Many municipalities across the country are reviewing law enforcement procedure following the death of 26 year old Breonna Taylor in Louisville Kentucky.
Taylor was killed by police after they executed a no-knock warrant, despite the fact that she was not involved in the case they were investigating. A no-knock warrant is exactly as it sounds. Police enter a residence without announcing themselves first in order to maintain the element of surprise.
We spoke with Manitowoc County Sheriff Dan Hartwig who explained how and when his deputies use this tactic. “We do them very infrequently,” He explained. “That’s kind of based on how serious the offense is. If we have a violent homicide, a robbery, those are things that are going to lead to us requesting a no-knock warrant.”
He also explained that they, along with the Manitowoc Police Department, need to get a judge’s approval for any warrant.
Hartwig said they do a lot of research into when they would actually perform such a warrant, something Manitowoc Police Chief Nick Reimer echoed, saying “We get a ton of intel before we do a search warrant.” For example, if there are children known to live at the residence, both entities will try to conduct the warrant when the children are in school in order to limit the possibility of them getting injured, or mentally scarred by the event.
Another aspect of the Breonna Taylor case that has many people upset is the fact that the officers conducting the warrant were not wearing body cameras.
While outfitting all law enforcement with body cameras is a great idea on paper, in reality they are expensive. “It’s not the equipment themselves,” Sheriff Hartwig explained. “It’s the back end support for it. Some of our staff, are required by statute, to keep documentation or records for up to 8 years, or in some cases, in extent of that. So as far as server space for holding all that data, if we have 40 some officers that have cameras, and some of them are recording for a few hours a day, that’s a lot of back end data that needs to be stored.”
While the Sheriff’s Department is not outfitted with body cams, the Manitowoc Police Department does have a few, just not enough for all officers to wear every day.
Chief Reimer told SeehaferNews.com that they got theirs via grant money, and explained an additional cost not addressed by the Sheriff. “Not only do you have to pay for the cameras and storage, there is redaction that happens. Wisconsin has very liberal open records law. If someone asked for a video, every time we did this we would have to redact the inside of the house, or maybe if some juvenile information is in there or medical, that would all have to be redacted. If you were to implement something like that, it would literally cost millions of dollars for the Manitowoc Police Department to do that.”
Both Law Enforcement leaders voiced their support for the use of body cams. Other supporters say they help hold law enforcement responsible.
Both Sheriff Hartwig and Chief Reimer have been vocal supporters of the local Black Lives Matter events, which have been put on by the Lakeshore is United Visionaries.
