COLUMBUS – Members of Columbus City Council are taking public comment on how police officers might implement body cameras in their work.
Public Safety Committee chair Mitchell Brown and Council President Zach Klein are conducting the hearing (5:30-7:00 p.m., Columbus City Hall, 90 W. Broad Street) was scheduled before last week’s fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Tyre King, though that case is expected to come up during discussion.
“Body cameras are a common sense technology for the Columbus Division of Police to include as part of their community policing efforts, along with cruiser and neighborhood cameras. Cameras provide an opportunity for third-party review of behavior during an interaction between law enforcement and the community,” Browns said.
Mayor Andrew Ginther promised during his campaign to implement body cameras for police officers and, following the shooting, repeated the vow to have them on the streets by early next year.
Police say Tyre was repeatedly shot last Wednesday night after he ran from an officer investigating a reported armed robbery and pulled out a BB gun that looked like a real firearm. No one else was hurt.
Tyre was black. The veteran officer who shot him is white.
The local police union president says the officer did what he had to do in that situation.
Authorities say the pending police investigation will be presented to a grand jury to decide whether charges are merited. A spokeswoman says council has reached out to schedule a meeting with a group that handed over a list of demands after a Monday protest (above).
The office of Franklin County Coroner Dr. Anahi Ortiz says the cause of King’s death is still pending, though a third-party forensics investigator hired by the King family concluded that the boy was shot while running away.