Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake says she will veto a City Council bill requiring all Baltimore police officers to wear body cameras ("City Council approves police body camera bill," Nov. 10).
"I refuse to roll out a program that has not been carefully thought through," Ms. Rawlings-Blake said after the council's vote.
Yet earlier, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts had outlined for the council's public safety committee some of the problems officers in Oakland, Calif., had encountered with body cameras while he was police chief there.
It seems to me that if the commissioner has already led a police department that used the cameras, he should be able to quickly bring the council up to speed on the issues that need to be resolved to make the devices feasible in Baltimore without months of delay while a task force appointed by the mayor debates the same issues.
Last year, a $285,000 consultant's report to the Police Department recommended that Mr. Batts establish a pilot program to test the cameras here. Has nothing been done or discussed since then?
David Gosey, Towson