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Like so many other states around the country, Hawaii is looking intently at technology that wasn’t widely available until just a few years ago, but that is bringing fundamental change to law enforcement nationwide: body cameras for police officers.

In jurisdictions around the country — including, as of last month, the Kauai Police Department — officers increasingly are wearing them on duty, where they record interactions with suspects, victims, witnesses, other members of the public and each other.

But who determines when the cameras are turned on and off? What happens to the video they record? Is it made available to the public? How long is it stored and when is it deleted? Regulating these practices is much more complex than the simple recording devices themselves and raises issues of privacy, transparency and accountability that demand our collective attention.

First and perhaps most importantly, body cameras hold great benefit for both sides — as a tool to protect the public against misconduct by law enforcement officers and as protection for police against false accusations of violence, racism and other kinds of wrongdoing.

That’s why Civil Beat has identified body camera legislation as one of four critical areas of law enforcement reform it is supporting in the 2016 legislative session.

Hawaii lawmakers considered two bills last year that would have helped pay for body cams for police agencies around the state, but both measures failed. Now Rep. Matt LoPresti is that doesn’t seek to provide the cameras, but would regulate their use including how the footage they collect is stored, archived, deleted and shared with the public.

Based in large part on , LoPresti’s bill speaks to some of the most challenging legal and ethical issues around body cam use.

For instance, it would prohibit the use of body cameras to “gather intelligence information based on First Amendment protected speech, associations or religion.” It also establishes retention and deletion schedules for recorded footage (though we believe all footage should be maintained for a minimum of one year, rather than the six months called for in the bill).

It also provides for longer retention periods if an individual, such as a law enforcement officer who asserts the video has evidentiary or exculpatory value, requests them.

“People recognize we need rules and regulations to deal with the (camera) data being captured by police. If we don’t, we expose the state and counties to litigation, so we have to move fast to get something on the books,” LoPresti told Civil Beat last week.

When To Record, When Not To Record

The legislation provides for the use of body cams when an officer is responding to a call and at the initiation of any law enforcement or investigative encounter between a cop and a member of the public.

It’s obvious that there’s a need to record in those situations. But the policy needs to go further.

Expecting officers to consistently remember to turn them on in stressful and even life-threatening circumstances is asking a lot. And that’s precisely when the recording is the most important, as we’ve seen over and over again throughout the country.

The cameras should be on at all times unless the officer is on a break or out of service. Otherwise unexpected, rapidly unfolding incidents may well go unrecorded.

Expecting officers to consistently remember to turn them on in challenging circumstances is asking a lot.

That means that the provisions in the legislation allowing the cameras to be turned off in certain circumstances needs to be reconsidered.

For instance, the bill allows crime victims or people who report a crime or help with an investigation but want to remain anonymous to ask that the camera be turned off.

It seems the smarter thing is to record everything and then have criteria governing the release of that information to the public or in other circumstances.

There are many reasons why recording interactions between police officers and crime victims and investigative sources — even those who don’t want to be recorded — make good sense.

Such records would be more accurate and less open to interpretation than simple written notes made by an officer. Having them could result in a stronger overall record of information that might be vital to successfully prosecuting a criminal case.

That said, the proposed bill already creates too many conditions under which video recordings would be kept from public view.

LoPresti’s measure essentially says that unless a video is related to a felony or a use of force, it can be withheld from the public.

That would leave too much material of legitimate public interest under lock and key, unavailable for review. The problems with that should be obvious, both for citizens and officers.

What if a citizen alleged that a police officer had used racial slurs against him? The body cam footage would show what happened, but under the bill the citizen would have the right to block public release of the recording. Exculpatory evidence in such a matter could mean the difference between public exoneration and an officer forced to work under a cloud of suspicion.

At a minimum, footage ought to be handled under the same laws and policies that govern other public records in our state. That’s a reflection of best practices nationally over the five-plus years that body cams have actually been in use in jurisdictions around the nation.

“A police department that deploys body-worn cameras is making a statement that it believes the actions of its officers are a matter of public record” and its management and use of those devices “creates a reasonable expectation that members of the public and the news media will want to review the actions of officers,” wrote Chuck Wexler, executive director of the , in a for departments seeking to implement a body cam program.

“And with certain limited exceptions … body-worn camera video footage should be made available to the public upon request — not only because the videos are public records but also because doing so enables police departments to demonstrate transparency and openness in their interactions with members of the community.”

Openness And Transparency

The importance of police transparency cannot be overstated, particularly at a time when scores of apparent police misconduct incidents nationwide captured on mobile phones have cast a pall over law enforcement. We hardly need to recount the many cases involving death or serious injury that would have gone quietly away if not for video recordings that captured the outrageous realities of those situations.

Here in Hawaii, witness videos have caught Honolulu Police Department officers beating a man on a Nanakuli beach, violently slamming a man to the ground in Palolo Valley for no expressed reason and beating two men inside a Chinatown game room. Investigations were helped in all of those cases because of the video evidence, and a range of charges and lawsuits have emanated from these incidents and others captured on camera.

If body cameras were in place, footage of each of those incidents should have been available immediately. In fact, the incidents might not have happened at all. Officers who know that their actions are being documented are more likely to act more responsibly.

“A police department that deploys body-worn cameras is making a statement that it believes the actions of its officers are a matter of public record.” — Chuck Wexler, Executive Director, Police Executive Research Forum

Given body cameras’ ability to provide evidence for officers falsely accused of wrongdoing and to provide accurate records of enforcement and investigative interactions, it’s interesting that the Hawaii’s statewide police union is fighting Kauai’s implementation of the technology.

The State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers has said it supports the use of body cams. But the complaint filed last week with the state Labor Relations Board makes it clear the use of body cams needs to be on SHOPO’s terms, not the public’s. The union calls the cameras a “condition of work” that should only be put in use with the permission of the union.

Definitely not. Unions that don’t answer to the public shouldn’t have a veto over tools that bring more transparency to law enforcement.

LoPresti understands that video recording by law enforcement can be a sensitive and complex topic for many different reasons. He is under no illusions with regard to the ease of getting the bill through the Legislature and approved by Gov. David Ige.

“I expect it to cause a lot of debate,” he said. “That’s the intent — to get people talking about what we need, what are the options and how we should move forward.”