By Ed Finnerty and Rex Hall Jr., The Kalamazoo Gazette
Kalamazoo’s police union has lodged complaints with the city over video and audio recordings at the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety headquarters that it says may be illegally monitoring employees’ private conversations.
“We are very concerned for our members and for other departments that have employees there and for citizens that have been in our facility,” said Jeff Vander Ark, president of the Kalamazoo Police Officers Association.
“We learned very credibly that there may have been hidden monitoring,” he said. “They are probably not doing that anymore.”
City officials sharply denied the allegations this morning. City Attorney Robert Cinabro said his office had reviewed the matter and found “no violation of state or federal law.”
Public Safety Chief Dan Weston acknowledged this morning that all interview rooms in the Public Safety building are equipped with recording devices but not for the purpose of eavesdropping on employees. He said the exterior and interior of the building is also monitored with video recording.
“It’s just silly,” Weston said. “We’re a police station. Our interview rooms are equipped with recording devices like any police station would be. Mr. Vander Ark has never, ever brought this topic up to us. So he is just making these silly assertions without ever having discussed it with the appropriate people.”
Memos from Vander Ark to presidents of the two other public-safety unions and letters from the officers association’s attorney to Cinabro were delivered anonymously to the Kalamazoo Gazette on Monday. Vander Ark said he did not give the memos and letters to the Gazette and other media, but he did confirm their authenticity.
Brett Naumcheff, attorney for the officers association, said in a March 13 letter to the city attorney that the union does not question the need for security in the public-safety headquarters, especially in the evidence room. “However, we have a tremendous problem with nonparticipant monitoring, especially private conversations,” he wrote.
The letter said the union learned three months ago from Public Safety Inspector Victor Green that a room used for investigation interviews is monitored by video and audio equipment, a concern to the officers association because members have had numerous meetings there with union representatives and expected privacy.
The union requested “full disclosure” on the city’s video- and audio-monitoring systems and practices.
In a two-page letter to Naumcheff, Cinabro said the meetings of officers-association representatives are not monitored.
“The city does not now and has not ever monitored private conversations between union members occurring in that interview room or anywhere else, and it is not the city’s intention to do so in the future,” Cinabro wrote.
Cinabro also said that cameras were installed to monitor public areas in the Public Safety building that “were identified as gaps in the total security system.”
Naumcheff’s letter notes that after a Public Safety employee complained about “covert monitoring,” signs warnings of electronic surveillance were posted around the building. “This response, in and of itself, is suspicious. It would lead us to believe the practice of secretly monitoring employees had been in place for some time,” it said.
In late February or early March, according to the union attorney’s letter, crews who were installing visible video cameras in the Public Safety building reacted with “sheer panic, and they would literally run away” from officers who asked them questions about the cameras.
Cinabro in his letter called that characterization “simply untrue.”