Body-worn cameras for Somerville police officers were approved Monday during a special meeting of the City Council. The vote ran 7-4.
Much of the opposition over the three-and-a-half-hour meeting from councilors and members of the public was about the financial demands of the devices – this year has seen budget cuts and staff layoffs – and lack of a police oversight body that had been promised for several years.
Along with an element of time pressure, which caused mayor Jake Wilson to call this special meeting held virtually while the committee is on break, there were other factors leading to passage: a touch of peer pressure from Somerville being a later adopter of the cameras; financial concerns being undercut by a combination of state money and budgeting from outside the city’s general fund; and City Council president Lance Davis drawing promises from the mayor that legislative concerns would be addressed quickly.
“I’m happy to reaffirm strong commitment to civilian oversight. We’re really excited to really, really, really dig in on that with the council. It’s going to be a big thing this fall,” Wilson said.
The urgency behind the special meeting is the deadline on a $231,635 state grant – the money must be spent, and police cameras be in the city’s possession, by Aug. 31. The city learned of the grant last fall, and Wilson was sworn in as mayor in January. City officials have been debating the grant ever since, in part because the gift is dwarfed quickly by costs the city assumes upon implementation – nearly a half-million dollars annually on technology, a new police staff person to handle the equipment and the data that results, and pay increases for police.
Councilors entered budget season being told the city was more than $5 million in the red, and midseason there were layoffs of 13 people. Because of the expenses that follow upon accepting the state grant, on July 7 the Finance Committee went 4-1 in rejecting the cameras.
No worries from Wilson
On Monday, the objections all but evaporated. “As far as the money goes, it would have been cheaper before. It’s going to be more expensive later,” councilor Matt McLaughlin said of buying the technology.
Wilson and councilor Jesse Clingan noted that the 2 percent raises negotiated by the Somerville Police Superior Officers Association for whenever the cameras are deployed – $105,000 annually – don’t come from the general fund that saw shortages. “Fiscal year 2027 costs are fully covered by the grant and by funds put away years ago for this purpose,” Wilson said. “If stewardship of public funds is important to you, it will never be more cost-effective to implement body-worn cameras in Somerville than this moment.”
The Somerville Police Employees Association is still negotiating its own pay increase, which will be phased into the fiscal year 2028 budget. “As the person who will have to present a balanced FY28 to this body in just 10 months, I wouldn’t be here before you tonight asking you to approve this if I were worried about us regretting this decision come next summer,” Wilson said, describing signs of an economic turnaround for the city.
No action since 2020
It was the groundwork laid for implementation of the cameras without matching oversight of the police department that grated on some councilors and members of the public. Both ideas were from among a 10-point plan the city committed to with the idea of addressing systemic racism after the death of George Floyd in 2020.
People on all sides of the issue were bitter that nothing from 2020’s social justice goals had been achieved, with McLaughlin, a yes vote on the camera grant, raising the point (“We used to be a leader in police reform in the region, and now I just don’t know what we’re doing”) as earnestly as opponent JT Scott.
“I actually went and looked up Just Us Somerville’s demands from 2020, and when it came to their demands about policing, there was No. 1 to create a civilian oversight and review committee,” Scott said, referring to an organization active during the Black Lives Matter era in the city. “Nowhere on that list of their demands was body cameras. So I am frustrated that somehow the city government has failed to move forward on civilian oversight or really any meaningful reform after 2020, despite promises and good intentions.”
Neighbors all have cameras
Body-worn cameras were an initiative the city has pursued with police union leadership since 2015, Wilson said, and in March 2021, the council unanimously backed a proposed 2020 resolution in support of the cameras. In 2022, the city’s Department of Racial and Social Justice launched a Public Safety for All Task Force that included body-worn cameras in its final report last year – before the department was renamed “Equity and Belonging” with a smaller staff.
In that time, police chief Shumeane Benford said, Somerville has become surrounded by communities such as Cambridge, Medford, Chelsea, Arlington and Boston that have adopted body-worn cameras. Cambridge moved to get them after the tragedy of a Jan. 3, 2023, police shooting of resident Sayed Faisal, 29, during an emotional crisis. More recently, North Andover and Madison, Wisconsin, have moved to implement the devices, also in the aftermath of violence.
“We have an opportunity to make sure that we’re not looking back with regret in the event of the unthinkable here in Somerville,” Benford said. “Let’s learn from these examples next door and this past week to make sure that we’re in line with all of our neighboring communities and yes, the Somerville Housing Police, by implementing a body-worn camera program that brings vital transparency to police interactions with the public.”
Public comment
Public comment was overwhelmingly skeptical or opposed to accepting the grant and new costs, or of giving cameras to police without an oversight council in place and proper mechanisms for video review.
“My fear is fiscal year 2028,” Emily Baillieul said, “that we’re going to be here in 10 months and people are going to be explaining cuts that we have to make to eldercare services, to the schools, to food security programs, in order to make things work.”
Another resident, Emily Doran, scoffed that “something the police are advocating for is something that’s going to benefit us.”
“When body-worn cameras were first developed over 15 years ago, it was police departments themselves and prosecutors who wanted them. The purpose was to get as much of the public on video as possible – total informational awareness – and the data shows footage almost is never used against police, but is used every day as leverage around the country to prosecute very poor people and low-level crimes,” Doran said. “In my opinion, body-worn cameras would be better described as mobile surveillance units.”
The final council votes in favor of accepting the camera grant came from Davis, vice president of the council Will Mbah and councilors Clingan, McLaughlin, Ben Ewen-Campen, Emily Hardt and Kristen Strezo. The votes against the grant were Scott, Jon Link, Naima Sait and Ben Wheeler.
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