BPD Use Of Bodycam Footage Was Unconstituional: MA High Court

BOSTON — A Boston Police detective violated a defendant's Fourth Amendment rights against warrantless searches when he used bodycam footage from an officer to obtain a search warrant that led to a criminal conviction, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled Friday.

The ruling overturns a superior court judge's motion ruling and sends the case back to the lower court. But, the state's high court added, the officer was operating within the law when he wore his body camera into the home while responding to a 2017 domestic disturbance at the defendant's home.

"Being lawfully present in the home, the officer's observations of the items and locations in his path as he effected the purpose of his visit were permissible plain view observations," the court said in its 35-page ruling. "We conclude that, where, as here, the officer was lawfully present in the home and the body-worn camera captured only the areas and items in the plain view of the officer as he or she traversed the home, in a manner consistent with the reasons for the officer's lawful presence, the recording is not a search in the constitutional sense and does not violate the Fourth Amendment or art. 14."

Boston police went to Abdirahman Yusuf's home on Feb. 10, 2017 after his sister called police and asked for the Yusuf's girlfriend to be removed from the residence. The sister told police her brother and his girlfriend were "doing too much arguing" and "punching walls."

One of the officers uploaded his body camera footage to a Boston police computer system after his shift. A detective, who had been investigating Yusuf for firearms crimes, used the footage to match the residence to video uploaded to social media which showed Yusuf holding a gun. The match was used to establish probable cause when the detective filed an affidavit for a search warrant.

Police seized weapons and drugs when they executed the search warrant. After the superior court judge denied a motion and allowed the bodycam footage, Yusuf was convicted on multiple weapons and narcotics charges.

"The home is not a place to which the public has access, or where an individual might expect a recording made during a lawful police visit would be preserved indefinitely, accessed without restriction, and reviewed at will for reasons unrelated to the purposes of the police visit," the SJC ruling said. "A database of body-worn camera footage of the places where officers are called upon to assist residents, reviewable at will and without a warrant, for unrelated investigations, renders 'technologically feasible the Orwellian Big Brother'."