As the law sits right now, law enforcement officers on duty can intercept and record oral communications using the body cameras. However, they must first tell those they encounter they are being recorded when “reasonably practicable.” The law also states that the devices cannot be used inside of a residence.
Steve Margeson, Carlisle chief of police, said he isn’t pushing forward with it too much until he sees what shakes out this legislative session.
“The tricky part then comes into the protocols and the policies on use and that tricky part is much more awkward for us in Pennsylvania because of our state law,” he said. “Until we get to a point where we are comfortable, we can’t be going out there and using this equipment in a fashion that some people may say is illegal by our own state statute. So that’s one of the reasons we’re taking this nice and slow. We’re waiting to see, might there be some changes to this law?”
While Sen. Pat Vance said she isn’t sure anything will make it to the Legislature this session, there is a judicial committee public hearing scheduled for Feb. 11 in Pittsburgh. She said as she understands it, there is a hope that additional changes to the legislation will allow police to record interactions during incidents inside residences and on the street.
Relaxed law?
While Margeson; Randy Finkey, of Newville; and Doug Reitz, of North Middleton Township agree that the changes to the law make it possible to create functioning body camera programs in their municipalities, they are hoping to see the law relaxed a bit.One of the chiefs’ biggest concerns is that a police officer will be in a chase and end up in a residence while still recording, and then someone will file a lawsuit.
“It’s inconsistent and awkward for police to be (turning a camera) on and off,” Margeson said. “A lot of incidents start on a street and go into a residence. We’ve literally had officers that have had to chase a suspect from the street, from a park, from the parking lot, across the street, into the house, into the apartment building. We can’t be fussing around with this technology in the middle of incidents.”
Mary Catherine Roper, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said that notion is just not practical. The way she interprets the changes to the wiretap are that a police officer has to inform the person they are being recorded, but that there is nothing specifying that an officer has to immediately interrupt their enforcement to tell the citizen that they are being recorded.
“I don’t think that’s a legitimate concern, because the law is written with an understanding of how police officers do their jobs,” she said. “If you are chasing somebody down an alley and saying ‘Stop, police,’ you don’t, I think, also have to yell, ‘You’re being recorded.’ That’s not the moment. No one’s going to get in trouble for not having yelled ‘I am recording,’ as they run down the alley after the suspected purse snatcher.”
As for possible changes to the law, Roper said there needs to continue to be that balance between safety and preserving the public’s constitutional rights. She said the biggest concern with using body cameras is not necessarily the recording of police interactions, but more with the storage of those audio and video files.
Roper said videos need to be safely stored so not just anyone can have them. She said if done well, this is a good move for police departments statewide.
“The potential here is for our police to learn a lot, for the public to learn a lot,” she said. “This is an opportunity. We’ll see if it’s used an opportunity, but this is an opportunity to change the game in terms of police accountability, which video recording has already done to some extent. The question is whether this becomes the tool for systemic improvement that it can be or if they use it grudgingly.”
Using technology
Dane Merryman, the executive director for the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association, said the law needs to be changed and legislators have to realize that those restrictions make it a challenge for the officers to use the technology to its fullest extent.“The issue here is body cameras are good, the law has to recognize the constraints that are imposed on police officers in the field who are doing their job every day and make it easy to use the cameras effectively and practically without making it too difficult to be feasible,” he said. “We’re not avoiding the use by hiding behind a statute. We like the ideas of the cameras, but we just want to make sure that the statute that we operate under provides the proper opportunities to do the job correctly.”
Finkey said because the laws are so different from state to state, it’s also a challenge for the departments to write their policies. A lot of times, it’s possible for them to use policies of use from other cities as an example when writing their own, but this is one of those times where that’s not really possible.
He said it’s also difficult to write the policies for use of body cameras because they want to make sure to protecting citizens’ privacy and follow the law.
“The challenges are to make sure that we have a use policy that is No. 1 consistent with what the law says about the body cameras,” Finkey said. “And No. 2 that we’re using the body cameras in a manner that protects the rights that the citizens are afforded under the wiretap law.”
Reitz agreed, saying that it’s a tricky balance, but that the cameras would be there to protect everyone, not invade privacy or create entertainment for Internet users. He said because technology is changing, it’s important for law enforcement to keep up with those changes.
“Things have changed dramatically in my career,” Reitz said. “So things are changing, people are changing and we need to kind of change with the times; everybody’s got a camera nowadays. You’ve got officers out on the street and they’re doing their job and you have someone pull out a cellphone and record the officer doing their job.”
©2015 The Sentinel (Carlisle, Pa.)
