PEP Director testifies for making police cameras assessable by Sunshine laws
Representing the newly formed Don’t Shoot Coalition, PEP director Jasmin Maurer testified in Jefferson City against senate bill 331, which would keep police camera footage from the public. Also testifying on behalf of Drone Free St. Louis was John Chasnoff, who laid out a better plan to protect privacy while providing for accountability with better policy regulations for cameras.
Check out the full story at the Post Dispatch and the Drone Free St. Louis website for their police body camera recommendations.
Jasmin Maurer believes St. Louis’ current climate of police officer mistrust after Ferguson could be alleviated with the use of body cameras — but not if those recordings are kept from the public.
That, however, is exactly what Sen. Doug Libla, R-Poplar Bluff, has proposed. In a measure he outlined Wednesday to the Senate Transportation, Infrastructure and Public Safety Committee, all videos from a police body camera would be exempt from the state’s open records law.
Attorney General Chris Koster recently suggested barring public access to body camera recordings as well.
“By not making (the videos) public record, it seems useless to have (body cameras) when the purpose is to create a system to go back and see what’s going on,” said Maurer, a St. Louis resident representing the Don’t Shoot Coalition.
The measure wouldn’t exempt just body cameras, however. Video or audio recorded from any device used by an officer — such as one attached to a car, boat or aircraft — also would be exempt.
Libla’s measure is one of at least eight addressing police audio and video recordings after the fatal shooting in August of Michael Brown by then-Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson. A video might have clarified the circumstances.
Those in support of Libla’s bill cited privacy concerns.
Sheldon Lineback, executive director for Missouri Police Chiefs Association, noted numerous instances in which recordings were obtained by the public and then uploaded to YouTube.
“Individuals may make mistakes and those mistakes … never come off the Internet,” Lineback said Wednesday.
But Maurer and several other people testifying Wednesday noted that guidelines could help prevent that problem.
“I think there are ways to solve the legitimate privacy concerns by mandating guidelines for policies and leaving the Sunshine Law relatively intact,” said John Chasnoff, representing Drone Free St. Louis.
Some of Chasnoff’s suggestions included informing people they were being recorded, getting consent from crime victims before recording in their homes and prohibiting it during strip searches, for example.
