ACLU gives St. Louis residents video cameras to monitor police activity

ST. LOUIS -- After a year of delays, the American Civil Liberties Union chapter in St. Louis is launching a program that will put video cameras in the hands of St. Louis residents so they can monitor police activity in their neighborhoods.

The ACLU of Eastern Missouri announced the program last year after television crews videotaped police punching and kicking a suspect after a car chase.

The ACLU said Wednesday it has given cameras and training to about 10 residents in north St. Louis, a higher-crime part of the city. The group declined to release the names of those participating in the video monitoring, dubbed Project Vigilant.

"The idea here is to level the playing field, so it's not just your word against the police's word," said Brenda Jones, executive director of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri.

The program is not just a reaction to one incident, but years worth of complaints about police misconduct in St. Louis, she said.

Jones said Project Vigilant is a pilot program the ACLU hopes to expand, enrolling between 50 and 100 members in total. The initial launch has been restrained to a lower-income area that ACLU members said is plagued by police misconduct.

St. Louis police spokesman Richard Wilkes declined to comment in detail on the ACLU program when asked how it might affect police relations with the community.