Police body-cam video creating deluge of demand, editing work
PALM BEACH GARDENS — Body-worn cameras have been lauded for protecting minority communities and police alike, but adopting the technology has created a new wrinkle for law enforcement: keeping up with requests for the footage.
As part of the public record, anyone can request police body-cam footage, although local police departments say it’s most commonly sought by attorneys in pursuit of evidence.
But because the law requires police to protect certain privacies, someone has to first edit the video, and that takes time — sometimes three times longer than the video itself.
At least four cities — Jupiter, Palm Beach Gardens,
West Palm Beach was the first police department in the county to adopt body cams, in 2015. Once cops wore cameras, police departments had video — lots of it. Jupiter police uploaded an average of 35 hours of video per day in August. Boynton Beach police estimated they upload about twice that, an average of 72 hours per day.
Boynton Beach and Delray Beach — have found themselves hiring more workers to keep up with the deluge of requests. At least some of the costs are offset by fees the departments charge for reviewing the records. Those charges are permitted by law and vary by department, typically kicking in after the first half hour of work and running $15 to $28 per hour after.
The video is edited so that it does not reveal the inside of someone’s home; the inside of a health care, mental health or social services facility; or any other place that a reasonable person would expect to be private. Agencies can make exceptions in the public interest.
For most, handling so much video is a new concern. Body cameras broke onto the scene in the United States around 2012. Rialto, Calif., a small city just west of San Bernardino, is often credited with being the first department in the country to start using the devices.
In 2015, West Palm Beach was the first department in Palm Beach County to adopt the technology.
Once cops wore cameras, police departments had video — lots of it. Jupiter police uploaded an average of 35 hours of video per day in August. Boynton Beach police estimated they upload about twice that, an average of 72 hours per day.
The Legislature is just starting to address the volume and cost of the records generated by body camera technology, said Mike Edmondson, spokesman for the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office.
“The workload and the technology have not caught up with each other, without question,” he said.
The public records workload on any video — not just body cams — is “extraordinarily high,” and it can take six to eight weeks for the state attorney’s office to respond to video requests because of the demand, Edmondson said.
Useful for attorneys
Defense attorneys said they’d be remiss not to ask for all of the possible evidence in their cases. Angie Pagán, president of the Palm Beach Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said she made a habit of requesting body-worn camera footage as soon as it became available.
“Why wouldn’t we want to take a look at it and see?”
Clients under the stress of being arrested may remember the scenario differently. Witnesses may lie or make a mistake, Pagán said. The video allows her to see what happened and pick up on details that didn’t seem important at first.
If a police officer does something improper or includes something in a written report that differs from what the video shows, it gives the defense the opportunity to challenge the state’s theory, she said.
Pagán referred to the case of former Texas police officer Roy Oliver, who was found guilty of murdering Jordan Edwards, a 15-year-old black teen in the passenger seat of a car driving away from a house party in a Dallas suburb last year. Oliver initially said the car was backing up toward his partner when he shot, but body-cam footage showed otherwise.
Pagán and fellow attorney Greg Rosenfeld, past president of the defense attorneys’ association, acknowledged body cameras have limitations. They can work against someone. Officers can turn them off, sometimes for legitimate reasons.
Battery life and bathroom stops are a consideration — but in any litigation, attorneys can question the credibility of officers who have shut the cameras off.
Jurors like to determine what actually happened by seeing it, Rosenfeld said.
“If the purpose of our system is actually justice, then these videos are important,” he said.
Agencies and attorneys alike face the challenge of determining who keeps the video and who is in charge of turning it over when requested.
In Martin County, attorneys must get the body camera footage directly from the State Attorney’s Office, Rosenfeld said. In Palm Beach County, defense attorneys go directly to law enforcement agencies.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office, the county’s largest law enforcement agency, doesn’t use body cams at all.
In Broward County, some departments won’t provide any records until discovery, when the prosecution presents its investigation to the defense. With smaller departments, you sometimes have to negotiate to get what you need, Pagán said.
“If you were a layperson, it could become daunting,” she said.
After the shooting
Rosenfeld said he recently wanted footage from a Palm Beach Gardens detective who told him in a deposition that it didn’t exist. Detectives in Gardens are not required to wear cameras unless they’re in uniform.
Palm Beach Gardens turned to body cams after the October 2015 shooting death of Corey Jones by an officer in plain clothes, Nouman Raja.
The shooting generated protests, and led to meetings between black leaders — Jones was black, Raga is Asian-American — and highlevel city officials.
Nine months later, all officers started wearing body cameras. Officers must activate the cameras when they respond to a call.
They also are required to turn on the cameras before any interaction with the public, although the city’s policy gives them discretion about whether to record informal interactions.
Requests for police records, counting both paper and video, have risen every year since officers started wearing the cameras. They went up nearly 50 percent in 2017. Requests in the first eight months of 2018 already exceed all of 2016, city records show.
The demand prompted the city to hire a specialist to keep up with the requests, especially related to body cameras.
Jupiter police, who began using body cameras in December, are also seeing an uptick in records requests. The department received 4,015 records requests so far this year, up from 3,805 for the same period last year.
But in Boynton, requests declined 20 percent after the city enacted body cams in May 2017, city figures show.
Still, the department is hiring someone Oct. 1 to help with records requests related to body cameras.
Delray Beach officials decided to equip all field officers with body cameras in 2016, after a successful trial run with 20 officers. The cameras are always on standby, and they turn on when the lights on a squad car are activated or as soon as an officer steps out of the vehicle.
One traffic stop alone turned up three hours of video, said Mike Garcia, an employee moved into the role of overseeing video requests in January 2017. Garcia watches all the footage twice — once to see what’s in it and again to make sure he didn’t miss anything that he should have redacted.
He said he fulfills about 80 to 100 requests per month and has about a monthlong backlog.
Prosecutors can quickly find themselves overwhelmed with body cam video, too. They don’t want hours of footage that has no relationship to a crime, Edmondson said.
A recent example: a Florida Highway Patrol trooper had his camera working during a routine traffic stop when he got called to a felony in progress. He raced off with the camera recording.
The state attorney’s office was interested only in the footage from the felony, not the traffic stop, but received all of it, adding to the workload.
“Ultimately, a person has to sit there and review what is submitted,” he said.