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MORGANTOWN - The Morgantown Civilian Police Review and Advisory Board on Thursday approved a report detailing recommended updates to the Morgantown Police Department's guidelines regarding body worn cameras.
The report will be forwarded to MPD Chief Eric Powell along with a request for a meeting to discuss the body's findings.
The existing department policy, known as General Order 311, was put in place in November 2014 and revised in June 2017.
It's been a focus of the advisory board since early 2025.
"I think that body cams are some of the most important developments in criminal law enforcement because it really helps everybody. It's so much more helpful for everyone to be able to see what happened," board member Bryan Church said. "So having a policy in place that is as updated and detailed as possible is only going to help that."
He continued.
"I mean, realistically, I think there's very little worse than having something where you have somebody who thinks that something bad happened, or something happened maybe with law enforcement that wasn't above board, and there's no way to demonstrate that. It's so helpful to build trust in the community if we have body cam that we can just point back to and say, 'Look, here, everybody can see what happened.'"
Church explained that among the additions highlighted by the board's review committee was an emphasis on ensuring the cameras are kept on throughout officer interactions as well as additional detail surrounding compliance with the policy and how violations are handled.
"With any kind of policy or rule or law or anything like that, having some kind of detailed process for violations and handling them is very important," Church said. "And obviously, that's going to be up to department policy on how they handle those things. But we certainly felt that it was important to kind of include things like that."
Church went on to say that the board's recommendations further aim to reinforce the existing policy's core tenet: When in doubt, record it.
"I think that's probably the easiest way to describe body cam policy," he said.
In addition to body-worn cameras, General Order 311 governs the department's use of vehicle-mounted cameras. It currently explains that absent unusual circumstances, any emergency response is to be recorded in its entirety.
The policy goes on to list specific examples of events during which recording equipment should be running.
Those include traffic stops, pursuits, observation of DUI suspects prior to stop and during sobriety testing and transport (if arrested), Miranda warnings (when feasible), prisoner transport, contact with juveniles, vehicle searches and inventories, DUI checkpoints, acts of hostility or physical violence (when possible), any confrontational contact with a citizen, and any incident which the officer feels may become an issue of some importance.
The policy states officers are prohibited from discontinuing recording of any incident without the prior approval of a supervisor.
Ultimately, Church said the board's efforts in reviewing the policy are in service to both the MPD and the public.
"So many officers, I think, rely on body cam now for evidence collection. Back in the day, you know, it would be a lot of pictures taken, written statements, maybe using separate recorders or separate cameras, or even your phone camera. But now a lot of officers routinely rely on these things to capture people's statements, to demonstrate what a scene looks like ... So, the more that I think this policy is adhered to and kept up on, that's going to help immensely with detecting and solving crime. And with sort of fostering public faith in the system."