​Opacity on the books

Earlier this summer, Governor Pat McCrory signed a bill into law that removed police body camera records from the public record. Three days ago, that law went into effect across the state of North Carolina.

The law, House Bill 972, was not ostensibly designed to obscure police records from the public. Supporters and writers of the bill claimed that its purpose was to solve a number of problems with police body cameras. First, they said, it would synchronize and standardize police practices regarding body cameras from department to department, ironing out inconsistencies. Before the bill’s institution, some counties in North Carolina declared body camera videos to be public record while others secreted them away and made them difficult to access. The bill would supposedly fix that. Second, it would prevent the release of body camera videos from impeding active investigations and unfairly swaying public opinion. A New York Times police body cam simulation published in April showed how seemingly clear videos can still hide the truth of scenarios. When such videos are published, it is eminently possible that groups of people will misinterpret them and wrongly judge officers or suspects. Finally, the bill would protect the privacy of citizens recorded in public by the police during routine interactions, preventing videos of them from being easily released.

To be sure, the bill has a few positive facets and motivations: privacy and statewide synchronization are important goals. That said, we believe that the crux of the bill—the removal of police body camera video from the public record and the erection of significant barriers to its publication—is flawed and regressive. Body cameras became a national trend across police departments because citizens had begun to demand accountability from cops. Removing video—the entire point of the cameras—from the public record essentially eliminates that accountability, returning trust issues between police and citizens to their original unfortunate state. Raising the requirements for video release to unreasonably high levels does much the same. House Bill 972 currently demands that a video release guarantee the protection of “active or inactive internal or criminal investigation[s]” as well as the protection of people's “reputations.” That standard gives police an extremely high level of discretion in what video they choose to release, in effect nullifying the public’s oversight capacity.

If Governor McCrory and North Carolina legislators truly want to pass a body camera law that guarantees “uniformity, clarity and transparency,” as McCrory claimed, they ought to focus on making records less opaque rather than more so: police body cam videos should public records by default. In seeking to protect active investigations, McCrory and legislators should work to craft legislation that sets timetables for the publication of police camera videos. Such a solution is far preferable to the blunt action of sealing the videos away from the public.

House Bill 972, despite whatever good intentions it may have had, is a step in the wrong direction. While it protects privacy and the reputations of police officers, it removes oversight power from the public—a body which has consistently fought to keep officers accountable. Moreover, it fails to address the root problems of excessive force that led to the very institution of body cameras. The law is unwieldy and unfortunate.