March 22, 2023
The following are our beliefs and understanding as Illinois Law Enforcement Officers with over 55 years combined experience with ISP and Kane County, and as ILETSB certified CSI instructors:
From the summary document “bc basic guidelines” published on the ILETSB website (the act in part):
(1) If an officer is assigned to wear a body-worn camera, it must be turned on at all times when the officer is: (a) on-duty, (b) visibly wearing: 1. any officially authorized uniform designated by a law enforcement agency, or, 2. articles of clothing, a badge, tactical gear, gun belt, a patch, or other insignia that he or she is a law enforcement officer acting in the course of his or her duties (c) and is: 1. responding to calls for service, or 2. engaged in any law enforcement-related encounter or activity: A. This includes, but is not limited to, traffic stops, pedestrian stops, arrests, searches, interrogations, investigations, pursuits, crowd control, traffic control, non-community caretaking interactions with an individual while on patrol, or any other instance in which the officer is enforcing the laws of the municipality, county, or State, but B. This does not include when the officer is completing paperwork alone or only in the presence of another law enforcement officer.
(4) Officer-worn body cameras may be turned off when the officer is inside of a patrol car which is equipped with a functioning in-car camera; however, the officer must turn on the camera upon exiting the patrol vehicle for law enforcement-related encounters.
There are several contradictory directives and ambiguities contained within the act (and why they keep looking to amend it). It says if you are wearing anything LE related, and/or performing any LE related activity, you must have the camera on. But then the Act references “interactions” “enforcing the laws” and “encounters” which infers that the spirit of the law relates to protections for persons during law enforcement encounters, interactions, or to capture law enforcement actions of misconduct subject to public complaints or discipline.
The last line of the first paragraph grants an exception “when completing paperwork alone or only in the presence of another law enforcement officer” and therein lies one of many ambiguities and potentials for exception. Looking again to the purpose or spirit of the law, the practicality of intended application, and REASONABLENESS of good faith compliance, one must ask if it is reasonable and necessary to record potentially hours of crime scene processing? For what purpose? How about evidence tech or custodians processing evidence in the lab, office, or handling evidence in the storage / vault and so on. What about during training, for example during the 40 hour CSI class? Does that fall under the “this includes but is not limited to…” wording of the act?
We believe that until there is a specific directive from the legislature or judicial clarification of the Act, it is not required to activate a BWC when processing a crime scene unless: 1) you are in the presence of and interacting with the public in some way or 2) special or exigent circumstances would lead a reasonable officer in the same situation to activate his BWC to comply with the Act.
Included with this document is the ILETSB document on Basic BodyCam Guidelines, as well as a link to the ILCS (50 ILCS 706/) Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act.
Keep in mind your Department policy may be more strict than Illinois Law. If that is the case you must comply with policy, but this may be a starting point for discussion about change.
Lt. Chris Collins (Ret) Lt. Heather Hansen (Ret)
Kane County Sheriff’s Office Illinois State Police
