The DEA Once Touted Body Cameras for Their “Enhanced Transparency.” Now the Agency Is Abandoning Them.
In early February, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, was one of the first agencies to get rid of its body cameras. Subsequent videos show plainclothes immigration agents making arrests with no visible body cameras.
The DOJ wrote in a 2022 Office of Inspector General management report that the cameras were a “means of enhancing police accountability and the public’s trust in law enforcement.” Studies have consistently shown that departments that use body cameras experience a drop in complaints against officers, according to the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum, though it’s not clear if the drop is due to improvements in officer behavior or to a decrease in frivolous complaints.
“Eliminating these videos is really taking away a tool that we’ve seen be of benefit to law enforcement practices,” said Cameron McEllhiney, executive director of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. “It’s also a great teaching tool, besides keeping community members safe from the potential misconduct that could occur.”
The DOJ put a lot of money into the body camera initiative. In August of 2021, it awarded Axon, the company that dominates the body camera market, a $30.4 million contract for cameras and the software to handle the evidence they created. The contract, according to Axon, remains active. But only about one-sixth of it has been paid out, according to federal contracting data.
The most recent publicly available version of the DEA’s body camera policy dates to December 2022. It only required agents to wear the devices when they were conducting preplanned arrests or searches and seizures that required a warrant. It also only required DEA officers to wear their body cameras when they were working within the United States.
Agents had 72 hours after the end of an operation to upload their video evidence, unless there was a shooting, in which case they were instructed to upload the video evidence as soon as possible. The policy laid out in detail how and by whom evidence from the cameras should be handled in the event officers used force, and it authorized the DEA to use the video evidence when investigating its own officers.
The DEA had planned to implement the policy in phases so that eventually its officers nationwide would be wearing the devices when serving warrants or carrying out planned arrests. In its 2025 fiscal year budget request to Congress, the agency asked for $15.8 million and 69 full time employees, including five attorneys, “to enable the DEA’s phased implementation plan of nationwide use of Body Worn Cameras.”
Records obtained via Freedom of Information Act request by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington show that the Biden-era DOJ had an ambitious plan to capture agencywide metrics and data about the efficiency and use of body cameras by its law enforcement officers.
Laura Iheanachor, senior counsel at CREW, said that before federal law enforcement started wearing body cameras, several local police agencies had declined to participate in federal task forces because doing so would have forced their officers to remove their cameras.
“It’s a protective measure for officers, for the public,” Iheanachor said. “And it allows state and federal law enforcement to work together in harmony.”
Mario Ariza is a reporter at ProPublica. This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive ProPublica’s biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
