PD Editorial: A rolling debate: who controls body camera video?

Video of a violent confrontation between an 18-year-old Petaluma resident and a sheriff’s deputy provided new twists last week in legal battles playing out in both Sonoma County Superior Court and the court of public opinion.

Based on the video and other documents, Judge Gary Medvigy ruled that there was evidence that the recent graduate, Gabbi Lemos, may have broken the law in preventing Deputy Marcus Holton from carrying out his duty to investigate a disturbance outside her Liberty Road home.

The release of the video also fueled public debate as to who was more to blame for the confrontation, Holton, who injured Lemos when he slammed her into the driveway, or Lemos and her family members who were uncooperative and showed clear hostility toward the deputy.

Either way, the release of the video, which occurred only after much public debate and pressure from interested parties, including The Press Democrat, aided rather than hindered the accuracy of the public discussion. Law enforcement and prosecutors should keep that in mind as local jurisdictions and the state iron out the rules on who has access to the video from police body cameras, which now are in use in many parts of the state, including in Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, Petaluma and the county itself.

We recently commented in support of a bill that would open up more records, including video, pertaining to instances of brutality by police. The legislation passed out of the Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday on a 5-1 vote, but only in the face of strong opposition from the public safety unions. The unions argue that SB 1286 by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would threaten the safety and privacy of officers and their families. But there should be no presumption of privacy, particularly in these cases which involve charges of police misconduct that have been sustained.

Unfortunately, the legislation has been watered down by the removal, at the behest of law enforcement groups, of a provision that would have allowed cities and counties to decide whether to hold public misconduct hearings.

Even so, this is a move in a positive direction toward greater transparency. Meanwhile, two other bills, involving access to body camera videos, threaten to take the state in the opposite direction.

AB 2611 by Assemblyman Evan Low, D-San Jose, would mandate that any video or audio that shows somebody being killed and seriously injured in a “morbid or sensational manner” could be kept confidential if its release is deemed to have no legitimate public interest or purpose.

But public safety’s track record in being the arbiter on what has news value and what is too gruesome for public consumption has not been good. Such sweeping license to determine what is releasable and what isn’t could invite all kinds of mischief and raise allegations of recordings being kept confidential in an effort to protect officers accused of misconduct. Such a standard, for example, could be used to refuse the releasing of recordings ranging from the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014 in Chicago by an officer who now faces charges of murder (too gruesome) to the video in the Lemos case (no legitimate purpose).

We also have concerns about AB 2533, by Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, which would require public agencies to give public safety officers a minimum of three business days’ notice before the agency releases any recordings involving the officer. What would be accomplished in these three days? This seems like an arbitrary and unnecessary delay of access to records that should, by default, be considered covered by the state Public Records Act.

By virtue of these bills, which are now working through the Assembly, state lawmakers appear to be taking the position that while the public can trust the information provided by those hired to protect and to serve, they cannot trust - or be trusted with - the information contained in the body cameras those same officers wear. It’s a curious argument. One that deserves rejection.