San Jose police withholding bodycam footage

Chief says it could take department about a year to release the video

Despite resounding calls from San Jose residents and elected public officials for more transparency, the city’s Police Department is withholding internal video footage of protests earlier this summer in which officers used rubber bullets, tear gas and other crowd control methods.

Citing the ongoing department’s internal affairs investigations and impending litigation,

San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia told the San Jose City Council this week that it could take up to a year for the agency to release video footage caught on officer body cameras and the city’s police helicopter of incidents that transpired during the protests denouncing police use of force after the killing of George Floyd.

“We very seldom want to take a year, but that is what the statute indicates,” Garcia said, pointing to a state law that gives law enforcement up to a year to complete investigations. “So we don’t want to give false hope that we can get this done quicker.”

Though California police transparency law — Senate Bill 1421 — states that an ongoing investigation may be grounds to withhold disclosure, civil litigation is not a listed reason for exemption.

But it would not be the first time San Jose police have attempted to get around the landmark transparency law, which took effect Jan. 1, 2019. The Bay Area News Group filed a lawsuit against the San Jose Police Department in July to force the release of dozens of files on officer misconduct and use of force after the city failed to comply with the law and honor a public records act request from the news organization.

In that instance, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo ordered the city’s public information officer to make the documents public but he was unsuccessful in getting any progress before the suit was filed.

From May 29 — the first day of protests in San Jose — to June 30, about 1,024 community members filed complaints with the city’s independent police auditor over officer conduct, use of force and potential breaches of the police department’s policies. Those complaints were all consolidated into about 20 internal investigations that are currently underway. For instance, 928 of the complaints all involved the conduct of one officer — Officer Jared Yuen, who went viral for antagonizing San Jose protesters — and so they all were consolidated into three complaints that are being investigated.

The Police Department has created a page on its website to post videos from the protest, but so far it features only links to just half a dozen public videos already well-circulated on social media or taken by various media outlets. Because so much public foot

age from the protest is already out in the open, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo is pushing the chief and City Manager David Sykes to publicly release some of the internal Police Department videos before completing the investigations.

According to Liccardo, many community members are only seeing “a 5-6-second video clip” at this point displaying only the protesters’ side and are missing the police officers’ perspectives, which the agency’s footage could help remedy.

“Why shouldn’t we just release video if we know it's an issue of intense pub-lic concern and there's al-ready ample public video out there anyway?" Licca-rdo said. Why wouldn't we want folks to understand what really happened?"

Garcia, however, said that once the department starts releasing video foot-age, it's hard to draw a line. So he is working with the City Attorney's Office and city manager to create a "consistent process" for re-leasing certain footage.

"We have to look at it throughout the entire spec-trum of force and whether there is exposure to the city, criminal allegations against an officer and other things," he said. "I think we're in a new age where we are going to have to be more transparent with bo-dycam footage, that's a re-ality, but we're just try-ing to find a process that's more consistent across the board to do that."

The police chiefs com-ments were made during an extensive conversation at Tuesday night's City Council meeting regarding

police reform in the aftermath of the protests.

Within the coming month or two, city staffers are expected to present a plan to the City Council on a community engagement process to “reimagine public safety response” and publicly review useof-force practices laid out

in the department’s duty manual. The City Council also is expected to continue a conversation at one of its next two meetings about amending the Police Department’s manual to potentially prohibit the use of rubber bullets in all crowd situations.

“This is probably going to be some of the most important work we do over the next few months,” said Deputy City Manager Angel Rios. “Our goal is to outline a framework and a process that’s going to be neutral, open-minded, candid, objective and has a racial equity lens included in it.”