After an undercover investigator shot and killed Tristan Clark in Tuscaloosa last year, officials promised change and got to work on a policy to require all city police officers to wear body cameras.

But, there’s an exception: police in investigative units do not have to use bodycams when working undercover, two city councilmembers told AL.com.

“There was a situation where someone wasn’t wearing one,” said Councilman John Faile. “They were working undercover. And still, if you’re working undercover, they won’t be wearing them.”

Now, Brent Blankley, the Tuscaloosa police chief, is updating the department’s policies to require investigative units, including the team that killed Clark, to wear body cameras, according to Sarah Bridger Gilmore, spokeswoman for the city.

“Our body camera policy has not changed,” Bridger Gilmore said in an email. “However, Chief Blankley has initiated an update of TPD’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for investigative units, such as narcotics, which will increase the types of situations when non-uniformed officers would wear body cameras.”

The city declined to respond to a question about how the new policy would address situations like Clark’s, where undercover investigative officers conducted a traffic stop. City attorney Scott Holmes and Chief Blankley declined requests for interviews.

“As mentioned previously, public safety cameras are a security sensitive item,” Holmes said in an email. “The City has no additional comments.”

Faile said that some of the city’s investigative officers, including members of the SWAT and narcotics teams, have started to wear cameras – specifically, helmet cameras for the SWAT team.

Two members of the narcotics team were working undercover when one shot and killed 24-year-old Clark during a traffic stop on Dec. 20, a shooting that was not recorded on bodycam or dashboard footage. A grand jury declined to charge the officer.

Clark was in the backseat of a car police said they pulled over for a window tint violation.

Police statements so far have said that Clark had outstanding warrants, and pulled out a gun after an officer told him not to. Reginald McDaniel, attorney for Clark’s mother, has disputed those claims, saying that two eyewitnesses who were in the car told his legal team that Clark never reached for a gun and his hands were raised when the officer shot him.

In early March, investigators with the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit showed Clark’s mother and her attorney body camera footage from city police officers who arrived on the scene after the shooting, McDaniel said. Per the attorney, the footage showed Clark’s lifeless body laying in the back seat of the car before he was moved to the street, as well as the undercover officers involved in the shooting explaining to other officers what happened.

Councilman Faile said that exempting officers who are working undercover from using bodycams means the policy change likely wouldn’t have made a difference in Clark’s shooting.

He also said he understands the reason for not requiring undercover police to wear cameras.

“If you were an informant, you wouldn’t talk to someone on camera,” he said.

After police killed Clark, the local NAACP called on city leadership to require that all officers wear bodycams. Speaking at the city council meeting on Jan. 4, Lisa Young, president of the Tuscaloosa chapter, said the community deserved more transparency in case another police shooting happens again.

“When families come to me looking for me to advocate on their behalf, it’s real disheartening,” Young told the city council. “As a mother, that answer, ‘no body cam footage’ would not sit well with me, and I would not accept it.”

In response, Councilman Cassius Lanier said that the city was working on updating the policy. That council meeting was the first after Clark died.

Lanier said in an interview with AL.com that he hopes to have a date to share soon about when all Tuscaloosa officers will be “body camera’d up.” He said the funds are set aside and the city is moving toward it.

Tuscaloosa’s current budget allocates nearly $42 million to the police department — the highest dollar amount to any one agency and more than 20% of the general fund’s budget.

“Everybody should have body cameras sooner than later,” Lanier said. “I think going forward if we have those body cameras, we’re able to be fully transparent with the public. And this is not an indictment of the officers or Tristan, but just saying that body cameras tell the story.”

McDaniel said he hoped that the policy change would require all officers to turn on their bodycams and help prevent another deadly shooting without video.

“Once Ms. Clark found out that that was going to take place, it didn’t give a relief, but we know his death was not totally in vain. This may prevent somebody’s young man from getting killed in the future. At the same time, this should’ve already been in place, and if it had been we would have known exactly what took place,” he said. “But it didn’t change what happened to Tristan.”

Young, the local NAACP president, said she’s had multiple conversations recently with local law enforcement, including Chief Blankley, through her work with Leadership Tuscaloosa, a local professional organization. She said those talks left her distrustful of their willingness to hold themselves accountable.

“It’s my opinion that police and law enforcement should be held to a higher standard of accountability,” Young said in an interview. “If we go back over history and look at the history between violence and the Black community, we have no reason to trust what the police say.”

Young told AL.com that she planned to show up at another recent city council meeting to get an update on the policy – but then she received the news of a woman who was shot and killed by Tuscaloosa police in her apartment on March 25.

“It speaks volumes,” she said. “It seems as if every time that there’s an allegation of excessive force, the use of excessive force or the use of deadly force, disproportionately, it’s an African American.”