Within minutes of being sworn in, the newly elected Salisbury City Council voted to approve the purchase of 60 body cameras for police officers financed half by a private donation from the Wallace family and half from other police department sources.

It wasn’t a difficult vote, but did we dig deep enough?

Body cams and dash cams (and bystander cell phone videos) have proven over and over that pictures are worth a thousand words.

The council discussion was relatively short and benign, covering close-contact fights, whether dash cams on the patrol cars would operate simultaneously, the clarity of videos in low lighting and backups on cloud servers.

What we didn’t discuss was who owns and controls the videos.

In October 2014, 17-year-old Laquan McDonald was jogging down the middle of a five-lane boulevard in Chicago avoiding police. He was no angel, having just vandalized a few vehicles in a Burger King parking lot and slashed the tire of a police car. Police were trying to stop him but he ran away.

A police car with a dash cam followed him. As Laquan approached a couple of police cars waiting for him in the middle turn lane, his jog slowed to a swagger. Looking straight ahead, he angled off to his right away from the police cars.

With his left hand in his pocket and his right hand swinging loosely, he crossed the middle line of the two right-bound lanes. Meanwhile Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke got out of the passenger side of a patrol car, ran around the front of it with his pistol aimed at Laquan.

Laquan appeared to glance to his left toward the police officers and then turned to his right so that his back was facing the police officers. Suddenly, he twisted all the way around to his right, looked over his right shoulder, and dropped to the ground.

A white puff of smoke arose from his midsection. A few seconds later, another white puff of smoke arose closer to his head. Seconds after getting out of his police car, Van Dyke had shot Laquan 16 times in 15 seconds.

A few seconds later, another officer walked over and kicked a 3-inch folding knife out of Laquan’s hand. Another patrol car arrived at the scene. Two officers emerged, walked past Laquan’s prone body, one glancing back for a second or two. Lying in the street, Laquan’s body appeared to jerk sporadically.

Later, paramedics arrived. Laquan died on the way to the hospital.

For more than a year, the official story was that Van Dyke feared for his life because Laquan had lunged at him with a knife and defied his order to drop it. His partner corroborated that story. Last week, in a lawsuit filed by a news reporter, a judge ruled that the video should be released showing the truth of the entire encounter.

A few days later, Van Dyke was arrested for first degree murder.

A year earlier, it was learned, the Chicago Police had deleted 86 minutes of video from another Burger King’s security cameras. Why?

Therein lies the critical issue: Who owns and maintains control of police videos? The police? The city? The public? Should all videos be subject to public record requests? Should a video of domestic violence or child abuse be public property? Should an impartial escrow agent be employed?

These are difficult policy issues. The North Carolina House passed a bill last spring permitting a person to request and the law enforcement agency to release video recordings.

Police cameras should reduce the “he said, she said” reality of criminal prosecutions. Videos should corroborate the police version of events as well as protect them from false charges of abuse and brutality.

Salisbury will have both dash cams and body cams. Perhaps we should also discuss appropriate policies for their use, ownership, storage, access, accountability and other crucial issues to protect our law enforcement officers, the public and the justice system.

David Post is a member of Salisbury City Council.