Councilmember Freddie O'Connell
Mayor John Cooper made the surprise announcement yesterday that Metro would be equipping Nashville police officers with body cameras starting next month, appearing to signal the arrival of a policy that was first announced more than three years ago. District 19 Metro Councilmember Freddie O'Connell reacted on Twitter: "Body-worn cameras are not a panacea for transparency nor a complete reform."
O'Connell, who has recently joined the list of Metro Councilmembers calling for the removal of Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson, went on to highlight concerns about the privacy of civilians in a city where every police officer is recording everything. This morning, he spoke to the Scene about the overwhelming public calls to defund the police and his concerns about strapping them with cameras.
What is your reaction to the defund-the-police movement broadly, and what you saw at last week’s Metro Council hearing?
There's a range of emotions over the past few weeks, right? There’s been this long concern in Nashville and all over the place that we were getting some fundamental things wrong about policing.
One of my biggest regrets from our last term on council was that I was not more vocal about demanding a more satisfactory response to the data presented by “Driving While Black,” by Gideon’s Army and that report. And then I feel like after we’ve had two officer-involved shootings, in just the period of time that I have been in office, under circumstances where it has not been demonstrated that there was an immediate risk to officers or to others, I think we made the right decision as a community to institute a Community Oversight Board. I had the kinds of concerns that I think are appropriate about, “Hey are we getting the policy right?” But by the end of it, some of the specifics and the language and the mechanics of it didn’t matter as much to me as that we establish it. So I wound up signing the petition and being in favor of it.
I think now we look with despair at something like what has happened in Minneapolis, which is still hard to believe, and then it doesn’t completely surprise me that we see a striking response to that. And I think maybe that response that we saw at public hearing at council, that we continue to see by the hundreds in our inboxes — it seems like we’re on the verge of hearing from every person in the city under the age of 25, and then certainly some others as well, demanding that we defund the police and/or that we reimagine a budget that serves the community through less policing and [more] public goods.
Are you persuaded by that?
Let me say it this way: I was persuaded that we needed to do more to rethink our strategy on policing before these emails began, but what it is refreshing here is that it’s no longer just being a quiet skeptic in a room but now there is a powerful movement out there.
I think the harder part is, for anybody that sat through that public hearing, members of the general public, probably even some of the people marching over the past few weeks or protesting, rallying, is what is exactly is meant by “defund the police?” …
I think there are a lot of things that are in meaningful reform agendas that we can and should pursue. I’m very glad that [Councilmember Colby Sledge] is pushing forward with a variant of the 8 Can’t Wait reforms. I’m a co-sponsor of that. It’s something I recommended that we pursue last week. It had been unclear how much we can do legally, but I really appreciate that Councilmember Sledge is pushing forward with that.
I tend to want to be pretty evidence-based on that, and I’m interested that Minneapolis seems to be on the verge of really carrying the defund-the-police thing all the way through, and it looks like they’re gonna wholesale-overhaul their police department, at least in some way based on the actions of their council. I think some of this is probably on the very soon side to see. We haven’t been able as a council, I think, to absorb the response from the public hearing because this has been such an unusual budget year. This has not been our ordinary conversation about priorities — this has basically been, “What do you do in a crisis?”
I think there are a couple things. If I listen to my constituents, the truth of the matter is, there are plenty of places with middle-aged and older African American communities who are concerned about crime and think that they don’t see enough of the police in the communities. But I think as you get into younger scenarios, and having served on the 37208 committee, I think I look at it this way: We’ve got three different bodies of work that have emerged in Nashville. First was "Driving While Black," which you probably remember that report actually included a list of demands. We’ve got the Policing Project, which followed that up, which validated the data in that report and made a series of recommendations. We also have the 37208 committee’s work. To be honest, we have made very little progress on most of the reforms, recommendations and demands in those reports and my hope is that we can now take those things, pursue the very best evidence and take immediate action on those things.
Shifting to the mayor’s announcement yesterday about body cameras. My understanding of what you said on Twitter is that you’ll be supporting that but that you—
Let’s just say, I know it may seem like a distinction without a difference — I would say my outlook on this is I will not be opposing it.
With that said, you raised concerns that would broadly fall under privacy. Can you outline the things you’re worried about and what you think needs to be thought through when it comes to policy around body cameras?
I’ve never been jump-up-and-down, "Hey, let’s put body cameras at the top of our list of a reform package or as an accountability and transparency tool." If you look back over the past five years, you’re not gonna find any public comment from me that says, “Oh yeah, this is the best idea and the first thing we ought to pursue.” In fact, I did an interview several years ago with concerns about cost, but also privacy.
The biggest issue there for me is, I don’t see the surveillance state as having particularly greater value than the police state that people are concerned about right now. This is the thing, right? Police-controlled camera technology I think we should look at with deep skepticism. The way I think about it is this: We’ve had these extraordinary moments of mostly peaceful protest and rallying here in Nashville over the past few weeks. Now imagine if every member of the police that was present — and in this case we can specifically say Metro Nashville Police Department — was equipped with a body-worn camera. Now, everybody who is walking by those cameras or police who are stationed anywhere in the footprint of a march, a rally, a protest, anyone walking by those is gonna have some portion of their identity recorded just for participating in a protest.
If we don’t get the policy right — I mean, think back over stories we’ve seen in just the past year. There was the extraordinary story in The New York Times a few months ago about how easy it is now to get location data that is kinda generally available. Now pair that with, for instance, Amazon effectively pushing Ring technology out into police department partnerships. So now, all of a sudden, where it seemed like, “Hey, here’s a neat little home-security tool that you can use,” well all of a sudden all of that footage is being collected by a private corporation and used in not-quite-transparent partnerships with police departments. So, again, you might be visiting a neighbor and unwittingly you’re participating in a massive facial-recognition operation.
The same is true. You show up to a rally, you show up to anything where there is a police presence for whatever reason, and suddenly you are no longer in control of the privacy of your identity based on just showing up.
Similarly, let’s say you make a request for service or that police arrive for whatever reason, and they knock on your door and we don’t have appropriate policies in place. Well, they might capture something that is a private moment in the home. They might capture something on footage that effectively amounts to a warrantless search of your house by virtue of the presence of that camera. I think these are things that we ought to be very skeptical of. There is a scorecard out there of places that have implemented body cameras, and it’s very, very rare to find an implementation that fully protects community privacy while also adding transparency and accountability to the policing process.
With all that said, let me flip the question. Why not oppose this?
I think the lack of opposition stems from my awareness that many people who are advocating for comprehensive criminal justice reforms see this as a necessary tool. If that is the case, and they want to pursue this comprehensive agenda, I don’t necessarily want to knock this out if we can kind of get the other reforms. But the thing that I will do is, if we are going to advance this, I’m not going to shut up until we’ve basically got a fully green scorecard on it.
