Over 30,000 Mississippians get stories like this delivered to their inboxes for free.
Sign up for The Today, our daily newsletter, and continue to read this story.
Three months after equipping police with dashboard and body cameras, the city of Hattiesburg could consider new rules governing their use.
Ward 2 Councilwoman Deborah Delgado said she will propose regulations for police surveillance equipment and allow for public input into how local police fund, acquire and use the equipment.
In June, the Hattiesburg city council voted unanimously to spend $249,410 for dash and body cams, WDAM reported. Delgado told Mississippi Today that she has not heard about any negative consequences of using the cameras and that her legislation is designed to protect the rights of police and citizens.
“Governments have used surveillance throughout history to suppress free speech, intimidate leaders of political movements, and track individuals and communities. Such technologies are disproportionately used to target communities of color and low income communities,” Delgado said in press release from the ACLU, which is coordinating with several cities to introduce similar bills nationwide.
Hattiesburg is the only Mississippi municipality included in the first wave of cities to introduce surveillance ordinances.
Jennifer Riley-Collins, executive director of the ACLU of Mississippi, said in a statement that “the use of surveillance by local police has been spreading unchecked across the country without regard for the communities that they purport to serve.”
Delgado will introduce the bill at an Oct. 4 work session, which will include an opportunity for public comment.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.