SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Protests over a police shooting in Sacramento are being fueled, in part, by police officers apparently muting their body cameras after the shooting.
Stephon Clark was shot multiple times as police were looking for a suspect who was breaking car windows.Clark was unarmed.
The 12 News I-Team has found that mute button is a function that's been used before, and one that many police-use-of-force experts don't know about.
Sacramento Police use the Axon body cameras, made by Scottsdale-based Axon, formerly called Taser International.
According to the user manual, holding down the Function button on the camera allows officers to mute their microphones indefinitely. The manual points out that the feature has to be enabled by the individual police department. The manual says the feature may be "useful in sensitive situations."
The I-Team first noticed the mute function on body camera video of the arrest of former Mesa City Councilman Ryan Winkle for DUI. Winkle's wife is on the video, appearing to try to convince the Tempe officers to let them go because Winkle was an elected official.
Tempe Police blurred the entire video and redacted certain personal information from the audio portion. But at one point, an officer says "hang on, mute" and the microphone cuts off with a quick beep. This happens at least three times during the video.
The officers eventually arrest Winkle, but there's no way of knowing what they discussed during those periods of silence.
"It raises suspicions from a public viewpoint and a citizen's standpoint of, 'Why is this being muted?'" ASU professor William Terrill said. Terrill studies police culture and use of force and had no idea the Axon cameras could be muted.
"It's hard to say why Axon would incorporate that as a feature of the technology," Terrill said.
A spokesman for Axon said the company added the feature as a result of requests from customers. Axons also said the feature is turned off by default. It did not speculate on why agencies would want to use the mute feature.
Various police agencies around Arizona use body cameras. Mesa Police uses the Axon system, but a spokesperson did not know about the mute feature and said the agency had not activated it.
Phoenix police use a different body camera system that is said not to have a mute function.
Tempe Police, which uses the Axon system as well, said the feature allows officers to discuss investigative techniques and strategies at their discretion. A spokesman for Tempe Police added that the policy is also under review.