OLYMPIA, Wash. — There was mixed reaction to a new bill heard Thursday in the House Judiciary Committee that seeks to balance the ability of police departments to handle broad requests for police body-camera videos with keeping essential footage available to the public.
Rep. Drew Hansen, D-Bainbridge Island, is the primary sponsor of House Bill 2362, which has three main prongs that would all expire by January 2018. The measure would:
Set rules on what body-camera footage can be requested as a public record and who can request body camera recordings for free. The executive directors of the state commissions on African American, Asian Pacific American or Hispanic affairs, among others, would be able to access body-camera recordings of an incident without paying for video redaction meant to protect the privacy of people in the videos, the bill says.
Create a task force to study and recommend policies about body cameras and public access to their recordings, made up of lawmakers and representatives from a number of state agencies and advocacy groups.
Require police departments that use body cameras to adopt policies in a number of areas regarding how to implement the cameras, like when a camera must be on and off.
A similar bill last year was approved in committee, but it didn’t get a floor vote in the House. Hansen said last session was the first time the Legislature had significant conversation on the issue. He added the bill, which has bipartisan sponsorship, has had more input this year.
Representatives of some cities like Olympia and Bellingham testified the bill was a step in the right direction.
Mary Perry, assistant Seattle city attorney, said Seattle police currently have 670,000 hours of dash-cam video. Perry said the department couldn’t afford or handle requests for a similar amount of body camera footage in the future. The city had a sixth-month pilot program for body cameras that ended in 2015.
“What is excellent about this bill is it gives a little breather to agencies as we work these issues out,” Perry said at the hearing.
Shankar Narayan, the legislative director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, testified that the bill does not solve privacy issues for people who appear in body-camera videos, and it may end up costing police departments more money to complete records requests.
“Overall, it’s a rush into a hurried and incomplete set of rules that may well leave us further from accountability than when we started.” he said.
Afam Ayika, representing black advocacy groups in Seattle and Washington like Black Out Washington and Village of Hope, said the Legislature should scrap the bill to focus on comprehensive reform of police departments.
Gig Harbor Police Chief Kelly Busey said he was largely in support of the bill, testifying that currently, “one single overly broad request” for body-camera video would be a disaster for his department.
Oregon, California, seven other states and Washington, D.C., enacted laws in 2015 that address access to body-camera footage and open-records laws, according to the National Conference on State Legislatures.
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