Government Lawyers Think Open Records Reform Proposal Hands Over Too Much Power To The People

from the more-darkness-and-denials,-please dept

The state of Massachusetts has some of the worst open records laws in the nation, which have not been updated since the 1970s. The main problem is the statutes provide no deterrence for abusive behavior by government agencies and very little in the way of recourse for public records requesters.

The laws -- as they stand now -- operate on the presumption of secrecy, which is completely antithetical to the purpose and spirit of the statutes. There's really no reason the state's public record laws should contain this much secretive bloat. Here's Allison Manning of Boston.com detailing just one of the many problems with the laws.

Our public records laws are abysmal, especially compared to those elsewhere.

There are 19 pages of exemptions alone in the 60-page guide to Massachusetts public records. How does this supposedly progressive state have such backwards open government laws?

What hasn't been shielded from the public by existing exemptions has been given a fresh coat of opacity by government officials supposedly tasked with ensuring maximum public access.

[A]fter the Globe challenged State Police for withholding the arrest record of one of its troopers, [t]he state’s supervisor of public records, Shawn Williams, ruled in favor of the police, finding that police had “the discretion to withhold records” that were covered under rules meant to protect criminal rap sheets from being misused; such discretion meant that the Globe could not obtain the names of the five Massachusetts police officers charged with drunken driving. A far more rational interpretation of the criminal-records rule would protect information about criminal proceedings, not the arrest records themselves. After all, the criminal-records law was never intended to open up a memory hole to conceal unflattering information about the police.

The state has also withheld records from a 63-year-old murder case, claiming (via the Secretary of State) that the investigation was still ongoing, despite police representatives stating they weren't pursuing any new leads and the lead suspect having expired years ago.

The state's House pushed through a set of open records law reforms late last year. It was a decided improvement (what wouldn't be?), but advocates still expressed concern the legislation didn't go far enough. Like many reform efforts, it started out robust and full-figured but was hacked to death by legislators and agencies who preferred to operate in as much darkness as possible.

“This doesn’t fix the fundamental issues with the law,” Michael Morisy, founder of the open records site MuckRock, tells Boston magazine. “Records take forever to get back to people. There’s no mandatory awarding of attorney’s fees, so agencies really don’t care if people sue them because they know by the law there are no consequences even if they lose. And while this bill does offer judges to grant attorney’s fees, that’s entirely discretionary, and what we’ve seen is that when things are discretionary, when things are optional, typically they just don’t happen.”

“One thing that public records law in Massachusetts really needed was teeth, and this bill just doesn’t do that,” Morisy says.

The Senate has introduced its version of the reform bill, and it's already receiving complaints from government entities which feel it swings the needle too far in the direction of accountability. The Massachusetts Municipal Lawyers Association doesn't like much of the Senate's proposed legislation and has issued a five-page memo to its members detailing its concerns. (h/t Michael Morisy)

For one thing, the MMLA wants government agencies to be given the discretion to ignore filers if they believe someone is requesting records too frequently, or simply requesting too much.

S. 2120 provides no protection to a municipality from the frequent and harassing requestor. Considerable staff time is wasted in responding to overly broad and frequent requests. The municipality should not have to respond to someone abusing the system.

The memo does not detail how agencies would determine what constitutes "abuse" of the system, nor what they would have to offer as proof that they are being "harassed" by an open records requester. It appears the MMLA would prefer to have this left solely to the discretion of responding agencies, giving them one more way to refuse to hand over documents.

The MMLA also doesn't like the fact that the legislation would dial back the amount of money agencies can charge requesters or that it would make requests fulfilled in under a certain amount of hours automatically free. It believes all efforts made should be billed to requesters no matter what.

Considering state agencies are well-known for their extreme reluctance to respond to requests in a timely fashion, it's rather rich to see this government body demand that open records requesters have as little time as possible to pursue litigation over delayed responses or refusals.

There is no time period or statute of limitations within which the requestor must appeal to court. As in the House bill, there should be a 30-calendar day time period, from the date of receipt of the SPR’s order, within which a civil action must be filed, whether by the requester or by the municipality.

Statutes of limitations are generally in the one-year range. The MMLA wants one month. The singular purpose of this demand is to allow the state to dodge as much litigation as possible. Thirty days to engage representation and file a lawsuit is an incredibly tight time frame. Open records requesters had better hope everyone's schedule is clear. The MMLA may look like it's acting in fairness when it applies the same time limit to government agencies, but it doesn't point out the head start they'll have: in-house representation.

Other parts of the MMLA memo veer into sheer vindictiveness, as if open records requesters were a pestilence inflicted on honorable government employees. The Senate's bill -- having just been introduced and still sheltered from the carving knives of transparency opponents -- contains an automatic fee award for open records requesters who prevail in litigation against the government. In the interest of "fairness," the MMLA wants this to be a two-way street.

Reciprocity is necessary. If fees are to be mandated against municipalities, fees and costs should also be awarded to the municipality against frivolous and harassing requesters.

The MMLA's take on this conveniently ignores the truth of the matter: the only reason this stipulation exists is because state agencies have proven they cannot be trusted to comply with the law. The longstanding problem with open records laws everywhere in the nation has never been an epidemic of frivolous or overburdensome requests. It has been the ongoing exploration of the outer limits of open records laws by dozens of government agencies who have repeatedly refused to reply to requests in a timely manner. Agencies ignore requests, set up massive "paywalls," abuse exemptions, knowingly perform inadequate searches for records and otherwise do anything they can to avoid transparency.

The MMLA wants fee shifts to affect requesters -- a move that would do nothing to improve the state's horrendous laws or response track record. It's just a form of bullying being sold as fairness. The entity with deeper pockets and control of the records wants to have the right to smack around citizens for daring to ask for the "wrong" information.

Filed Under: accountability, massachusetts, open records, public, public records, reform

Another Lawmaker Is Trying To Create A Photography-Free Zone For Police Officers

from the the-21-foot-rule-of-police-misconduct dept

A former cop is trying to legislate some First Amendment-violating protection for his blue-clad brothers. Everyone's carrying a camera these days and Arizona Senator John Kavanaugh wants them to be as far away as possible from police officers performing their public duties. Ken White (aka Popehat) summarizes the proposed legislation for FaultLines.

The proposed legislation makes it illegal to record cops in action.

IF THE PERSON MAKING THE VIDEO RECORDING DOES NOT HAVE THE PERMISSION OF A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER AND IS WITHIN TWENTY FEET OF WHERE THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY IS OCCURRING.

If it’s on private property where you have a right to be — say, your house — you can record the cop from the next room, unless of course the cop says you can’t.

IF THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY IS OCCURRING IN AN ENCLOSED STRUCTURE THAT IS ON PRIVATE PROPERTY, A PERSON WHO IS AUTHORIZED TO BE ON THE PRIVATE PROPERTY MAY MAKE A VIDEO RECORDING OF THE ACTIVITY FROM AN ADJACENT ROOM OR AREA THAT IS LESS THAN TWENTY FEET AWAY FROM WHERE THE ACTIVITY IS OCCURRING, UNLESS A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER DETERMINES THAT THE PERSON IS INTERFERING IN THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY OR THAT IT IS NOT SAFE TO BE IN THE AREA AND ORDERS THE PERSON TO STOP RECORDING OR TO LEAVE THE AREA.

Taking video from 19 feet away is a petty offense, unless the cop tells you to piss off, at which point it becomes a misdemeanor if you don’t.

Having learned nothing from Texas legislator Jason Villalba's similar attempt to create a footage-free buffer zone for police work, Kavanaugh is headed down the same path towards ridicule and disappointment. The only difference is that Arizona citizens would be "allowed" five feet closer (20', rather than 25') to their public servants.

Kavanaugh, as White points out, is a former police officer. This explains his desire to take the "protection" out of "protected speech" and hand it over to law enforcement. Officers will then be free to guesstimate the appropriate distance for filming and enforce the new law accordingly.

Kavanaugh's latest effort follows his apoplectic defense of a bill that would shield officers involved in shootings from any sort of public disclosure for at least 60 days. Last year, he claimed the US was full of "lunatics and zealots" seeking to "assassinate" police officers, thus necessitating the conversion of transparency and accountability into an opaque shield for excessive force and misconduct.

The legislator's rationale for his boneheaded, unconstitutional legislation traces all the way back to his days as a cop, when an arrest didn't go exactly as planned.

Senator Kavanaugh explained to U.S. News and World Report that this is all Wilson Pickett’s fault.

"In the early 1970s, Kavanagh says, he arrested a bandmate of the popular “Mustang Sally” singer at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He had the man against a wall after finding syringes in a clam-shell jewelry case when Pickett approached and politely asked, “Is this gonna take long?” he recalls.

The next day, the ex-Port Authority cop says, he was told the arrestee tossed a package of heroin behind a television as he looked away."

As I recall Yosemite Sam used to fall for that “hey look over there” routine a fair amount as well.

Yet Senator Kavanagh didn’t offer a bill prohibiting musicians, or any other class of people, from approaching an officer in the course of a detention or arrest. He aimed at folks recording cops.

The omnipresence of cameras is obviously disconcerting for officers who prefer to do their work either unobserved or witnessed solely by unreliable eyeballs. Existing laws can be used to arrest those who truly interfere with police business, but someone roaming the periphery with an iPhone is only a distraction if the officer allows it to be a distraction. Giving them the power to arrest photographers only ensures cops will be more distracted than ever. And while they're approaching the person standing 15 feet away recording the arrest, the suspect will have even more opportunities to discard evidence than the guy in the Wilson Pickett case ever did. Of course, these "distracted" arrests -- accompanied by descriptions of the evidence that got away -- will be offered up as justification for Kavanaugh's First Amendment-trampling.

In both of these cases where law enforcement sympathy has trumped logic during the bill-crafting process, no one seems to have taken into account the other photography equipment everyone seems to have: CCTV. In recent high-profile shootings (Laquan McDonald, Fridoon Nehad), this technology has been the silent, unseen witness that has produced evidence that contradicts police reports. How does the 20-foot rule work in these situations? Arguably, a person does control the camera, even if only to collect footage passively. Would Kavanaugh have these cameras disabled or their footage destroyed if they "intrude" on the crime scene?

No matter how it's spun, this is nothing more than a former cop trying to delay the inevitable.

Why do legislators like Kavanagh keep trying this nonsense? They do so because their constituency is cops, and people who think that cops should be obeyed without question. And cops are nervous. Disturbing videotapes of police misconduct are no longer a rare exception, as in the Rodney King era. With a smartphone-obsessed populace, they’re an almost daily occurrence.

At this point, it can't be stopped. It can't even be contained. A roaming 20-foot "halo" around cops won't keep their misdeeds from being recorded. And it's highly unlikely a judge would be sympathetic to the destruction of recorded footage as the result of misdemeanor arrest. As White points out, it's not as though the punishment of bad cops has risen in correlation to the amount of available footage. It's still the exception for an officer to be severely punished, rather than the rule. But that too will change and that's what cops -- and Kavanaugh -- are afraid of.

Filed Under: accountability, arizona, first amendment, john kavanaugh, photography, police, video tapes

Police Union Thinks Cops Should Receive Less Scrutiny Than Retail Workers

from the pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-arbitration! dept

Police unions are working tirelessly towards destroying any remaining shreds of respectability. Presumably, they once served a purpose roughly aligned with the public good. Now, they serve the singular purpose of ensuring our nation's law enforcement agencies will always be forced to keep the abusive, incompetent officers on their payroll.

No entity has spoken out more frequently about the supposed damage body-worn cameras will do. Meanwhile, many officers appear to have made peace with the new technology, much as they had with dash cams. No entity has continued to voice its resistance to anything approaching accountability as vociferously as our nation's police unions. If you want to see what's wrong with today's policing and why it won't be changing anytime soon, all you have to do is spend a few minutes talking to a union rep.

Out in Pittsburgh, the local police union wants cops to be held to a lower standard than retail employees.

The union representing Pittsburgh police officers has filed a civil rights grievance against the city, claiming officers have been ordered to undergo drug and alcohol testing that is in violation of their contract.

The union tells Channel 11’s Rick Earle that the testing amounts to an illegal search and seizure that is not only in violation of the contract, but the Constitution as well.

Perhaps the union will be surprised to know that these supposed "Constitutional violations" occur daily at nearly every major employer. They are required before applicants are hired and random checks are often performed post-hire as well. Why the union feels police officers -- who should hold themselves to higher standards than the average hourly worker -- should be exempt from this extraordinarily common practice isn't clear.

The only thing it offers in its defense is that the contract signed with the city only specifies three times cops can be tested: after firing weapons, being involved in a car accident, or are "suspected of being under the influence." Why the additional testing of three officers involved in a car chase suddenly rises to the level of Constitutional violation is something only the union can suss out. And it seems to have confused "violated the terms of an agreement" with "violated officers' Fourth Amendment rights."

Because if the test is a violation of civil rights in this particular circumstance, then it's a violation of rights even under the terms of the agreement. The union reps seem to have opted for drama, rather than accuracy, which is kind of standard operating procedure. I mean, it's not as though the Pittsburgh PD needs to swear out a warrant to obtain the fluids requested in the circumstances permitted by the agreement.

Police officers should be subject to random drug and alcohol testing just like everyone else in the nation's workforce. Considering most states tie implied consent to drug/alcohol testing to the issuance of drivers licenses, it's really not too much to ask that people in powerful government positions be subject to the same expectations.

Filed Under: accountability, body cameras, civil rights, pittsburgh, police, police unions

The FCC Has To Remind ISPs Not To Spend Taxpayer Subsidies On Booze, Trips To Disney World

from the like-my-subsidized-Rolex? dept

For many years now, the General Accounting Office has warned the FCC that if it's going to throw billions of dollars at giant ISPs, it might just want to track how that money is spent. GAO reports like this one from 2009 (pdf) noted that not only has the FCC historically done a dismal job at tracking subsidy spending, most government broadband policies have been based on flawed, incomplete or downright hallucinated data (just check out our $300 million US broadband map). In other words, for the better part of fifteen years our government not only didn't really know where broadband funding was needed, it couldn't be bothered to track if it was actually going there.

Not too surprisingly, as a result, we've seen years of fraud, waste and abuse in the FCC's Universal Service Fund (USF) and e-rate programs intended for rural and school telecom improvements. To be clear, the USF has certainly helped thousands of communities; but were someone to conduct an audit of state and federal broadband subsidies since the late nineties (which will never happen) they'd very likely find that misdirected funds could have delivered a fiber connection to every U.S. home and school -- several times over.

As the FCC looks to expand the USF to cover additional rural broadband deployment, it's now warning ISPs that somebody's at least pretending to watch where billions of dollars are going. An FCC notice to recipients of FCC funds (pdf) this month informs companies that subsidies intended for broadband...should actually be used for broadband:

"The Commission reminds all eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) that receive support from the Universal Service Fund’s high-cost mechanisms of their obligations to use such support only for its intended purposes of maintaining and extending communications service to rural, high-cost areas of the nation."

The FCC proceeds to remind ISPs that this money should not be used for booze, gifts for co-workers, entertainment, political donations or cafeteria art work. Amusingly, the FCC includes a few examples of ISPs that have decided to use the USF as their own personal little slush fund. One ISP, by the name of Sandwich Isles Communications, collected $242,489,940 from the USF over a decade, purportedly to provide telecom service to just 3,659 rural customers. Instead, company owner Albert Hee used taxpayer money for everything from massages to trips to Disney World:

"For example, the companies apparently paid $96,000 so that Hee could receive two-hour massages twice a week; $119,909 for personal expenses, including family trips to Disney World, Tahiti, France, and Switzerland and a four-day family vacation at the Mauna Lani resort; $736,900 for college tuition and housing expenses for Hee’s three children; $1,300,000 for a home in Santa Clara, California for his children’s use as college housing; and $1,676,685 in wages and fringe benefits for his wife and three children."

Note the FCC never bothered to notice. Lee was ultimately convicted in Hawaii of filing bogus tax returns, and the FCC stopped throwing money at the company only just a few months ago. So while it's great the FCC seems to finally be paying closer attention to broadband subsidy fraud (it launched a new strike force last year tasked with rooting out abuse), most of the companies abusing the USF over the last twenty years have had notably more clever accountants, lawyers and lobbyists than Lee (read: AT&T and Verizon). Given these more formidable adversaries you'd be hard pressed in finding anybody interested in conducting an audit to see where those billions of dollars actually went. Still, moving forward, it's a good reminder for everybody that taxpayer subsidies should not be used for Jagermeister shots and happy endings.

Filed Under: accountability, broadband, fcc, isps, spending, universal service fund, usf

Creating New Privacy Expectations For Body Camera Footage Will Only Carve More Holes In Police Accountability

from the one-of-the-few-times-law-enforcement-shows-an-interest-in-privacy dept

As police body cameras head towards becoming as commonplace as dash cams, privacy concerns still remain mostly unaddressed. It's not that law enforcement officers are in need of privacy protections, but the people they interact with -- especially inside their homes -- are. Unfortunately, most of the discussion about privacy concerns tends to be headed by law enforcement agencies looking for ways to prevent the public from accessing recordings. There's very little genuine concern for the public's privacy (much of what law enforcement does relies on minimal privacy expectations). Instead, there's only useful concern.

Bob Collins, a blogger for Minnesota Public Radio, is expressing his concerns about the privacy implications of publicly-released body cam recordings. Unfortunately, his "test case" doesn't do much to inform the unaddressed issues.

A video of a Duluth (MN) police officer talking a young man out of committing suicide was posted to Facebook by Police Chief Gordon Ramsay. Collins, while appreciative of officer Joe DeJesus's efforts, feels the released video may be doing further damage to the vulnerable young man in the recording.

For sure, it’s a great tribute to a cop’s work and it probably perfectly highlights a typical day in the Duluth police department. Whatever good comments were posted to the video, which has gone viral, are certainly deserved.

But what about the kid who wanted to kill himself? How does he feel about having the most private moment in his life broadcast to the world?

The department clearly took pains to hide his face. But his voice and his clothes might make it possible to ID him. Even if it’s not, what is the impact of distributing the video on a young man’s psyche who is already on the edge?

While the concerns about the impact on the young man may be valid, care was taken to protect his identity. In addition, the suicide attempt took place at a public parking garage, where any number of people might have ID'ed the young man. Even if rules were put in place to protect citizens from invasions of privacy, a suicide attempt from the top of a public structure likely wouldn't fall under those rules. The police chief did not release the man's name or reveal his face. That's about all that can reasonably be expected under these circumstances.

In addition, this sort of proactive release is what's expected from law enforcement agencies. It shows an officer doing his job well and saving a life in the process. The introduction of further limitations under the guise of privacy protections will be used to redact or withhold footage that isn't nearly as flattering. You can legislate an inch, but agencies will stretch it a mile… or at least to the point of an FOIA lawsuit.

Victims of police misconduct aren't as likely to be as concerned about privacy violations as those committing the wrongdoing. The privacy concerns self-servingly raised by law enforcement agencies have come at a faster pace than those raised by privacy activists.

Collins himself spins the narrative on Minnesota law enforcement's attempts to keep body cam footage out of the public's hands by presenting it as something the public spearheaded.

These are the issues that were behind the effort to put limits on what police can do with body-cam video in Minnesota.

Last month, 16 Minnesota cities petitioned a state agency to declare that body-camera data be presumed private in most instances, the Associated Press reported.

But it wasn't 16 "cities." It was 16 law enforcement agencies. There was no "public interest" being advocated for. The only issue at stake was how much agencies could withhold, and they were aiming for 100% until told otherwise by new legislation. That effort failed and recordings are considered to be public records until further notice.

Collins agrees with Maplewood's (MN) police chief that recordings -- or access to them -- should be limited when responding to medical or mental health emergencies. Collins feels suicide attempts -- like the one posted by the Duluth police department -- should also fall under this proposed exclusion. His concern for the privacy of at-risk citizens is understandable, but a blanket exemption for these areas is a terrible idea.

Law enforcement doesn't have the greatest track record when its comes to dealing with suicide attempts or mental health issues. At the very least, recorded footage would prove useful in training officers to better handle these interactions. Rules forbidding recordings (or their release) of these interactions would eliminate the sort of footage no law enforcement agency wants to release: like every time officers respond to medical emergencies with shows of force or "assist" in suicide prevention by turning it into a homicide.

Agencies should do everything they can to protect the identities of citizens who aren't charged with crimes and treat the footage of the interior of people's homes with as much care as possible. Beyond that, almost everything else about the job takes place in public and should be accessible by the public. Adding exceptions for privacy (in areas where privacy expectations are minimal-to-nonexistent) just gives agencies more ways to bury footage that shows officers behaving badly.

Filed Under: accountability, body cameras, police, privacy, transparency

Civilian Complaint Board Finds The Public And Their Cell Phones Are Foisting Some Accountability On The NYPD

from the the-camera-is-on-the-other-eye...-or-something dept

There's probably not much the NYPD will like about the latest CCRB (Civilian Complaint Review Board) report, but then again, the CCRB isn't really there to serve up the sort of stuff it likes. What it will discover is that some form of accountability is now inevitable, rather than remaining a lofty ideal thrust in its general direction by a handful of activist groups and politicians.

Cameras are changing the way complaints are investigated. The report notes that video footage relevant to CCRB investigations is leading to more substantiated complaints.

Under the preponderance of evidence standard that the CCRB must use in evaluating cases, the increased prevalence of video in force cases has led to an increased percentage of cases where CCRB can substantiate the use of improper or excessive force. The percentage of substantiated force complaints with video evidence increased from 15% in 2012, to 26% in 2013, 34% in 2014, and 45% in the first half of 2015.

Substantiated cases of abuse of authority, discourtesy, and offensive language increasingly have contained video evidence: 6% of such cases in 2012 had video evidence, as compared to 23% during the first half of 2015.

So, not great news for the NYPD. While it is seeing an overall drop in complaints (thanks largely to the scaling back of stop-and-frisk), more and more cases are being decided in favor of citizens, thanks to camera footage, most of which has been obtained by the citizens themselves. (Note that most of what's detailed in this report occurred before the NYPD's body cam pilot program began.)

While the ubiquity of cameras has begun to force a certain amount of restraint on police officers, it hasn't been able to cure them of all their bad habits.

In the first half of 2015, the highest substantiation rate by allegation was for retaliatory summons and retaliatory arrest, which were substantiated at a rate of 70% and 58%, respectively.

And despite everyone and their mother being able to produce footage, officers just keep on lying.

In the first half of 2015, the CCRB closed investigations that noted 19 allegations of false official statement, 18 of which stemmed from incidents that occurred in 2014. Those 19 allegations of false official statement are on pace to far exceed the 26 allegations noted in 2014. The reason for the significant increase is primarily the result of video evidence.

On the bright side, the number of cameras in use at any given time is likely discouraging a few would-be complainants from filing bogus paperwork.

In the first half of 2015, civilian complaints against the police decreased by 22%, as compared to the first half of 2014. The CCRB received 2,092 complaints from January through June 2015, as compared to 2,698 for the same time period in 2014. This is the lowest number of complaints since 2001.

Now for more bad news: the thing about "bad apples?" Not just a stereotype.

More than 80% of NYPD officers have had no complaints in the last 18 months, whereas 14% of officers are responsible for 100% of all complaints. Five percent of officers on the force—about 1,800—are responsible for 80% of the force complaints.

There's a good chance their fellow officers know who these problematic cops are. And yet, they remain employed. NYPD officials absolutely know who these officers are. And yet, it would appear a great many of them are still employed. If the CCRB is going to be effective, and if the NYPD brass wants to be taken seriously when it claims to care about ensuring New York's Finest only contains the finest, then these numbers will need to drop by next year's report -- both in terms of overall complaints and the number of still-employed officers generating a majority of complaints.

Filed Under: accountability, ccrb, civilian complaint review board, mobile phones, nypd, police, transparency

Police Cameras Are Valuable... But Not If They Can Alter The Videos

from the trust-goes-out-the-window dept

We've talked plenty about the value of body cameras and dashcams for police -- in acting as a deterrent to bad behavior by police while supposedly acting as public servants. Of course, that only works if people trust the video not to be edited and doctored. This week there are all sorts of questions being raised about the arrest and hanging death of activist Sandra Bland in Texas. There are plenty of questions about why she was even arrested in the first place, and then plenty more about why she died (the police called it a suicide, which many who knew Bland find highly questionable).

In response to some of these concerns, the police released a 52 minute version of the dashcam video of her arrest -- though for some reason, the YouTube version has since been taken down. Perhaps it's because people watching the whole thing noticed a bunch of really sketchy problems with it that suggested the video had been edited, while the audio remained in tact. Ben Norton first posted the details of these, highlighting a bunch of weird artifacts like disappearing cars that magically reappear seconds later: Or the tow truck driver who gets out of his truck, walks behind the car and out of frame... and then suddenly gets out of the truck again: You can skip your "glitch in the Matrix" jokes. They've already been made. Plus, this is about someone who died.

The Texas Dept. of Public Safety said it would look into the video problems, and officials have denied any edits and have said that they will re-upload the video (which likely explains why the original has now gone missing). It also seems worth noting that the timing of the edits doesn't make it look like anything important was edited out (it all happens after the arrest itself).

It's possible that there was just some sort of weird glitch with this footage, but it's a reminder that anything that calls into question the credibility and accuracy of these kinds of videos will only undermine the purpose of these videos. We've heard too many stories about how some of these cameras can be "turned off" or that police would have access to the coverage before it's released to the public. If officials want these systems to actually work, they have to be trustworthy on their own. While this is likely just going to turn out to be some sort of technical problem that will be fixed, with nothing nefarious at all, it still acts as a strong reminder for the need to make sure that this kind of footage is stored and released in a way that doesn't raise such questions.

Filed Under: accountability, dashcams, edits, police, police cameras, sandra bland, texas

DOJ Handing Out $20 Million For Police Body Cameras

from the finally,-a-law-enforcement-grant-that-doesn't-involve-military-gear dept

The Department of Justice is looking to help equip more law enforcement officers with body cameras.

The Obama administration is spending $20 million on police body cameras, amid rising tension over police violence.

The announcement from the Justice Department on Friday would create a new pilot program to equip police in dozens of cities with the devices, as the first step in a $75 million three-year effort that President Obama requested from Congress in December.

“This body-worn camera pilot program is a vital part of the Justice Department’s comprehensive efforts to equip law enforcement agencies throughout the country with the tools, support and training they need to tackle the 21st century challenges we face,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement shared with media outlets. “Body-worn cameras hold tremendous promise for enhancing transparency, promoting accountability and advancing public safety for law enforcement officers and the communities they serve.”

One-third of the first $20 million will be routed to "small law enforcement agencies" -- the ones least likely to adopt this technology due to the cost of acquiring cameras. While grants towards initial purchases are helpful, unless there's more money on the way, ongoing maintenance and video storage costs will still be stated as reasons to avoid equipping officers with cameras.

This is a good move forward, though, even if simply equipping cops with cameras isn't a quick fix for law enforcement misconduct. As it stands now, most camera-equipped officers still exercise a great deal of control over what actually gets captured. And police departments -- often aided by sympathetic legislators -- are working quickly to limit the public's access to body camera recordings.

While there have been reports that body cameras have lowered both citizen complaints and use of force incidents, there's still more than enough released body cam footage that indicates it will take more than realizing they're being recorded to deter certain officers' abusive behavior and excessive force.

For instance, here's some footage captured by a Utah police officer's body cam that shows he and his fellow officers unleashing a police dog on a person with both hands in the air (while claiming the suspect "might have had a weapon" [that he was going to pull with his feet?]). Knowing a camera was running didn't result in any additional restraint by the officers.


Then there's the matter of the "extra rights" many officers have secured through police union pressure and law enforcement-friendly lawmakers. In addition to maintaining control over the release of footage, officers in some cities are given up to three days to review evidence before making a statement -- or even answering questions about the incident itself.

The administration's decision to fund body camera efforts is an implicit criticism of the current state of American policing. Police officers are well aware of what message is being sent by the deployment of these cameras. Even though captured footage also holds the power to exonerate wrongly-accused police officers, this fact is seldom mentioned by those critical of these programs. Instead, officers and their representatives suddenly develop concerns about the public's privacy -- something they've never expressed much interest in over the past several -- and mostly unrecorded -- decades.

Filed Under: accountability, body cameras, doj, police

Minnesota Legislators, Law Enforcement Trying To Strip The 'Public Accountability' Out Of State's Body Camera Program

from the one-way-surveillance-and-zero-accountability dept

More cities and states are getting behind the idea that outfitting their law enforcement officers with body cameras will result in better policing and more accountability. Unfortunately, many of them then follow this moment of clarity by gutting the "accountability" part of the programs.

Los Angeles law enforcement agencies will only turn over camera footage if it's part of a criminal or civil suit. Florida legislators are pushing for additional exceptions in the state's open records laws specifically for body camera footage and specifically at the request of the state's police union.

Minnesota seems to be taking the same route. The state wants its law enforcement officers to wear cameras but some legislators don't feel the public should have access to the footage. A bill supported by the state's law enforcement aims to keep as many recordings out of the public's hands as possible.

The bill states:

[A]udio and video data captured by a portable video recording system that is not part of an active or inactive criminal investigation must be destroyed within 90 days of the date the data were captured, unless the data subject, or any peace officer identifiable by the data, submits a written request to the law enforcement agency to retain the data for possible use in a future proceeding related to the circumstances under which the data were originally collected. Any law enforcement agency that receives a request to retain data shall retain it for a reasonable time, based upon the likelihood of its future use and the agency's policies for retention. Peace officers who are identifiable by portable video recording system data shall have unrestricted access to the data while it is retained and must be permitted to make copies.

It seems reasonable... until you realize what it's allowing law enforcement agencies to do. Anything retained by these agencies will only be accessible to civilians in the recording, and then only by request. Alleged misconduct that is cleared by law enforcement oversight will move affected recordings into the "destroy" pile, which means agencies can start deleting potentially damning footage almost immediately, provided there are no current requests for the recordings.

The bill also exempts recordings from state public records laws by deeming nearly all recordings "nonpublic" by default.

Except for data classified as active criminal investigative data pursuant to subdivision 7, portable video recording system data is private data on individuals or nonpublic data at all times. Notwithstanding subdivision 7, portable video recording system data that are part of an inactive investigation remain classified as provided in this subdivision.

Subdivision 7 pertains to "criminal investigative data" -- which is also "nonpublic" and "private."

On the other hand, peace officers will have unrestricted access to any footage they appear in. This open-ended access is the sort of thing that can lead to tampering and deletion. Any officer should, at best, have controlled access to recordings involving them if the recording system is going to maintain any sort of integrity. Anything else is completely irresponsible.

If the bill goes forward, the body cameras willed be largely robbed of their deterrent effect. By removing the general public from the information flow, the cameras will no longer be tools of police accountability, but rather just another surveillance option for peace officers. The cameras basically become "one way" collections, wholly controlled by the officers who generate the recordings.

Those representing the law enforcement side are defending this bill by presuming to speak for the public they don't want to be accountable to...

Dennis Flaherty, executive director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, said public access to body camera footage "really serves no public purpose."

… because it might make things a little tougher for peace officers:

Flaherty and other law enforcement representatives expressed concern about what wide public access would mean -- both for exposing citizens' private lives and, in their minds, spurring more complaints against officers.

"Complaints against officers" is exactly what's spurring so many states and cities to outfit their cops with cameras. Flaherty conveniently forgets that body camera footage can also exonerate wrongly-accused officers in his haste to portray body cams as somehow intrusive to public officers.

Video works both ways… theoretically. Public access is essential if the camera programs are going to have any chance at reducing complaints and misconduct. Drastically limiting the number of people who can access recordings makes it highly unlikely the goals will be met. The bill creates a cover system for abuse and allows for full narrative control by law enforcement agencies. And this is coming from a state where law enforcement already expects the public to perform its surveillance for it and turn over video recordings captured in private businesses whenever a cop asks for it.

That's not accountability. That's nothing more than a bunch of government agencies attempting to dodge their responsibilities to the public they're supposed to be serving.

Filed Under: accountability, body cameras, law enforcement, minnesota, police

Police Departments Skirting Public Accountability By Using Private Foundations To Obtain Controversial Surveillance Technology

from the what-the-public-doesn't-know-will-probably-irritate-them-to-no-end dept

The less the public knows about law enforcement surveillance technology, the better. That's the thought process governing the purchase and deployment of technology like Stingray devices and automatic license plate readers. In the case of the former, even the nation's top cops (the FBI) actively discourage talking about the cell tower spoofers through the use of restrictive non-disclosure agreements.

Being public entities, it's sometimes hard to keep the public and local law enforcement's new tools and toys separated. FOIA requests and a whole lot of persistence have managed to uncover details about surveillance tech, but what's turned over is often heavily-redacted or several months out of date. The purchasing process should run through local governing bodies, but many of those are only too happy to defer to law enforcement and rubber-stamp purchases sight unseen or keep discussions of purchases off the public records.

If the normal routes -- as deferential as they are -- seem to be a bit too "leaky," many law enforcement agencies have a third option available to keep the public in the dark about their technology acquisitions: private funding.

Across the nation, private foundations are increasingly being tapped to provide police with technology and weaponry that -- were it purchased with public money -- would come under far closer scrutiny.

In Los Angeles, foundation money has been used to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of license plate readers, which were the subject of a civil-rights lawsuit filed against the region's law enforcement agencies by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (A judge rejected the groups' claims earlier this year.)

Private funds also have been used to upgrade "Stingray" devices, which have triggered debate in numerous jurisdictions because they vacuum up records of cellphone metadata, calls, text messages and data transfers over a half-mile radius.

These private foundations have been useful in the past, supplying cops with needed equipment like bulletproof vests and office equipment during times of budget shortfalls. Unfortunately, they've now stretched far beyond funding to fill in budgetary gaps to become the checkbook of choice when purchasing controversial surveillance technology.

Not only do these foundations help law enforcement sidestep public accountability, but they also serve as convenient recipients of private contractors' largesse. The LAPD avoided creating a paper trail when Palantir and Target Corp. teamed up to donate the former's surveillance software to the department through the Los Angeles Police Foundation.

These foundations are also used a lobbying proxy. Contractors hoping to receive city contracts grease the wheels by donating funds or products to the private foundations, again skirting accountability by taking advantage of looser disclosure requirements.

The NYPD's citywide surveillance hub uses software from IBM, which gave between $10,000 and 25,000 to the foundation. According to its website and tax documents, the foundation helped fund creation of the hub. IBM did not respond when asked about its relationships with New York's police foundation and police department.

DynTek Inc. made a contribution of similar size to the foundation and has won more than $47 million in technology contracts with New York City since 2008. It lobbied the police department for more business as recently as this January, according to disclosure records. DynTek officials also did not respond to questions.

Defenders of these accountability-skirting foundations portray them as nothing more than more efficient ways to get police departments the tools they need.

"There's very little discretionary money for the department," said Steve Soboroff, a businessman who is president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, the civilian board that oversees the LAPD's policies and operations. "A grant application to the foundation cuts all the red tape, or almost all of the red tape."

And, hilariously, they portray the generous donations by private contractors (with eyes on securing city contracts) as nothing more than pure, unstoppable acts of charity.

Soboroff said he had no concerns that companies were donating to the foundation to improve their chances to do business with the city -- donors were typically driven by "an insatiable appetite to help," he said, not self-interest.

Some of this "insatiable appetite to help" more closely resembles straight-up lobbying combined with the infamous governmental "revolving door." Motorola, vying for a $600 million city contract, donated more than $164,000 to the Los Angeles Police Foundation and placed former chief Bill Bratton (now New York City's police commissioner) on its board of directors, a position that paid $240,000 a year. Motorola ended up with the contract, despite a good showing by its main competitor Raytheon, which dumped $311,000 into the foundation over the same period.

The problems here are numerous. These foundations allow police departments to acquire controversial surveillance technology with very little transparency. There appears to be no oversight on the spending -- something that is to be expected when a public entity decides to start making purchases using private funds. As the ProPublica article points out, there will be more of this in the future. What used to be something only available to the nation's two largest police forces (NYPD, LAPD) is becoming more common elsewhere. Foundations like these are popping up around the country and are being used similarly. One foundation in Atlanta, Georgia paid for the citywide network of surveillance cameras as well as the communication center where these feeds were viewed.

There's likely no simple fix to this problem or at least, not one that won't do considerable collateral damage. The default mode should be that if a public entity is spending money, it needs to be accountable for the expenditures, no matter where the funds originated. Even if city officials can't prevent the purchase of items with private funds, they should be able to force the creation of a paper trail that can be accessed by the public.

Filed Under: accountability, police, private funds, surveillance