HILO — There won’t be a law this year requiring Hawaii’s police departments to purchase and use vehicle and body-worn video cameras.
HILO — There won’t be a law this year requiring Hawaii’s police departments to purchase and use vehicle and body-worn video cameras.
Senate Bill 421, the last remaining measure among several introduced during this session of the state Legislature, passed its first reading after crossing over to the House last month. The House Judiciary and Finance committees, however, failed to schedule required hearings on the measure prior to Friday’s deadline.
The bill would have established the requirements for body-worn and vehicle cameras for county police departments, appropriated matching funds for counties to purchase body-worn and vehicle cameras, and required departments to report costs of implementing and maintaining the body-worn cameras and vehicle camera program to the Legislature.
The measure, introduced by Maui Sen. Gilbert Keith-Agaran, with co-sponsors including Big Island Sen. Kai Kahele, mandated body-worn camera footage to be retained for no less than three years if the footage captures images involving any use of force, events surrounding the commission of or arrest for a felony offense, or encounters where a complaint is lodged by the subject of the footage.
Video footage of incidents involving deadly force by a law-enforcement officer, or otherwise related to an administrative or criminal investigation of an officer, could not have been deleted or destroyed without a court order.
“I think it’s eventually going to happen,” Hawaii County Prosecutor Mitch Roth said Monday. “There are things the police are looking at, such as (video file) retention policies. I know it will be expensive, but I look forward to a day where we have body cams.”
The bill was opposed by Hawaii County Police Chief Paul Ferreira, who in written testimony said the measure’s requirements would probably delay implementation of the cameras by law-enforcement agencies because of the financial burden of retaining video for three years and a “plethora of public records (requests) for release of the videos.”
Also submitting written testimony in opposition were the Maui Police Department, the state departments of Public Safety and Land and Natural Resources, and the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, the statewide police union.
Ferreira supported SB 331, a less-comprehensive bill that died earlier in the legislative session.
Ferreira said in February a cost analysis done by the department found it would cost about $381,000 for the equipment and storage to deploy at least 300 body-worn cameras.
He also said three full-time employees would need to be hired for management, storage and retrieval of digital data at a cost of about $231,000 annually.
SB 421 was supported by the state Office of Information Practices, which described the bill as “helpful, in that it does set reasonable statewide standards for when body-worn camera recordings are definitely not public under the (Uniform Information Practices Act).” Also supporting the measure was the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, which noted Maui and Kauai police have begun the process of implementing body-worn cameras, and the Hawaii Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Roth said once cameras are in place, he thinks the video evidence will bolster court cases.
“I think it will greatly help us, in that officers are taking notes, and you don’t always get everything completely right when you take notes on a small notepad. And it’s not an intentional thing,” he said. “But I think it will improve the quality of evidence to have somebody at the scene saying they did something. … A lot of times, we have witnesses recant or change their stories a little bit, especially in domestic violence kinds of cases, the testimony can change a little bit. Having it on the body camera, it allows that testimony to be retained a lot easier. When you see someone saying it, when you have to refresh someone’s recollection, that makes it a lot easier than if it’s just written in the police report that you said this to a police officer, and they may or may not remember saying it.
“We understand also that it’s not an end-all, but it will help us make better decisions.”
Monday morning calls to Ferreira, Kahele and Keith-Agaran were not returned by press time.
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.