A Metro Nashville Police Department internal investigation found that two employees removed swearing from body camera videos without permission. But the department has no record of how much footage was improperly edited, and has no plans to do an audit to find out.
More: Nashville’s police oversight board recommends body camera audit after incident with edited footage
Instead, the police offered to send the Community Oversight Board copies of all the footage they’ve requested in the past, so that the board could do its own investigation — comparing hundreds of videos they received to the originals.
“They could have done a very thorough investigation if they choose to do it, but they did not,” says Jill Fitcheard, executive director of the oversight board. “And now, we’re left with all of these unanswered questions and the responsibility and the onus is on us. And I don’t think it should be. They’re the ones that did this and they’re the ones that need to be held accountable for it.”
Conducting that type of audit, she says, would tie up her department’s investigators for months — taking them away from doing their jobs of looking into community complaints of police misconduct.
“We don’t have the manpower to do that,” Fitcheard says, “and it shouldn’t be us doing it anyway.”
‘It’s eroding trust’
Following reports of the dispute, MNPD announced it would audit more than 40 videos turned over to the COB since September 2020.
More: MNPD now says it will review body camera footage for improperly censored language, after all
This saga between the police department and the board appointed to oversee it began in August of last year.
A community member filed a complaint with the oversight board, saying an officer was disrespectful. The oversight board took the steps it usually does: requesting documentation of the incident, including the officer’s body camera footage. The board reviewed it, then recommended discipline.
It wasn’t until the police chief responded to say that they planned to also discipline the officer for profanity that the oversight board realized the video they had did not include any swearing. It had been edited.
The police department originally said it was an isolated incident with one IT employee. But its internal investigation revealed two employees were editing footage without permission.
More: Internal investigation shows editing of MNPD body camera footage was more widespread than claimed
And during an oversight board meeting last month, an MNPD captain said that the employee started removing swearing from videos out of habit from his time working for the city’s TV channel, the Metro Nashville Network. But it’s not common for the MNN to edit swearing out of videos, and department policy requires edits to be run by Metro Legal first.
Fitcheard is concerned about how the information keeps changing, and what this interaction says about the oversight board’s relationship with the police department.
“I think that this relationship is — based on the continuation of things that are happening — I think it’s really fragile,” she says. “It is. I think it’s eroding trust.”
Next steps
MNPD recommended a written reprimand for both IT employees and more training on redactions for the entire Public Records Unit. The police department says this was not an attempt to mislead the oversight board, or cover up wrongdoing by officers.
“They were redacting profanity for all public requests, not just by officers but by civilians,” MNPD spokesperson Kris Mumford wrote in an email. “Once it was learned that they were making those redactions, in 2021, they were immediately instructed not to redact profanity.”
Moving forward, the police department says footage will come with a written log of edits or redactions.
During its next meeting, the Community Oversight Board will decide what steps to take — including possibly bringing on a third party to investigate how widespread this issue has been.
Update: This story has been updated to include MNPD’s announcement that it would conduct an audit.
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