From Staff Reports

Police body camera videos should not be available to the public for viewing, according to Cecil Bothwell, City Council’s public safety chairman and a former journalist, who recently took a firm stance in the national debate about the cameras.

Following a number of high-profile violent encounters between law enforcement officers and residents in different cities around the nation, the cameras have become commonplace

Locally, his  stance pits him squarely against the Asheville Citizen-Times and other news media, who are battling for the routine release of the videos, as well as the  Dec. 31 recordings that authorities say led to the firing of two Buncombe County sheriff’s deputies.

Instead, Bothwell, a former managing editor of the Mountain Xpress and a longtime liberal activist, is taking the opposite stance from the local news media, siding with restrictive positions taken by Asheville and other police departments.

“While I have long been an advocate of government transparency the broad questions concerning body cams and surveillance cams are complicated,” Bothwell said in a mid-February e-mail to the AC-T. “Surveillance cameras are ubiquitous in our society today, intruding on our privacy and solving crimes at the same time.”

“While on the council, he (Bothwell) pushed for civil liberties legislation limiting police video taping of public rallies,” the AC-T noted in a late February news story, adding:

“Bothwell took the latest stance on videos after questions from the Citizen-Times about the agenda of a Feb. 22 public safety committee meeting and whether he expected much discussion on the videos. Asheville police anticipate getting their first 60 cameras by this summer then a final 120 over the next few years. The 60 cameras will cost $142,000 for the hardware plus initial storage space.”

Buncombe Sheriff Van Duncan and Asheville Police Chief Tammy Hooper stated at a Feb. 8 public forum at UNC Asheville that they believe body camera videos are protected because of the personnel law and because they can contain evidence. They also cited privacy issues and administrative problems.

However, according to the North Carolina Press Association, the videos are in fact public record because they are not specifically exempt from state public records law under North Carolina General Statute 132.

That law says things such as documents or recordings are public record when they are “made or received pursuant to law or ordinance in connection with the transaction of public business by any agency of North Carolina government or its subdivisions.”

Cecil Bothwell, City Council public safety chairman, was contacted by the Daily Planet on Feb. 24 for a more detailed explanation of his stance on body camera videos. The following is the full text of the statement Bothwell emailed to the newspaper:

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As chair of the Asheville City Council Public Safety Committee, I have fielded a few questions about my position on the forthcoming deployment of body cams, and city policy concerning the recordings.

Body cams employ relatively new technology to record interactions between police officers and citizens. They can serve several functions. Citizens who choose to have interactions recorded (and they can decline — on camera, so their choice is recorded) are somewhat protected from bad behavior on the part of officers. Officers are protected from false claims concerning their work. Recordings may help prove innocence or guilt for either when cases arrive in court. It has been predicted and observed that body cams help diminish excesses of both officer and citizen behavior — when everyone knows a recording is being made, they tend to be on their best behavior.

The question then becomes: what is the status of recordings? Should they be deemed a “public record” under the law.

North Carolina law defines all evidence gathered in the course of investigating or preventing crime as investigative, and therefore not public. The argument for this is that if police are making a case it would be counter-productive to release what they know. Perhaps a specific interaction with a suspect does not “prove” criminality, but helps build the picture. Release of that recording could tip-off the suspect. (That’s one simple example.)

On the other side, recordings of employee behavior are regarded as part of a personnel file — most importantly when bad employee actions are recorded. Personnel files are strictly private under N.C. law. If a complaint is filed against an officer, such a recording becomes part of the evidence weighed concerning the officer’s employment — or possible prosecution.

So it seems clear to me that any body cam recording that reveals a problem with either a citizen or an officer is automatically not a public record under N.C. law.

That would leave recordings (I would guess, most) that reveal neither criminal behavior nor officer bad behavior. What such recordings would presumably reveal are the faces of innocent people, of children, perhaps of domestic violence victims who choose not to press charges, and etc. In such cases children’s faces would have to be blurred — it is against the law to record photos of minors without parental release. It also seems to me that most people would prefer not to have their innocent interactions with police recorded and made public. Certainly, as a matter of helping to shield domestic violence victims, the matter of privacy is paramount.

State law permits destruction of such recordings after 30 days. Police Chief Tammy Hooper intends to preserve them for 60 days, based on Asheville’s track record concerning citizen complaints. Almost all complaints are filed within 30 days, some later, and virtually none after 60 days. The limiting factor is cost. Storage of data is expensive and video recordings are data-intensive. (If you run into storage problems on your personal computer it is almost certainly video files that cause the overload.)

In the meantime, any citizen recorded via body cam will be able to request viewing (and of their minor children if such interactions are recorded). The police chief will be able to grant the request, and if the citizen is denied, the citizen will be able to appeal that decision.

An overarching matter is that the N.C. General Assembly is almost certain to take up the question of how body xam recordings are handled in the near future — this is a new issue, and is being handled in different ways in cities across the state. When the GA acts, we will of course comply with the new law.

Meanwhile, those who insist that all or some Body Cam recordings should be public seem to me to be well-intended but not practical. First off there are the two classes of recordings mentioned above that are not public under current state law. So the third group, that embody no bad behavior, might be eligible for release. First off — if nothing happened, what’s the point? Second — the cost to taxpayers could prove to be enormous. Each recording released would have to be screened very carefully — to blur the faces of chidren, for example. But then how does the screener know that a person is a minor? Would an innocent adult in the recording have a say in whether their image should be released? A simple 10-minute tape might take hours to examine. Who is going to pay for those hours? And as a matter of public reporting, what exactly is the value to the public of recordings concerning non-issues?

Given that N.C. is a Dillon’s Rule state (municipalities only have authority specifically granted by the state government) — I am content to follow the guidelines offered by the City of Asheville legal department and the Chief of Police, pending more definitive regulation from Raleigh.