After a shooting death, residents and officials demand body cameras and crisis intervention
In the aftermath of a police shooting that left a 20-year-old Bengali immigrant dead Wednesday, one of the loudest and angriest refrains from his community and allies has been shock and dismay at the lack of police body cameras that could show definitively what happened.
Police leadership and unions, city councillors and staff want the cameras too, and have for years.
It may be the Cambridgeport killing of Sayed Faisal that finally sparks action. Change looked less certain around comprehensive funding for an organization that would replace the police in providing an unarmed response to mental health crises and other community needs.
Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui hoped the public would get answers on “this body cam” question and other issues concerning the killing, including whether an outside investigator would be brought in to look at the circumstances, at a meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School, 102 Putnam Ave., Riverside. Police commissioner Christine Elow, City Manager Yi-An Huang and Middlesex County district attorney Marian Ryan are expected to take questions.
“Internally we’ve had some of the similar discussions about body cameras” over the past few days, Huang said. “There has been strong support across essentially all of our stakeholders. But the work hasn’t been done yet.”
“This is certainly a moment for us to have that discussion and recommit to it,” Huang said.
Recurring issue
Faisal was killed by police gunfire after he was seen self-harming with shards of glass and a large knife, which he kept with him as he ran around the neighborhood, police said. He still had it when he ignored a nonlethal “sponge round” fired at him and moved toward officers, police said. The death took place in a backyard. No onlookers have been identified.
Protesters have spoken of the death at the hands of police as an injustice like those of Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and other people of color. Faisal needed “help, not a bullet,” they said, and public comment at Monday’s meeting included testimony about people who survived mental health crises and confrontations with police – if they were white.
An extensive conversation about body cameras, nonlethal weapons and unarmed response was held in Cambridge in the summer of 2020, after the murder of Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer led to a resurgent Black Lives Matter movement and calls to fund police less and social work more.
The ensuing conversation led to dual proposals for the independent Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team and a new city agency called the Community Safety Department; a majority of the City Council supported the agency, which has a budget but won’t operate until next month or March, emergency services director Christina Giaccobe told members of the council’s Public Safety Committee in December.
As for body cameras, they weren’t in the police budget in May despite widespread support. “It got put on a to-do list and it never got done,” councillor Marc McGovern said Monday.
Body camera money missing
It was McGovern who asked during the last budget process – the final one for outgoing city manager Louis A. DePasquale and the first for Elow as commissioner – where the cameras had gone.
“I am such a fan of body cameras. When I think about the transparency and accountability, that would be such a benefit for us,” Elow said in May. “I absolutely am passionate about engaging in that conversation with the council when the time is appropriate … it really is up to the City Council to engage us.”
McGovern noted Monday that there was another budget season underway, and said he expected to see funding for body cameras in what was presented to the council for approval.
Two members of the task force that came up with the Community Safety Department proposal, Samuel Gebru and Loren Crowe, wrote an open letter Monday to the council and city manager requesting “immediate funding for body cameras … a policy for their use in the field and storage, and procedures for Cambridge residents and others to be able to access body camera footage as a public resource,” they wrote. “From our understanding, this issue has had widespread support in Cambridge for several years, including from law enforcement, but no clear implementation plan.”
A plan would mean union negotiations and a process to decide how to protect the privacy of citizens who are photographed and ensure that officers turn on the cameras and audio, among other things, former police commissioner Branville G. Bard Jr. told councillors at a meeting in August 2020. The city might also need permission for cameras from the state Legislature through a home rule petition, city solicitor Nancy Glowa said.
Anti-surveillance law in place
The city passed an anti-surveillance law in December 2018 that would require council approval for cameras on police officers or in police cruisers, and councillors have approached them with caution. “Body-worn cameras on police officers can be used to hold police accountable for their actions, or as intrusive devices that vastly expand police power and expose ordinary people to government surveillance of their most intimate, challenging moments,” the local American Civil Liberties Union warned.
“I’m glad that we passed a really strong surveillance ordinance, because there are concerns,” vice mayor Alanna Mallon said in August 2020. “We know that facial recognition is notoriously bad for misidentifying black and brown individuals, which would hurt the community.” Mallon does support police wearing body cameras, she clarified this week.
They also have limits, and would “probably not” have changed the outcome for Faisal, McGovern said. “But we would have more evidence and we would have more answers … If it’s just one person says one thing [about Faisal’s death], one person says another thing, we’ll never really know. But cameras will give us visual and auditory evidence.”
Call to fund Heart program
Councillor Quinton Zondervan, who said the time since Faisal’s death had “easily been the most difficult week in my five years on the council,” used Monday’s meeting to repeat calls to back the Heart program – echoing calls during public comment that the program was ready to serve with $1 million in city funding.
It could have helped keep Faisal from entering the moment of crisis that led to the confrontation with police, Zondervan said.
“Despite the lack of funding from the city so far, Heart has done yeoman’s work to get off the ground. They have hired a full staff, including seven fully trained responders who are deeply connected to the community in a way that the police or other city staff frankly can never be. They are ready to begin taking calls,” Zondervan said. “All they need is funding and cooperation.”
Aside from councillor Patty Nolan saying it was “time to accelerate” plans for alternative responses, there was no response to Zondervan’s call.
Sue Reinert contributed to this report
This post was updated Jan. 11, 2023, to correct the spelling of Loren Crowe’s name.
Gebru and Crowe’s email does talk about body cameras, but that’s just one paragraph out of eleven.
The bulk of the letter (https://twitter.com/SMGebru/status/1612570413866930194/photo/1) talks about the City’s continuing failure to implement unarmed dispatch for exactly the sort of situation that caused this death.
When you read this, you see what a mess the city government is.
Sadly, when you move around Cambridge, you see what a mess the city government is.
Sadly, when almost half of our public school children (grades 3-8)can’t read proficiently, you see what a mess the school committee is.
Thank goodness Harvard and MIT are here!
The school committee vies with the city council
for being the most ineffectual.
The fact that so many children cannot read at grade level is heartbreaking. That has been the case for many years, but the schools are more interested in “soft stuff”, and are not making sure that the students can read and write.
I’m afraid there is little hope. We spend much more per student than almost any other city in the state, but it is not money spent wisely.
If we have some schools where students cannot read at grade level, we have to ask ourselves, why?
Is it that some schools have teachers who are not as good as at other schools. I don’t believe that is the situation. Is it that the parents of these children don’t read to their kids or don’t make sure their children are reading and doing their homework? Why aren’t we funding an after school activity to bring up to par those students who need help?
I think both body cameras and the alternative response department are a great idea, but my understanding was that even if it had been stood up already that alternative response wouldn’t have helped here. I thought they are only going to be called for non-violent incidents. Is that understanding incorrect?
Also, not clear to me if that’s the same as this HEART program, but this publication writing articles that presume tons of prior knowledge is nothing new)
I’m sorry it’s confusing. The article says, “The ensuing conversation led to dual proposals for the independent Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team and a new city agency called the Community Safety Department; a majority of the City Council supported the agency, which has a budget but won’t operate until next month or March, emergency services director Christina Giaccobe told members of the council’s Public Safety Committee in December.”
The final four paragraphs of the story discuss the hopes of councillor Zondervan and others to get Heart funded.
Oh it’s an acronym! I should’ve gotten that but missed it. Maybe add (“Heart program”) in that paragraph for other idiots like me
Concerned43 please listen to the pod cast “sold a story”. You will then understand the lack of proficient readers (47%) in CPS is not due to parents or children…
It’s what’s or more accurately how they’ve been taught in CPS.
It now seems to be recognized but who knows what will replace reading recovery…
PRC
Thanks for recommending the podcast.
I read the transcript of the first episode and it was absolutely frightening.
There were so many parts of the podcast that were upsetting, but this one bothered me the most.
“Alden: What’s going on with my son is that he was made to feel successful by not looking at all the letters in the words. He learned those strategies. Things like – look at the first letter, use the picture, think of a word that makes sense. That’s what he was taught. And that’s what he did.”
Here is a child who is made to feel successful, even though he doesn’t have a thorough
grasp of what he is reading. This doesn’t bode well for later in life.
I’ve seen this with many students entering college. They have little ability to absorb what they have read, and even less of an ability to be able to write an essay about the topic.
I’m aware of the woefully inadequate teaching of math in the CPS, but wasn’t aware that this method of reading instruction is perhaps the norm. If so, is it any wonder why so many children cannot read at grade level.
We are doing a terrible disservice to the children… and their parents. Why is the
Cambridge School allowing this? Don’t they care that the ability to read competently, and to write in a coherent manner, is one of the most important things in being able to function as an independent adult?
“Why is the
Cambridge School allowing this?”
They aren’t only allowing it – they require it! Speak with some teachers they have had many hours of professional dev training on this flawed method.
This is NOT a teacher issue but a School Administration issue. Many great teachers have resigned in part due to this and many other top down policies – if you listen to the last episode in the podcast the Winchester reading specialist resigned due to it.
It seems the yet again “new mgt” is aware of it and is defunding the “reading recovery” in cps. Seems to be a generation late but hopefully they select something that improves the situation. Not that is matters but we’ve had to hire private tutors to correct the situation with our children. Most don’t even know this is happening to their child. However, being forced to sit at home (while every private school in Cambridge had in person instruction) had one only one benefit! We could see this clear as day and hired a tutor immediately.
I’m not actually sure if you tried to force children not to read proficiently you could get half the children to fail.
It’s yet another self inflicted complete mess!!