By Mike Ward
Houston Chronicle
AUSTIN — Texas lawmakers are considering a pair of bills focused on the increasing phenomenon of police being filmed during the course of their duties.
One would make the public back up when shooting video of officers working crime scenes or making arrests. The other would establish state standards for equipping police with so-called body cameras that would record actions from the officer’s point of view.
Neither would do much for transparency, critics contend.
House Bill 2918 by state Rep. Jason Villalba, R-Dallas, would make it a misdemeanor for a member of the public to film or photograph a police officer within 25 feet of the officer performing his or her official duties, or within 100 feet if the officer is carrying a handgun. Mainstream news media would be exempt from prosecution, but other violators could face a maximum fine of $4,000 and a year in jail.
Villalba said the bill has been misunderstood, adding his intent is to keep citizens out of harm’s way during police actions, not restrict public access to film officers in action. He said he is changing the distance requirement to 15 feet.
“It makes it easier for people to film police,” he said. “We were trying to balance the rights of the public with those of the police. But I’m not against people filming police.”
Critics, however, say the bill would interfere with citizens’ ability to record officers’ behavior and interactions with the public. Villalba was assigned a security detail in response to threats he received after filing the bill.
The measure has the support of some in law enforcement, though some police groups have questioned whether setting specific distance limits for public filming will take away from existing law that allows officers discretion to protect crime scenes and investigation areas.
The bill does not address such issues as privacy or access to the videos taken of police by citizens, unlike the debate unfolding across the Capitol over Sen. Royce West’s Senate Bill 158. The Dallas Republican’s bill would establish state guidelines for police wearing body cameras. It would also restrict when those videos should be made public to ensure privacy of citizens, crime suspects and police, as well as control costs.
“There is an irony in that a citizen can film police without all these issues that come up if the police do it,” West said. “We’re at the edge of a new technology frontier here because the video technology gives us so many new opportunities for accountability. But with that is a whole lot of new questions that have to be resolved.”
Benefits Cited
At a time when Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin and other major Texas cities are moving to equip some or all of their patrol officers with body cameras, and when citizen-shot videos routinely go viral on the Web and social media, the Legislature’s dilemma in moving forward highlights issues being faced across the country.
“Body-worn cameras not only create concerns about the public’s privacy rights, but also can affect how officers relate to people in the community, the community’s perception of the police, and expectations about how police agencies should share information with the public,” states a 2014 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice on the issue.
Amid the questions, there are benefits. A Cambridge University study of the small police department in Rialto, Calif. reported a more than 50 percent reduction of use-of-force incidents with officers wearing cameras and an 89 percent decline in the number of complaints against officers during the yearlong trial.
In Houston, police last year asked for $8 million to equip 3,500 officers with body cameras, after spending $108,000 to buy 100 pager-sized body cameras for testing in 2013. Houston Police and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, which also is testing body cameras, have declined to make public their policies governing the use of those cameras.
Privacy concerns and costs appear to hold the most interest among lawmakers considering West’s bill.
“We don’t forego our rights of privacy simply because we put on a gun and a badge,” Chris Jones, with the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, a group that represents police officers across the state, told the Senate Criminal Justice Committee on Tuesday. “We’re for transparency. We’re for body cameras ... (But) there are issues.”
Steep Price Tag
The cost to retain all the video footage from the body cameras will run into the millions of dollars, police officials agree, as will the costs of editing the video to comply with requests by the public to view segments of the video, as state law allows. Robert Looney, a planning and research analyst for the San Antonio Police Department, said more than 640,000 hours of video from body cameras at his agency would have to be retained, and additional personnel would be needed to review the videos and determine what clips can be made public, a time-consuming task he said could cost as much as $10 million over five years.
Officials said the total cost depends on whether the cameras are turned on all the time, or just in certain encounters, decisions that now are being made department by department, meaning the rules are different from city to city.
While West and police officials acknowledge the costs could be high, some officers in departments moving to equip their patrol personnel with body cameras say the move could be a help.
“It could help us at crime scenes ... by removing all the chances of error, if we could go back and review the video of witness statements,” said Mark Clark, executive director of the Houston Police Officers Union.
If those concerns do not complicate the issues over police videos enough, West said some videos of crime and shooting scenes may need to remain confidential for a period of time to avoid compromising investigations. Then there is the question of who should bear the costs of editing the segments of police videos that are made public, and how quickly that can take place.
Police officials who testified at the Senate hearing indicated that could take weeks, perhaps even months.
The videos covered by Villalba’s bill have no such delay. They can show up on YouTube and social media in minutes.
“If a citizen takes the video, there are very few restrictions,” Villalba said. “But if actual law enforcement takes it, it’s much more complicated.”
Copyright 2015 the Houston Chronicle