Jim Rosica
A Broward County lawmaker wants his colleagues to reconsider the contentious issue of police body-worn cameras after similar legislation failed last session.
State Rep. Shevrin Jones, a West Park Democrat, filed his bill (HB 93) on Friday. His version that was proposed last session died.
“Problems don’t disappear just because legislation doesn’t pass,” Jones said in a news release.
The bill would allow the decision to wear body-cams to remain with local police and sheriffs, but would mandate that those agencies using them develop “policies, procedures and guidelines” governing their use, including the “storage, retention and release of audio and video.”
But Jones’ bill comes after a law passed earlier this year that critics say undercuts the cameras’ usefulness to “police the police.”
The Florida Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott OK’d a public records exemption for police body-camera videos.
It creates privacy exceptions to public disclosure, including police body-cam footage taken inside a home, at a hospital or at the scene of a “medical emergency.”
A catch-all provision also exempts any body-cam video where someone recorded had a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” but does allow the subject of any footage to authorize its release.
Michelle Richardson, public policy director for the ACLU of Florida, told the The Tampa Tribune that the records exemption “turn(s) what should be a police accountability tool into a propaganda device – giving agencies license to release footage that shows officers following the law and hide behind public records exemptions when their officers are engaged in wrongdoing.”
Still, Jones said, “if we want to start seeing change in tense police-civic relations, these body cameras are a necessity.”
