Nashville Police gave the community oversight board edited body camera footage. That’s raising questions about transparency.

A Metro Nashville Police Department employee tampered with body camera footage before passing it on to the Community Oversight Board. It’s the latest tension in the relationship between the police department and the board tasked with overseeing them.

It started last year, when a resident reached out to the COB to file a complaint about an officer being disrespectful.

The oversight board requested documents from MNPD, including the body camera footage of the interaction. They wrote a report recommending officer Brandon Chapman be disciplined for his actions.

The chief of police responded, accepting some of the recommendations, attaching their own internal report and mentioning they planned to also discipline the officer for profanity.

“And I was like, ‘What are you talking about?'” says Jill Fitcheard, head of Metro Nashville Community Oversight, or MNCO, the support department for the COB. “Profanity? Now, you know, I would have caught profanity.”

Her confusion came from the fact that, in the video she had, the officer never swore.

That’s how she discovered an MNPD IT employee had edited the swearing out.

MNPD confirmed that’s what happened with WPLN News.

“Profanity was redacted for all requests, not just for MNCO,” an emailed statement from MNPD spokesperson Kris Mumford reads. “Once a supervisor became aware that this was occurring, the profanity redactions ceased.”

Fitcheard says usually a redaction is more obvious; for example, someone’s face is pixilated or blurred out. In this case, she says it was done in a way that hid anything was missing.

MNPD says it was an isolated incident, but Fitcheard isn’t so sure.

“It just opened up a, in my opinion, a Pandora’s box of questions, concerns,” Fitcheard says, “Not only for us, but I’m sure those who are watching and complainants are concerned about theirs as well. Makes me have to think, do we need to go back and relook at every single case that we have here?”

So, she asked the police department to do an audit of all edits on footage sent to her department. It’s a hefty ask. The oversight board has been reviewing videos of police misconduct for the last three years.

Fitcheard also requested an investigation into the IT employee for possible disciplinary action. MNPD says that staffer will continue to work with videos in the meantime.