AI-generated transcript of Medford City Council Committee Meetings PHCS, 6/16/26

[Emily Lazzaro]: Hello. Good evening. This is a meeting of the Public Health and Community Safety Committee. June 16th, 6.30 p.m. We are meeting today to talk about the Citizen Control over Public Surveillance report from the Medford Police Department. We received this report in May and we are here today to ask a few questions that we have still from that time. And we discussed this just a little bit. The 2025 annual surveillance report was sent by Chief Buckley every year There's a required report that goes over the police use of body cameras, which is a program that this department's been using for a few years. And we had a report last year that discussed the opportunities and challenges and what was working. And this report is, the intention of the report is to address why to make sure that there aren't situations where any branch of our local government may be inadvertently storing or using data that surveils our residents unnecessarily. The report answers a few questions. This report is publicly available for anybody who might be interested in reading it. I won't read through it now because it's many pages. But if anybody is interested in reading it, it is available on the City Council page of the Medford City website. I would now like to offer City Councilors an opportunity to comment on the report or ask any questions. We do have three representatives from the Medford Police Department here that may be able to address any questions that may come up on the report. And actually, I would also like to offer the police department an opportunity to give a summary, quick summary of the report if you would be comfortable doing so. just because, you know, we wouldn't want to read, like, a six-page report into the record. Any changes that were notable from last year, anything that's improved or changed specifically over the last year, or anything that's notable, continued challenge, perhaps, So Chief Buckley, Jack Buckley is here. If you want to pick up the mic and put it on the higher part of the pedestal, that tends to work if people are taller, a little bit better to pick up your voice. I know it's a little challenging.

[Jack Buckley]: Does that work?

[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes, I think so. Yeah, so if you can just give us a little summary, that would be great.

[Jack Buckley]: Sure. So the annual surveillance report was submitted in May. We answered the nine questions as per ordinance. And for the most part, the surveillance technology that we use commonly is our body-worn cameras. I think everybody at this point in time kind of knows what body-worn cameras are, how they work. We see it as one of the advantages of policing, the newer technology that has helped policing and helped the residents and individuals who come to work, play, and reside in the City of Medford. So, Bodywood Camera captures the audio and video footage of most civilian and police officer interactions and relations. During calendar year 2025, Medford police officers made 32,181 videos, of which 1,717 were related to arrests. There were 906 videos related to incidents involving felony, and 1,861 videos involving misdemeanors. About 3,425 video cases, that could be criminal cases, public records requests, et cetera, that were in there, were generated as a result of our sort of organizing those, and there were a separate 361 public records requests, mostly from the district attorney's office, but prosecuting agencies would be requesting those, most of our public records requests. In addition to that, with the public records request, I should note that there are restrictions on public records requests for body-worn camera video footage, and that applies, it's the same restrictions that apply to, say, public records for police reports, where records for, domestic violence, rape, sexual assaults, they are confidential and not public records. So those body-worn camera video footages would not be disseminated by public records request, even if we get said public records request. And so you could see there were nine times that that happened where people submitted a request for body-worn camera footage and we denied their because of the law, the request. There was also nine other of the requests that were denied of the approximately 108 public records requests, and those were related to arrests. And the best way to describe this is an individual gets arrested on Friday. By Monday morning, they're requesting their body-worn camera video footage that has already been turned over to the prosecutor. They get it through their defense attorney that they include anyway. It saves everyone a whole lot of time to just say go through the court system with your defense attorney because all of our body-worn cameras related to any criminal event is turned over to the district attorney and subsequently going through the discovery process given to all defendants in a case. That's sort of the crux of the body-worn camera. That's our primary use of surveillance technology. This year, we are reporting that at least in one criminal case, we used GPS to track it. Again, I'm not going to get into any of these criminal investigations, but it was court-ordered. We put a GPS device on. I'm trying to carefully walk my way through this. We used the GPS in the criminal investigation per court order. And in addition to that, there were three identifiable times where we use facial recognition technology, and that was in compliance with other police agencies. But also, anytime we use facial recognition, we are bound by the restrictions of Mass General Law, Chapter 6, Section 220, which outlines how police departments can use facial recognition. And were we, I mean, I guess the oversight to that comes with the court systems, right? So if we were to probably use facial recognition, we would know by the judges and the defense attorneys, et cetera. And so there were no issues thus far with using them. And additional to that, there was approximately 12 cases where flock camera evidence was used in criminal investigations with the police department. Now, I'll say publicly because I know everyone here realizes and understands we do not have flock cameras. We don't have them. We don't maintain them. We don't. administer them, but other communities still don't. And if we say, hey, we're looking for a red Prius in a criminal investigation, and I'll give an example, say the city of Somerville, I don't know if they have law cameras or I do know they have certain cameras, they come back and say, hey, we had a red Prius that was driving down the street. and we captured this plate at this certain time, it matches up to criminal. So we will use that information as evidence in our criminal investigation. And again, evidence isn't always used to convict somebody. It's also used to prove innocence of people. So those are the instances that we have used other surveillance technology, even though we don't really own or operate those sorts of technologies. Separate from that, I'm here to answer any other questions. I think it's pretty straight. I think the report reads pretty clearly and straightforward. You know, I will add that, you know, the body one camera program is proceeding. And, you know, we went through a first year of So trial and error, it's a new practice, we put it into play and we had a lot of training and retraining. And last year, somewhere around May, I was here also talking about this and we had some issues that we were dealing with. I believe one of the issues that was brought up at that time was a question of how we redact. And so we will have a package for you later on that shows you that we have a policy now on redaction of body-worn camera. That was a suggestion from the city council at last year's meeting which we implemented shortly thereafter and we follow that. Above and beyond that, so. We collect our body-worn cameras. We store them for certain periods of time. We don't store anything indefinitely unless it's a very, very serious crime or that the courts have ordered us to store them indefinitely. And we, the other things that we do is we do two separate audits of our police officers, right? So we wanna make sure that they're in compliance with policy. So we don't review every body-worn camera video because we can't, right? There's not enough time in the day. So annually we do an audit of our, Camera systems, in general, we take three incidences per officer, right? So it's going to be hard to find three incidences of the chief of police on body-worn camera because that's just not really my job and my technology, but a regular patrol officer will clearly have many of them. So we go through every officer, we review three videos, three separate incidences, say it could be a general incident, a motor vehicle stop, could be an arrest if they had one, and we make sure that they're in compliance with sort of body-worn camera policy and other policies. Additionally, we do another audit. where we review our supervisors, because we have restrictions on who even internally can review body-worn camera footage. And that audit is to make sure, you know, like as a lieutenant, I might have access to body-worn cameras, but if it's not to my shift or my involvement in that case, I shouldn't be reviewing that case. And we do an audit to kind of ensure that that's not happening. So we have a lot of safeguards in place for the technology. It does take a lot of time and a lot of hours to kind of maintain this program, but we feel thus far it's very effective for everyone involved in here. And I think we've fairly outlined that in this report. So any questions, I'll be glad to help.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you, Chief. As I recall from the report last year, there was a challenge officers that came up in the audit, officers announcing that they were going to turn on their cameras. Was that something that you noticed this time or was that kind of a first year issue?

[Jack Buckley]: So it is probably one of the regular compliance issues that we still maintain. In the beginning, like I said, these are There were growing pains, per se, and now we still have it, and occasionally it still does happen. But we have instituted other reviews and policies and checks, and I'm trying to think back at what point in time. at 2025, but we did a whole, another sort of update and training and reminder of people to do this, and we have pretty good compliance with that. So, yeah, I think it's going to historically always be with us, like at 3 o'clock in the morning if an officer forgets something, we're going to record that. But we review and make sure that none of this is sort of intentional, right? I think the idea behind body-worn camera, or at least the way the law is written is we want to make sure the police officers aren't intentionally not recording things, and we don't see any evidence of that, right? So occasionally we get somebody who turns it on too late, turns it off too early, or may have forgotten to turn on the body-worn camera. So it still sort of is an issue, but we are improving on that as the standard as we mentioned last year, we were going to improve on that standard.

[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, I have three questions. I'll just do one at a time. It's a little easier. So how would people file complaints? Like what's the process for filing a complaint?

[Jack Buckley]: Just in general or like related to the technology?

[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, so under number five, a summary of complaints or concerns that were received about the surveillance technology. Like how would those complaints, like what would be the process for that to happen?

[Jack Buckley]: This is not as, it's a simple process, but it's not as simple as to be able to kind of describe it. There's multiple ways. So, in general, they can show up in person, right? They can speak to the commanding officer of the shift, and they will be given an opportunity to be heard. They'll fill out a complaint form. And anytime we receive a complaint within 48 hours, we have to notify the state, the post commission, and then we do an investigation on those sort of complaints, right? We also can, an individual can also file online and file a complaint, in which case, When we get that, we will do sort of the reverse. We have a professional standards division who might have to reach out to that individual, follow up, and say, hey, I'd like to talk to you about this. Will you have a complaint? They can either meet in person or do an interview over the phone to file that complaint. And then there's another option where simply they can go directly to the Mass Post Commission to file a complaint on anything. And they can just go online to file a complaint. And that's just, that is body, word, and camera related complaints, but it could be any complaint for any of those issues.

[Anna Callahan]: Thanks. My second question is, yeah, it's about violations. There were no violations observed or reported. I'm just curious, like, can you give us a few examples of what violations could be, and do you expect in any one given year, do you expect to have a few, or I'm just a little bit curious about the violations and what they would be.

[Jack Buckley]: Sure, and I don't know if you're referring to, or if you want me to try to reference any specific violation, but again, as I mentioned, a lot of the violations will be like failure to turn your body one camera on in a call or turning it on too late or turning it off too early as I mentioned just a few seconds ago. Those are in generally our biggest sort of by far our largest sort of complaint and issues. And let me mention that any time somebody has a failure or a discrepancy, they're required to fill out a report. So like it's a user report that says so that the body-worn camera division knows that there was a discrepancy and they can follow up and find out like what happened. Sometimes it's just an honest mistake, an innocent mistake, and we kind of have to, again, backing up to what I said earlier, we have to rule out any intention to it. Also, it should be mentioned that, especially if the case rises to the level of a criminal investigation that might end up in the courts, police officers, when they write their incident reports and their arrest reports, will mention that this incident was captured on body-worn camera, or if not, it was not. mention of audio camera, but there will be a discrepancy report that was filed with that to kind of keep track of that. And so, but I think by far, I would tell you that the incidences of, just looking for the policy here, what else we would have, it's clearly those are the biggest incidences that we have, is just the timeliness and filing of the camera. Sometimes you get out in mayhem and you've got to do this, you actually have to hit the camera You forget. And what's kind of curious is we still count it as a violation, but let's say, you know, you and I showed up as a scene, we're both police officers. It's still a violation if I don't turn my body and my camera on, but you might have captured everything. We don't say, oh, it's on, because there's multiple officers sometimes almost on every scene. So in some version we get it, but we still make and require the officer who did turn their camera on to file a report on it, a separate report on it.

[Anna Callahan]: Great. And do you, I only asked because I was slightly surprised to see that no violations observed or reported. Like I would imagine that, especially because it's a new-ish program, it's only the second year of the program, that there would be some violations. So I was wondering if there were like any that you would, like would you anticipate four or five or ten or something each year from newer officers or from, you know,

[Jack Buckley]: And are you referring to question six?

[Anna Callahan]: Number six, I think, I apologize.

[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, and that's that's for the audit. Yes. So and again, the audit is of. It's not every video recording. And we, like I said, on a daily basis, we know if somebody made an error because it's self-reported. But we'll take, say we have 100 police officers, we'll do three videos of every single officer who may have them and go through that. And yeah, they're, you know, we're looking at body-worn camera policy mostly. Of course, we're not going to ignore something that we blatantly see wrong, right, which we haven't, but yeah. And, you know, I have Officer Casarino, He does that audit, and he's one of them. We have a lieutenant, and there's no report. We're getting really good at this, and it's not... I guess the best way to say this, and you could see it in every other police agency, is just, like, I still have a habit to this day. I touch this radio, and I turn it on and off, because if your radio is on when you step into a cruise, you get two different things in your skull. So every time I step in a car, I'm turning this thing down. It's a habit I have for 28 years. Body-worn cameras and the touching of that are becoming a habit of police officers, just sort of instinctive. Sometimes you still forget that, right? Like, and so, but yeah, as far as our articles, yeah, it's nothing. And I mean, if you need me, I can have Officer Casarito come up. I know he loves to be in the public limelight, but he does the audits along with Lieutenant Duffy, and there's no reported issues.

[Anna Callahan]: Great, so it sounds like there is a difference between the violations that come out of the audit and the violations that I just imagined. And I remember there was some sort of a graph, like a chart or something last year.

[Jack Buckley]: So keep in mind, yeah, correct. So keep in mind, there could be, right? So if the number one violation is failure to, let's say the number one violation is failure to turn on your bodywork camera, well, we can't audit that because it doesn't exist. So we're only auditing a video that exists.

[Anna Callahan]: But you probably somewhere have those because they write them down, but they don't appear in this report.

[Jack Buckley]: Is that accurate? They don't appear in that report, but we produce an annual body-worn camera report that will have certain, like, this is how many videos and this and that, and so I can get you a copy of that tonight.

[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. And is that something that normally comes up at the same time, or is that, like that body-worn camera report, is that the same time?

[Jack Buckley]: That's an internal document we do ourselves as part of, so. the team that I have on 41 cameras reports directly to the Office of the Chief of Police and they'll do these audits in an annual report to kind of keep me up to date. I get a monthly report, I get an annual report, and they send it to me and we kind of, you know, it's not part of the CCOPS ordinance, it's not really part of the questions that we're required to answer, but it's just an internal way that we keep track of what's happening on the police department. I probably get way too many reports, but this is one that we use. That's how we can judge and tell what's going on and what's happening.

[Anna Callahan]: Okay, thanks. My third question is about just, so I'm curious about instances when, and please tell me if it is covered in here and maybe I didn't pick up on it, but instances where police, anyone from the department would view the body-worn camera footage after the fact? Is that something that is tracked, maybe in the document you just referenced? Is it something that appears in this report? Like, I'm assuming that that's generally, there's a policy that that doesn't happen, but I'm just kind of curious about that piece of it, if you can talk, speak to that.

[Jack Buckley]: Okay, so it's a larger question than I think you even imagine. So if I, let's say, go to a motor vehicle accident, and I have my body-worn camera, when I'm writing that report, I have access to view my body-worn camera. I can, by policy, I can review my body-worn camera and write reports, et cetera. If we have an incident where an officer fills out, say, like a use of force report, the supervisor of that shift and that officer's supervisor is actually sergeants and lieutenants have access to look at that body-worn camera and review that. Anytime somebody accesses a body-worn camera video is, I forget the term for it, but basically it's an electronic signature. We know who's watching what. And that was part of the supervisory audit that I had mentioned earlier. So we know when people are watching videos and who's watching them.

[Anna Callahan]: That's really helpful to know. I like that.

[Jack Buckley]: Thank you. Yeah. And so it is, again, part of the secondary audit. We also, you know, in a criminal, and I'm just kind of expanding this to give a clearer picture. if there is a criminal investigation that results as a, that comes about as a result of a police interaction on, say, like this evening, detectives will also have access because they're investigating that criminal. They would be able to sort of look at that. And professional standards, of course. I very rarely look at a body-worn camera video footage because there's no real need for me to look at it, unless there's a need for me to look at it, if that made some sense. But we have staff that are put in place, and it just kind of restricts. It's not out there for entertainment purposes internally. Very few people have access and we do keep track of that. And we can't find out.

[Anna Callahan]: That's super helpful. Thank you so much. It really is. It's good to understand kind of that there's like very clear policies on like when they can be reviewed. And you know I'm sure that they are quite useful when you're writing your report.

[Jack Buckley]: It's yeah it's beneficial. That's for certain. And as I mentioned I think I mentioned this last year but definitely the first year. We're finding more and more the district attorneys and at least through the district attorney in Middlesex County, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges are now saying we prefer the officer to watch their body on camera video. I mean, there's a legal side of that and everything else like that but it is beneficial, right? And we have not had any instances of issues with that when it comes out.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Are there any other questions from Councilors? Seeing none, do you have anything else you want to say about?

[Jack Buckley]: Okay. Whatever you need from me, I'll.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Great. Okay. I would like to open it up to public comment. We have a, yes, if you'd like to come to the podium and give us your name for the record.

[Jean Zotter]: Good evening. I'm Jean Zotter, 36 Saunders Street. I'm with Medford People Power and we advocated for this ordinance. And we want to thank the committee for making this, holding this forum to provide public comment on the annual surveillance report. We want to thank the police department for submitting the annual report, although we hope next time it's on time. Just a quiet request. I just want to say a little bit about why this is important. I think we've seen over the past couple of years how surveillance technology can be misused when it comes to ICE officers using it to track down people in their homes, and the laws have not caught up with this type of technology. So warrants aren't required for a lot of surveillance technology that's allowed. And so it's important that Medford have this. And I just want to remind us why we're doing this, because I know it could be a lot of work for the police department and a lot of work for this committee. And one of the CCOPS came up around the Black Lives Matter movement. And this was a way to ensure police accountability. And so that's one thing that we see this ordinance doing is to make sure that police are accountable to the public. And also body worn cameras were something that came up as a source of holding police accountable to the public. And that was a reason, I remember we were at a Martin Luther King event and Chief Buckley was there and we were talking about some of the recent murders that happened of black people by police. And this was something that was mentioned as a way to hold police accountable in Medford. not saying that anything has happened in Medford where this is needed, but it is good to be proactive to ensure that we have this type of accountability. There has also been recent instances of misuse of body-worn camera where there has been, not in Medford, but instances of police looking up their ex-wives, looking up girlfriends, tracking where people are, using body-worn camera footage. So it's just, good to make sure that we're staying on top of this technology and tracking what's going on. So with that in mind, I think Barry has some questions he's going to ask, and I just want to focus on two issues of privacy and accountability. We just always want to make sure that the privacy of Medford residents is protected with the use of surveillance technology. Our main concern is that any surveillance technology that we have is not used as a general surveillance tool outside of investigation of crimes and that the privacy of residents is protected. The report details the use of body-worn cameras primarily for case investigation. However, we would like to see more information about how they're protecting the privacy of residents. It's good to know, and I know in the body-worn camera policy there's information about storage of data. It would just be nice to hear how, when data is going to be destroyed, how they're protecting the data itself. The second thing is accountability, and so the chief did mention there's two audits, and in the report it says that there were no findings. It was really helpful last time. The report had both the results of the audit, but also a breakdown of special notification forms, which I think is when body worn cameras aren't turned on or off. So it would be helpful to see whether those whether that's getting improved or not. And, um, are there instances of special notification forms being issued? Um, you asked a lot of our questions. Councilor Callahan. So thank you. I think the only other question we have is, has there ever been an instance of an officer who is allowed to review footage before making a statement prior to possible, in a case of possible misconduct by that officer? So we know that they can, the chief detailed how they can review footage prior to a case that's going to court. The DA is asking for that. But has there been a case where an officer is allowed to review footage if there is a case of misconduct? So that's the only question I have. I know Barry has some more. Thank you. Thank you.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I'm just checking on Zoom for any other comments. Seeing none, go back to the podium.

[Barry Ingber]: For short people.

[Emily Lazzaro]: And you can give your name for the record, please.

[Barry Ingber]: Barry Ingber, 9 Draper Street in Medford. I guess I have a question on process for the chair first. I have a lot of questions and Jean just asked one, and if it's okay with you and if it's okay with the chief to have a dialogue to get those answers would probably be helpful. But if that's not consistent with how you see process, just please advise me on how you'd rather I do it.

[Emily Lazzaro]: If you wouldn't mind presenting the questions to me, then we can offer an opportunity for the police department to field the questions once your comment period is over.

[Barry Ingber]: Thank you.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Concluded.

[Barry Ingber]: So I'm going to restrict my comments and questions to section 1B of the annual surveillance report. And I appreciate Chief Buckley for being upfront about the use of surveillance technologies other than body-worn cameras in his report. So note that, Chief Buckley, I just appreciated it. The report states that these tools, specifically GPS trackers, flock data from other municipalities, and facial recognition technology from other law enforcement agencies, were used, quote, in accordance with applicable legal authority. And I'm just wondering what authority is meant, since these tools are restricted by law under CCOPS. and wondering if there were any exigent uses of those technologies, which is an exception granted in CCOPS. So that's the first set of questions.

[Emily Lazzaro]: What was the second part? Any what uses?

[Barry Ingber]: Whether there were any exigent. Exigent. Yeah. Second set of questions is around the GPS tracker. I'm wondering if the Medford Police Department owns GPS trackers. If so, how many? And was their purchase or use cleared with city council? And is there a policy, an internal policy on their use? And a third set of questions is on FLOC. I just want to say Medford People Power doesn't necessarily object to the acquisition of this data in pursuit of a criminal investigation, but we have questions about it. We'd like to know, and I think that Chief Buckley hinted at the answer that we want to hear, but it wasn't clear, was the data only on specific vehicles or was it bulk data gathered at particular times and locations. Related, why would the Medford Police Department be interested in data gathered outside of Medford, which the flock data would be? The data that was acquired, was it the data itself that was shared or was access to the system shared? When and how was this use authorized? And what was kind of the timeline between the the need for the investigation, the request for the authorization, the authorization and the receipt of the data. Like, you know, was that 15 minutes? Was it four days? Like, you know, how did that, how does that progress? And that's it. Thank you.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Thank you. Jean, could I ask if you can isolate the questions that you had in your comment, I'd like to just write them down and I think maybe the best way to address this as early as possible would be that I can address these questions if this makes sense to the police department. If you feel that these are things that are addressable in this meeting we could do it now or we could do it over email. You know, and kind of, but I think if we did it over email, it wouldn't be public to, you know, hear the answers. But if there's anything that we need to like go back on, we can come back to later. But I want to make sure I have all the questions collected.

[Jean Zotter]: Great. Thank you. There's really two. One is the last report provided a breakdown of the special notification forms. So it wasn't included in this report. What's the reason or can it be included in future reports?

[Barry Ingber]: Okay.

[Jean Zotter]: And then the second is has there been any times when an officer has been allowed to review footage in a case where there's possible misconduct by that officer? Got it. Thank you.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Chief, would you be willing to address these questions now?

[Jack Buckley]: I can try. Although I can't promise you I'll get everything that Barry asked at the end there. That's okay.

[Emily Lazzaro]: It feels like, I don't know, are you guys lawyers? Okay, so let's start with, okay. So tools, GPS trackers, flock data, and facial recognition data. that you access from other agencies and other cities and towns that are being accessed in accordance with other applicable legal authorities? What authorities would you be referring to?

[Jack Buckley]: I don't know how to answer the question. It's my authority. It's our authority as police officers to do criminal investigations, right? So we're empowered with certain authority under the law to gather and investigate criminal access, but in other words, I'm going to try to use the example I used earlier. Somerville had something on their camera and we were notified it. I don't know that we need much more authority other than our police authorities investigating criminal activity to gather that data. But we don't, in other words, we don't have to file a report with the state or ask the city council, or they don't have to go up to the chief and say, hey, can we do this? They have to comply with state and federal law when it comes to that. That's pretty much how we do our business on a daily basis.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Any time that you're investigating something in which a crime was allegedly committed in Medford and somebody crossed a town line, And it was necessary to follow up on that person. Yes.

[Jack Buckley]: I'm not sure if this was a question, but you're leading to one of the questions I think I heard.

[Justin Tseng]: Yeah.

[Jack Buckley]: Was crime isn't restricted to the borders of Medford. Exactly. Medford individuals aren't committing crimes in Medford only and then going back to their homes. Right. There are people who come from out of state. There are people who go from city to city. It's quite often that people who commit a crime will leave the jurisdiction of the Medford Police Department. That's what any sane criminal would do, right? You don't want to go where they're looking for you. But I think I should add this also. You know, while I won't get into the criminal investigations, and not even necessarily the type, but we're not using GPS or facial recognition or like floor camera data from another jurisdiction for like shoplifters. These are for serious criminal investigations. And they're well worth the effort for the point in time that we're doing this. And I think that can't be lost in this sort of conversation. We're not just saying, hey, just happened, let's see if Somerville has on it. It's not worth our time to do all this extra work unless it's a serious violation of a criminal offense. There are victims that need to be defended and there are bad people that we need to capture for public safety purposes.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Is it something violent necessarily?

[Jack Buckley]: It is often something violent.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Got it. Does the Medford Police Department own GPS trackers?

[Jack Buckley]: We do not.

[Emily Lazzaro]: No. Okay. Could you give us a quick, actually, this is not one of the questions, but could you give us a quick summary of what FLOC is? Because we've been saying FLOC, we haven't talked about what it is.

[Jack Buckley]: Oh, I don't know what FLOC is. We're not allowed to use it. The Flock is a company, first of all, right? But it's basically just a camera that can capture data, right? And yes, I mean, I know one of the questions was are we gathering bulk data or individual data? To the best of my knowledge, again, I don't do these criminal investigations. We all understand that. I'm not involved in every single one of these cases, but we're not saying, hey, give us all your cameras and all your data at one time just so we can kind of skim through it and see who's doing what out there. We don't have the time of the day to do this stuff, right? Some of it's just practical. If we are looking for a red Prius at 10.50 in the morning, that's what we're looking for. And we'll have a general idea that they drove down, say, Warner Street into the city of Somerville, and we're very specific about what we're looking for in most cases. And again, not for petty criminal offenses. But flock cameras are a general system that, you know, to a lot of degree, they provide a safer environment for municipalities when it comes to conducting public safety. This isn't the day, you know, that we have, you know, 150, 200 police officers here, right? We have more and more responsibilities with less officers, and technology helps with that, right? I mean, every single day. We're not still writing things with pen and paper anymore, right? We're typing into our laptops. That's technology. It's just advancements. Flock technology has the ability to be able to say, I capture it, let's say we put a flock camera in Method Square, it will record what's going through there. But when we need to find that red Prius who just committed, say, an armed robbery, we have specific times and understandings of when they may go through that, and it could capture plate data and give us the information. It's a simple breakdown of it, but, you know, what I, we don't have flock cameras, so I don't, you know, this isn't, I don't want to offer this as a pro or a defense of the situation, but that's basically what they are.

[Emily Lazzaro]: So they are cameras that connect to each other and then they make like kind of a web of visual.

[Jack Buckley]: Well they can but they're not always right so like I've seen you know a lot of communities that just keep it's like regulated just in-house.

[Justin Tseng]: Okay.

[Jack Buckley]: Most of this most communities do that right we're not sharing. I'm careful when I talk technology because I'm probably the worst, but it is often expensive and dangerous to share your data with everybody at any given time, and most public safety agencies don't do that. When used right, it's a great tool.

[Emily Lazzaro]: So when you request data, if you're not given access, are you given access to the whole system or just to the data that you request or the question answered that you ask?

[Jack Buckley]: So I haven't done it personally. I'll go back to what I said before. I'm not actually doing this. But again, we are looking for specific things. We're not going to say, hey, let's go look at every camera. I hate to pick on Somerville. I'm just using them as example because they're next door. So let's go look at every camera at Somerville and see if we see a suspicious car that's driving by. That's just a waste of time. So we use them for specific circumstances.

[Emily Lazzaro]: You would have to come to them with something that you've identified.

[Jack Buckley]: Or they come to us.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Or they come to you. What's the timeline for something along those lines? If you were to identify a kind of car that somebody was looking for, how fast is the turnaround?

[Jack Buckley]: It could vary. We may not develop a suspect vehicle in a criminal investigation for a month or two later.

[Justin Tseng]: Right.

[Jack Buckley]: Right? So there's no real way to answer that question. But let's say an incident happened right now, and we know that the vehicle, we had concrete proof that the vehicle drove into the city of Somerville. We could call Somerville. They could look at it. It probably would take a half hour to an hour. I don't know. Again, I don't do this on a daily basis. And when I was doing criminal investigations, all the cameras were like video cameras. But in general, it doesn't work that fast. Like we're not that into it. Nor would we be that sort of, It would depend on the violence and the extremity of the crime. That would really push things. But there's really no, there's no way of determining. Again, because facts change at all different times.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Got it. Okay. For Gene's questions, the last report had a breakdown of the special notification forms, but that wasn't here this time. Why not? And is it possible to get it in the next report?

[Jack Buckley]: I believe it's still possible to do this, right? I mean, it's just data that we have to kind of extract and go through all of those reports. And I think we did it the first time to, you know, kind of give us an idea of what's going on. And again, we do review our special notification forms, et cetera. I don't want to put work on them, but I think it's still something that could be possible. I just want to note. repeating myself, but the body-worn camera report is essentially just an internal document. It's not, like, required as part of this, and I'm not saying what it is. In general, it can be helpful, but I think we could still provide that notification. But as we advance in our use of this technology of body-worn camera, these things are becoming like sort of rote, like everyday things, we know what's happening, we know what it is, and we're not, if we see like, wait, this special notification form said something so bizarre that we didn't understand, that's what we're gonna sort of look into, but if it's the regular everyday, like, okay, we've seen this before, we've seen this before, we keep track of them, of course, but we, I don't think we can, I don't think we generate it in this time, but it's not impossible to do.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Another thing I'd like to note is that The requirements of this report aren't the same as something that you might want to keep track of in a body-worn camera report, which we saw a lot of last time, last year, because the body-worn camera program was very new. And the CCOPS report is really much more, it's not about the success of the body-worn camera program. It's about, is the body-worn camera program and every other bit of surveillance, including the parking, you know, is it, stepping past what its intention is, which is to allow police officers to successfully carry out their work while being held accountable for doing it the right way without inadvertently taking and keeping images of our residents unnecessarily invading their privacy and uh, violating their rights. So that's what this report is about, is, is, is it going too far in that direction? So it's not really about, like, all the stuff about body-worn cameras. And that's, I think, where it, like, the first version of this report was kind of a little bit of both. And maybe that's why this version is shorter and, uh, more specifically about, uh, is it overstepping? and answering those questions exactly. So if there are things that we may like to see in the body-worn camera report, that may just be like something that's not in the ordinance and not required of this report. I mean, I'm just saying that. That's not a question. And we can look at that again. I mean, it's like we can ask for it, but it doesn't mean that you're required to do it.

[Jack Buckley]: But to that point, we are making sure that we're not here to invade anybody's privacy. No, I know. I'll make a notification. Inadvertently. Just as an opportunity to. And we keep track of that. And eventually, I know the question was mentioned about retentions. I mean, we have a retention schedule. It's in our policy. I can't give it to you and dictate it to you all right now, but everything has a lifespan and they just go away. They just delete. And the second part of that is no one has access to this. I mean, outside of our police department, and we have the systems in play that I've already talked about on checks and balances and who has access. Nobody has access to this. Motorola doesn't have access to this. The state doesn't have access to this. The Middlesex District Attorney's Office doesn't have access. The feds don't have access unless we physically hand it to them and we are only doing that through proper public records requests.

[Emily Lazzaro]: And warrants.

[Jack Buckley]: And warrants, but we're not really getting those. Right. Okay.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Okay. Have there been times when an officer was allowed to review footage in a case where there was misconduct, known misconduct by that officer?

[Jack Buckley]: This is an interesting answer. The answer is yes. But you have to remember, though, if most misconduct or a lot of misconduct will come out of, say, a police action. And in which case, the police officer would have already written a report, has already had access to their body-worn camera, has reviewed it, wrote their report. And maybe a day, week, month later, somebody comes in and files a complaint against that police officer. So at that point, we can't really do anything about it.

[Emily Lazzaro]: They've already done the review.

[Jack Buckley]: Yeah, they've already seen the body-worn camera. They've already written the report. Complaints don't generate immediately, sometimes after an incident. Having said that, there have been times and instances of potential misconduct, right? Well, we say it's misconduct. And this is where it gets interesting. Even though they are allowed to, by policy, review their policy, officers and their attorneys, their representative unions, are electing to not watch the camera until after they answer their questions. And their theory is that we want to dictate to you exactly what we recall in this instance as fresh as we can remember it offhand. And I reserve my right to, you know, modify my statement after I watch the body-worn camera. That is becoming more and more of a practical thing. And that's part of their, I don't want to call it the defense, but that's part of their representation in a potential misconduct. So it's a good question. The answer is yes. It's an evolving situation where I think attorneys and unions and offices are starting to say, hey, I want to get a statement in right away. And then I'll watch my body-worn camera and modify my statement, which we will allow them to do also, even though they have the right to watch that camera ahead of time.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Interesting.

[Jack Buckley]: So they're doing it on their own. I threw you a curve ball with that one, didn't I?

[Emily Lazzaro]: Well, it was interesting. I mean, it's smart to do. OK. Councilor Tseng did join us. Do we have any other comments from city councillors? Councilor Tseng does want to say something. Councilor Tseng?

[Justin Tseng]: Hi, thank you for joining us, Chief Buckley, and sorry I'm a little late to this. My day job has been kind of crazy recently. I was wondering about the disproportionate impact. The report concludes that no community was disproportionately impacted. Would you be able to describe the methodology behind that assessment? What data was reviewed? By whom? I think without demographic data on who's reported or investigated using these technologies, it's a bit difficult for us as a council to independently evaluate that conclusions. I was wondering if you could speak to it to that.

[Jack Buckley]: I could try the. When body work cameras were first discussed in the city of Medford, there were several proposals, I don't remember from who at this point in time, to conduct these studies on disproportionate impact. in the community and they had all of this information such as gathering GPS data and where in the city was the body, where's the body, where camera footage taken and match that up to demographic, just information that we couldn't possibly do, right? And I think everyone grew to understanding that that sort of in-depth study would be impossible and so, Right now, how we're measuring it is part by audit, right? And again, we do this audit of three of each case, but also there's some three to 400 public records requests every time that we have to edit and review and we have lieutenants and an officer who reviews the body-worn cameras and looking over those things. And we can see and develop patents. And also the final determination would be how many complaints we're receiving from the public on this, right? And where those complaints are emanating from. That's why we haven't seen anything that has suggested to us that the community is being disproportionately affected by our use of body-worn camera. I know it's written into the C-Corp's ordinance, and I've argued this from day one. The whole argument, the whole question of how do we determine it is like, I'm not saying we won't do it. I'm just saying how do we do it? I think we're doing it well now with what we have. unless you get sort of complaints or we notice it ourselves. And keep in mind, we do that anyway, right? Like we know if we have an officer who's just arresting a certain demographic or just making car stops, we're picking up on that. We see this and we have people in lines that are keeping track of this data. And the same thing sort of would pop up on body-worn cameras. But I recognize that the intent of that is a lot more than what I just said, right? There's a lot more to it. It's just that we've discussed this in the city and other communities have discussed it, and they, we don't even know how to do that, right? And yes, it's part of the CCOPS ordinance. So we answer it as best we can, and we do our best to kind of make sure what we have, but there's no real clear-cut reason or process for us to go through and do that.

[Justin Tseng]: I just wanted to say thanks for the answer. I think it's something for us all to think a little bit more about. I know, I understand it's, you know, it can be difficult for you as an executive to read that and to decide how to go forward. I'm hoping us as a community that will sometimes help you think through that as well. I have to assume that there are folks who might have questions. I don't want to hog the time.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Sorry, I'm having a hard time understanding what you're saying, Councilor Tseng. Could you say that one more time?

[Justin Tseng]: Sorry, my audio recently is a bit crazy. Does this work?

[Emily Lazzaro]: Yeah, I also can just read the, if I stand up, I can read the captions. Go ahead, say it again.

[Justin Tseng]: Oh, I was just saying, I understand that thinking through disproportionate impact is something that is really difficult because it can, it can touch a lot of things, mean a lot of things. There's a lot of bigger points that could be collected or used. And I just wanted to thank Chief Buckley for his answers. I'm sure that Folks will have a lot of ideas on what we can track and hopefully as a community and as a council, we can help Chief Buckley think through it as well and upgrade him deeper. And then I said that I don't want to hog my time because I know that folks in the community, in the audience, might have questions.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Oh, for sure. No, we have actually already done our public comment. This meeting started at 630. Love you so much. I think one thing to note about the question about folks being disproportionately impacted is that not being racist or prejudiced or uh uh it's really hard to disprove it's hard to prove a negative it's hard to you know it's it's hard to say that you're like you're being even-handed with your traffic stops or the way that you react to investigations or respond to domestic violence calls or arrest people or don't. And I think it's probably a good sign. If you can't really tell, if you can't see a pattern, that's great. We would like to see more of that. So whatever kind of records you're keeping, keep doing it. keep being confused about how to show that you're not seeming racist. We would love to. We would love to carry that forward.

[Jack Buckley]: And again, I just want to reflect that I recognize that that is a much larger question than as we're simply talking about it, but it's really the only way to talk about it now, because it is a it's a difficult and confusing sort of dynamic and continuing to continuing to keep the conversation going and continuing to keep all the officers aware of like of like how

[Emily Lazzaro]: how it's being reported on and how front of mind it needs to be and that it, you know, professional development and constant, you know, opportunities to train and retrain and, you know, keep best practices in mind and all of that stuff being part of the conversation as you move forward is probably the best way to keep doing it. And I think that, again, it's very difficult to prove that you're not doing something. So I appreciate that we can continue to have that discussion. Are there any other comments from Councilors? Councilor Tseng, you do still have your hand up. Do you want to say something else?

[Justin Tseng]: Oh, no. Sorry. I didn't realize it was still up.

[Emily Lazzaro]: We're doing great.

[Justin Tseng]: It's one of those days.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Same. OK. Do we have any motions from Councilors? Anyone? Does anyone have a motion? Councilor Callahan. Oh, wait. Do you want to say something? Great. Everybody's doing great. Councilor Callahan.

[Anna Callahan]: I assume you keep this paper in committee because we review it every year.

[Emily Lazzaro]: I think you can approve this report. Approve the report, keep the paper in committee, and adjourn. Excellent. On the motion of Councilor Callaghan to approve the report, keep the paper in committee, and adjourn. Do we have a second?

[Justin Tseng]: Seconded.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Seconded by Councilor Tseng. Mr. Clerk, can you please call the roll?

[Marie Izzo]: Councilor Callaghan. Councilor Scarpelli. Yes. Councilor Tseng. Yes. Councilor Leming is absent. And Vice President Lazzaro.

[Emily Lazzaro]: Yes. In the affirmative, one absent.