The discussions arising from a proposal to encourage the purchase of "body-mounted video cameras" for law enforcement officers have drawn wide support — deservedly so — and from organizations generally suspicious of most forms of surveillance.
Senate Bill 199 Opens in a new tab, which would authorize grants-in-aid to county police departments that provide matching funds for the cameras, found a friend in the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii. While the ACLU added a caveat that clear guidelines for their use are needed, the takeaway from its testimony was that the cameras "primarily serve the function of allowing public monitoring of the government instead of the other way around."
And that’s a good thing. But studies also have shown that police body cameras keep everyone’s behavior in check — the police in their encounters with the public as well as the people at the other end, deterring excessive aggression and false accusations from either direction.
The bill got its first thumbs-up from a joint session of the Senate committees in charge of judicial and public-safety matters.
It moves now to the Ways and Means Committee because $1.35 million in state funds would be appropriated for the coming fiscal year and up to the same amount for 2016-2017. It would be allocated among the counties that provide matching funds:
» $700,000 for the City and County of Honolulu;
» $250,000 for Maui County;
» $250,000 for Hawaii County; and,
» $150,000 for Kauai County.
Kauai is the county that already has pioneered this technology for the state. The department started looking into it following the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference two years ago and last year tapped five officers for a one-month pilot of the body cameras. They have received a positive assessment from Kauai Police Chief Darryl Perry, who noted that the cameras can yield evidence at the scene and reduce investigation time.
Leadership from the state’s other police agencies ought to recognize that advantage and sign on to a similar program. Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha has expressed concern about the investment in technology, but the state grants-in-aid ought to lower some of that resistance.
There are legitimate concerns that should be addressed in the legislation, issues raised by the ACLU and other advocacy groups: The public needs assurance that the cameras won’t be turned on only when the recordings would tend to support the police officer. At the same time, experts have asserted, there are circumstances in which recordings can impede police work, such as during interviews of assault victims or conversations with informants.
But police departments in Los Angeles and elsewhere around the country are now grappling with such concerns, field-testing the cameras and developing policies for their use. Increasingly, law enforcement is finding that the cameras yield clearer records than random cellphone public footage, and that’s in the general public interest. In Rialto, Calif., the cameras resulted in an 89 percent decline in complaints against the police.
There are reasons to proceed with caution, and county police should field-test the equipment, as Kauai did, before rolling it out more broadly. But there is no good reason to not proceed at all. Public safety and police protection can all be served through carefully planned and executed camera programs, and SB 199 can help get them established.
