...But lawyers including Darius Charney of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Angel Harris of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund said the year-long pilot program was vague about when officers must use cameras.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan, they said officers should be required to turn cameras on during "forcible" stops, encounters where people are free to walk away and when they are "generally" looking out for crime.
The lawyers also said the program should clarify when officers must alert people about the cameras, and that officers cannot review videos until after writing their reports or making statements, so the footage does not color their recollections.
"Details of the policy as approved by the monitor turn the cameras from an accountability tool into a tool for surveilling and criminalizing New Yorkers," the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement. ...