I-TEAM: Potential body camera loophole could allow officers to hide evidence

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The WAFB I-TEAM has uncovered a potential loophole in the Baton Rouge Police Department’s body camera system that could allow officers to review their video and possibly hide evidence. It’s a loophole a whistleblower claims his fellow officers exploited to allegedly hide evidence in a use of force case.

As a special grand jury is set to determine whether BRPD officers Doug Chustz, Todd Thomas, Troy Lawrence Sr., and Jesse Barcelona will face criminal charges for their roles in allegedly strip-searching a man and then plotting to get rid of the evidence back in 2020, what the WAFB I-TEAM found has one attorney raising questions about officers and their body cameras.

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Internal BRPD documents leaked to the WAFB I-TEAM, a whistleblower told investigators the four officers’ alleged plot to hide evidence started the moment they realized the whistleblower’s body camera was rolling during the strip search, which allegedly captured officer Todd Thomas punch a man in their custody inside a bathroom at BRPD’s First District precinct.

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The whistleblower claims Officer Thomas took the officer’s body camera and then used his phone to access the footage after telling him not to put it on the docking station so that it would not be uploaded into BRPD’s storage system.

”That’s a major problem,” said attorney Ryan Thompson. “It’s scary if I’m being honest with you. How rampant is that practice? I didn’t know that they could view their body-worn camera via their personal cell phone via an app. I wasn’t aware of that.”

Thompson says the fact that officers can access footage and possibly prevent it from being logged is troubling.

”If that is the case then exactly what prevents officers who have done things that are not lawful and that are not constitutional from reviewing their body-worn camera before they put it on the docking station,” Thompson questioned.

WAFB’s Scottie Hunter asked the attorney if it raises enough flags if an officer accesses the video—regardless of why— to prompt someone in the agency to ask questions about what they were reviewing and why.

“Absolutely,” Thompson said. “It goes back to this whole discretion that officers have and that is a problem.”

Based on an audit of the body camera system, investigators determined that Officer Thomas accessed the body camera system on a computer and a Samsung cellphone. At some point, the whistleblower claims Officer Thomas told Deputy Chief Troy Lawrence, Sr. that the video was “bad” and that they needed to “get rid of it”. The whistleblower claims Deputy Chief Lawrence agreed with the other officer’s assessment of the video and his plan to hide the evidence. The officers allegedly got rid of the body camera without uploading the evidence to BRPD’s cloud system and then wrote a letter saying the camera was lost.

WAFB’s Scottie Hunter asked attorney Thompson if having this kind of power gives officers too much authority to monitor themselves and edit out things they don’t want the public to know.

“Absolutely, it does,” Thompson said. “From the very beginning, I applauded the individuals who were instrumental in creating the body-worn camera policy; however, I’ve always felt that it was not strong enough.”

According to BRPD’s policy on body-worn cameras, officers are not allowed to transfer evidence over cellular data without permission. As Chief TJ Morse took over the department earlier this year, he said he would review many departmental policies. A spokesman with the department confirms the body camera policy is one of the policies the chief is currently reviewing. The spokesman says that officers are not able to download videos to a phone or computer but that officers do sometimes review those videos to assist them in writing reports at the end of their shift. He says the videos are not downloaded to the BRPD cloud storage system though until the body camera is placed on the docking station.

Attorney Thompson says body camera policy definitely needs to be reviewed and possibly strengthened to make sure something like what the officers in this case are accused of, does not happen.

”You’re circumventing the system and it needs to be fixed and I think that’s a policy problem that needs to be fixed ASAP,” said Thompson.

The special grand jury that will examine this case was put in place last week. It’s unclear how long it could take them to comb through all of the evidence and decide whether the officers involved will face formal charges.

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