AUBURN — Auburn police emails show the department was aware of issues with its body cameras before one failed to record a deadly shooting in 2021, according to a WGME report that aired Friday night.
The officer’s actions were ruled justified by the Maine Attorney General earlier this year.
The fatal shooting on Sept. 27, 2021, happened just five days after the official launch of Auburn’s police body camera program, according to the report.
Police emails show starting in July of 2021, the cameras were not working effectively, activating too easily, and dispatch wasn’t being notified.
Other times, an official reported the system didn’t recognize a camera was in its holder, which means an auto-record feature wouldn’t activate.
The day before he shot Joseph Arbour in the back, Sgt. Steven Gosselin alerted others to a “new body worn issue,” according to the WGME investigative report.
He said his camera was “almost too hot to touch” and the battery was nearly drained, even though it had not recorded a single incident.
Gosselin said others in the department also reported charging problems, according to WGME.
A day after the shooting, Auburn Police Chief Jason Moen reportedly emailed Utility about the failure to record.
Auburn’s deputy chief says the problem was a firmware update that was never pushed out from Utility to the devices. Seth Stoughton is the faculty director of the Excellence in Policing and Public Safety program at the University of South Carolina.
“The problem with software issues is that it’s really not within the control of the agency that’s paid to get these cameras, and often the officers aren’t even aware of them,” Stoughton said.
Utility referred CBS13’s questions to the Auburn Police Department.
“The whole point for a police agency of buying an off the shelf piece of technology is that they don’t have to think about the underlying technology,” Stoughton said.
Stoughton’s seen a range of footage issues but says it’s impossible to say how often a camera fails to record, because it’s not always reviewed.
“The majority of the time when we have body worn video footage, it just sits on a digital shelf and gathers digital dust,” Stoughton said.
Gosselin’s body camera would have been the only way to see the moments before the shooting, according to the WGME report. No surrounding businesses captured the shooting clearly or at all.
The emails show in the months after the shooting, there were problems with the holster sensors holding a charge and a system to record video started after a patrol supervisor left a scene.
The entire camera program, which includes a cruiser system, cost about $300,000 for a five-year contract.
CBS13 has repeatedly asked the police chief for an interview, but he’s refused, according to the report.