It’s a dirty little secret of prisons that for all their security cameras, there are always dark corners, blind spots. Prisoners know them. Correction officers know them. And they pose a danger to both.
Two federal lawsuits charging use of excessive force by correction officers, filed in the wake of a prisonwide lockdown and contraband sweep of the Souza-Baranowski maximum security prison in January 2020, provide ample evidence of the need for more light in those dark corners. Some 118 prisoner complaints charging officers there with excessive use of force were filed during the three-month period beginning that January.
In the summer that followed — the summer of the nation’s George Floyd reckoning — much attention was focused on body-worn cameras as part of a solution to excessive force by police on the streets of our major cities, including Boston. But there was also a growing realization that the need was just as great — or greater — within prison walls for the safety of inmates and correction officers alike.
“Body Worn Cameras (BWCs) have increasingly become a tool utilized by law enforcement and correctional agencies to improve the quality of evidence, increase the safety and accountability of officers, reduce and resolve false allegations, as well as positively affect public trust and police legitimacy,” the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Assistance said in announcing a $2 million grant to the Massachusetts Department of Correction for 2022.
The idea was to outfit 50 officers at Souza-Baranowski in a pilot program with an eye toward expanding the program throughout the system. The reason, according to DOJ, was obvious.
“A 277 percent increase in assaults, that have taken place behind the walls of Massachusetts correctional facilities between 2017 and 2019, highlights the need for a technology that can not only deter assaultive and criminal behavior, but swiftly and efficiently prevent further harm through procedural and prosecutorial means evidenced by clear and definitive audio and visual recordings.”
The pilot project launched in the waning days of the Baker administration, nearly a year after its initial announcement.
Today, a DOC spokesperson declared the administration “pleased” with the results of the pilot program for improving “the safety of incarcerated individuals and correction officers,” and confirmed that it “is now working to implement this program statewide.”
Well that was the plan. Now the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union, which represents most correction officers within DOC, has asked the state Department of Labor Relations to halt what it called the “unlawful deployment” of the body cameras, asking for a cease and desist order.
At issue, according to their filing is the right to review their own body camera footage “before submitting use of force written reports.” The filing also indicated the department was willing to pay officers an additional $2,500 but only if the union agreed to new rules over when officers could review the camera footage.
“This fight is far from over,” warned a letter from the union’s executive board posted on its website.
“I don’t see any principled reason for the union’s position,” said Patty DeJuneas, the attorney who filed one of those federal lawsuits on behalf of two inmates, who say they were beaten without provocation inside a cell on Jan. 22, 2020. One of them was allegedly mauled by a DOC patrol dog while handcuffed. The plight of both inmates was documented in the Globe Spotlight story, “The Taking of Cell 15,” which also found that at least four officers involved filed reports containing falsehoods about the incident.
And that, more than anything, might point to why the officers union is so sensitive to the review issue.
“If officers are doing their jobs properly, then they should want the world to see it,” DeJuneas told the Globe.
The second lawsuit, filed by Prisoners Legal Services of Massachusetts, on behalf of nine Black and Latino men incarcerated at Souza-Baranowski, accuses prison officials of “unconstitutional brutality” during a five-week “retaliatory force campaign” during that same period. The suit notes the men had nothing to do with a prison disturbance that injured several correction officers earlier that month in a separate unit of the prison.
Both suits reference the department’s own requirement that a “planned use of force” — for example, the extraction of an inmate from his cell — be recorded with a handheld camera to capture areas not visible on surveillance cameras. That’s something that wasn’t done during the events of that fateful January.
The Prisoner Legal Services suit also notes, “Officers were permitted to review surveillance video depicting the incident before writing their official reports, and they were permitted to confer with one another while writing the reports.” It was part of an effort “to orchestrate a cover up of the ongoing abuse of prisoners,” the suit alleges.
That certainly helps explain the union’s current demand for the right to prior review of body cam footage.
Body-worn cameras are surely not the sole solution to the brutality and the code of silence described in both lawsuits, but properly implemented they can be a part of the solution — and union recalcitrance must not be allowed to stand in the way.
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