Body-cam videos play key role in local cases

Video and audio footage from cameras clipped to officers’ shirts is finding its way into courtrooms, used as evidence in criminal cases.

“We believe that it is now a ‘best practice,’ as well as good public policy, for all police to be equipped with body-cam technology,” said Bob Miller, chief deputy prosecutor in Monroe County. “There is simply no better evidence of what occurs during a police-citizen encounter than video of the event.”

In October 2014, a body camera clipped to BPD Officer William Abram’s uniform recorded the sounds of gunshots from inside a dark residence where two women were being raped at gunpoint. The video shows two men escaping from a bedroom window and one turning and firing toward Abram, who shot back.

It documents just what happened and backed up the officer’s account.

It’s evidence. Strong evidence.

During a trial this month in Monroe Circuit Court in which a man was convicted of causing his 2-month-old daughter’s death, deputy prosecutor David Gohn played for jurors a video and audio recording. It came from a Bloomington police officer’s body camera that was on when the parents of the battered infant were told that despite efforts to revive her, Kenya Rose Smith-Barton had died.