PORTLAND, Ore. — On Monday, about 100 Portland police officers at central precinct started wearing body cameras, marking the official start of the bureau's full-scale body camera program after a pilot project last year. All 800 of the bureau's sworn officers are expected to start wearing them over the next couple months.
Police and community advocates both say it's a welcome change, and long overdue; Portland is one of the last major cities in the country to equip its police department with body cameras
“This is something that’s been a long time coming, and I felt like almost a sigh of relief putting on this morning to go out on patrol,” said David Baer, a public information officer with the Portland Police Bureau’s Central Precinct.
Certain situations will make the cameras automatically record including when officers draw their guns, grab their taser, or activate sirens.
“It’s a good thing that it’s happening now at least, but it really could have happened way before this,” said Jim Libby, who frequents downtown Portland.
The change is coming too late for mothers like Rhoshelle Clark. Her son Immanueal Clark was shot and killed by a Portland police officer back in November 2022, when officers did not yet wear body cameras.
“He should still be here right now… It’s going to be an awesome thing because our kids are getting killed out here and we don’t know what to do anymore,” Clark said.
Clark’s family sued the city this past March, alleging officers “wrongly and unreasonably” mistook her son for an attempted armed robbery suspect before shooting him in the back with an AR-15 rifle, the lawsuit said. That case is still pending.
“They shot my son and killed him and let him lay there suffering and bleeding,” Clark said.
A grand jury determined the officer’s use of force was not criminal under Oregon law.
Clark believes body camera footage would have helped explain what really happened the night her son died.
“We need justice, so if they start doing that, that’s wonderful,” she said of the bureau's new body camera policy.
Asked about public calls for the cameras as a form of police accountability, Baer said he agreed with the sentiment and added that accountability works both ways. Officers believe the footage will help them when criminal cases are brought to court, he said, pointing to downtown interactions with drug dealers.
“Hopefully going forward having these cameras will be really helpful for the police bureau,” he said at a Monday morning press conference.
KGW asked if PPB will proactively release body camera footage after extreme situations such as police shootings, and the bureau said they intend to release that footage in the interest of transparency, but they are still figuring out what that process will look like.