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According to an internal email obtained by ProPublica, the Drug Enforcement Bureau quietly ended its body camera program just four years after its inception.
On April 2, DEA headquarters sent an email to employees by emailing them, announcing that the plan had taken effect the day before. The DEA has not publicly announced policy changes, but by early April, the link on the DEA website about the body camera policy was damaged.
The email said the agency would change it “consistently” with Trump's execution order, revoking the 2022 requirement that all federal law enforcement officers use human-body cameras.
But, according to its spokesman, there are at least two federal law enforcement agencies within the Justice Department – the U.S. Marshal Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Guns and Explosives – that still require body cameras. The FBI referred questions about its body camera policy to the Department of Justice, which declined to comment.
The DEA did not answer questions about its decision to stop using cameras, saying the agency “has not commented on tools and technology.” Reuters reported the change as part of a story about budget cuts in the law enforcement office.
A former federal prosecutor expressed concern that the change would make life more difficult for DEA agents.
“The vast majority of the footage of my body cameras I watched was based on the allegations of defense attorneys about what police did,” said David Devillers, a former attorney in the Southern Ohio region. “I would say that police officers who are wrongful are exempted from 95% of the time.”
The Justice Department began requiring its federal agents to wear the devices in 2021 after protesting against George Floyd's death.
Announced the use of the camera at the time, then-administrator Anne Milgram said in the release: “We welcome the added cameras of body wear and thank them for the transparency and assurance they provide to the public and for the hard work of law enforcement to ensure our community is safe and healthy.”
In May 2022, then-President Joe Biden issued an executive order that expanded the use of human-body cameras to all federal law enforcement officers.
In January, the incoming Trump administration revoked the order, along with nearly 100 other orders, which were considered “harmful.”
In early February, U.S. immigration and customs enforcement was part of the Department of Homeland Security and one of the first agencies to get rid of its body cameras. The subsequent video shows the plainclothes immigration agent was arrested without a visible body camera.
The Justice Department wrote in a 2022 Inspector General Administration Office report that cameras are “a means to strengthen police accountability and public trust in law enforcement.” According to the nonprofit police execution research forum, the study has consistently shown that complaints against officials have declined by departments using human cameras, although it is not clear that the decline is due to improvements in official behavior or reduced rash complaints.
“Eliminating these videos is really a tool we’re seeing for good for law enforcement,” said Cameron McEllhiney, executive director of the National Civil Law Enforcement Association. “It’s also a great teaching tool, in addition to protecting community members from potential misconduct that can occur.”
The Justice Department put a lot of money into the body camera program. In August 2021, it awarded Axon, which dominated the body camera market, a $300.4 million contract for cameras and software that handles the evidence they created. According to Axon, the contract is still active. However, only about one-sixth was paid, according to federal contract data.
The latest public version of DEA's body camera policy dates back to December 2022. It only requires the agent to wear equipment when conducting pre-planned arrests or searches and searches requiring warrants and seizures. It also requires only DEA officials to wear body cameras while working in the United States.
Upload video evidence for more than 72 hours after the operation is completed. Unless there is a shooting, they are instructed to upload video evidence as soon as possible. The policy details how and who the evidence of the camera should be processed in the event of the use of force by an active officer, and authorizes the DEA to use video evidence when investigating its own officers.
The DEA plans to implement the policy in phases so that eventually officials wear devices nationwide when serving arrest warrants or conducting planned arrests. The agency asked $15.8 million and 69 full-time employees, including five lawyers, for the fiscal year 2025 budget requirements, to “enable the DEA phased implementation plan to use body wear cameras nationwide.”
Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act request, records obtained in Washington’s Code of Responsibility and Ethics suggest that the Biden-era Justice Department had an ambitious plan to capture agency-wide metrics and data on the efficiency and use of human cameras by its law enforcement officers.
Laura Iheanachor, senior adviser to crew, said several local police agencies refused to join the federal task force before federal law enforcement began wearing human-body cameras because doing so would force their police to remove their cameras.
“This is a protective measure for police officers in the public,” Iheanachor said. “This allows state and federal law enforcement to work together in harmony.”
