Indiana Law Journal Indiana Law Journal
Volume 92 Issue 4 Article 2
Fall 2017
Collateral Visibility: A Socio-Legal Study of Police Body Camera Collateral Visibility: A Socio-Legal Study of Police Body Camera
Adoption, Privacy, and Public Disclosure in Washington State Adoption, Privacy, and Public Disclosure in Washington State
Bryce Clayton Newell
University of Kentucky
, brycenewell@uky.edu
Follow this and additional works at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj
Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, Criminal Law Commons, and the Law Enforcement and
Corrections Commons
Recommended Citation Recommended Citation
Newell, Bryce Clayton (2017) "Collateral Visibility: A Socio-Legal Study of Police Body Camera Adoption,
Privacy, and Public Disclosure in Washington State,"
Indiana Law Journal
: Vol. 92: Iss. 4, Article 2.
Available at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ilj/vol92/iss4/2
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by
the Maurer Law Journals at Digital Repository @ Maurer
Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Indiana Law
Journal by an authorized editor of Digital Repository @
Maurer Law. For more information, please contact
1329
Collateral Visibility: A Socio-Legal Study of Police Body-Camera
Adoption, Privacy, and Public Disclosure in Washington State
*
BRYCE CLAYTON NEWELL
†
Law enforcement use of body-worn cameras has become a subject of significant pub-
lic and scholarly debate in recent years. This Article presents findings from a study
of the legal and social implications of body-worn camera adoption by two police
departments in Washington State. In particular, this study focuses on the public
disclosure of body-worn camera footage under Washington State’s public records
act, state privacy law, and original empirical findings related to officer attitudes
about—and perceptions of—the impact of these laws on their work, their own per-
sonal privacy, and the privacy of the citizens they serve. The law in Washington State
requires law enforcement agencies to disclose substantial amounts of body-camera
footage—although important new exemptions were added to state law in 2016—and
options for withholding footage based on privacy grounds are limited under the
state’s Public Records Act and disclosure-friendly decisions of the Washington State
Supreme Court. Additionally, broad requests for body-worn camera footage have
posed significant problems for civilian privacy. Police officers report strong con-
cerns about public disclosure of their footage, largely because of the potential for
such footage to impact civilian privacy interests, and officers also report high levels
of disagreement with laws requiring the disclosure of most footage to any member
of the public. However, officers are supportive of limited access policies that would
allow individuals connected to an incident to obtain footage. This Article concludes
by making a normative argument for restricting public access to some body-worn
camera footage on privacy grounds while still preserving adequate space for robust
civilian oversight and police accountability.
* Copyright © 2017 Bryce Clayton Newell.
† Assistant Professor, School of Information Science, University of Kentucky; Ph.D.
(Information Science), University of Washington; J.D., University of California, Davis School
of Law. The author wishes to thank Mike Katell and Chris Heaney for their assistance with
fieldwork and data collection, as well as Adam D. Moore, Ryan Calo, Ricardo Gomez, Batya
Friedman, Steve Herbert, Mary Perry, Marthinus Koen, Maartje Niezen, Ivan Skorvánek, Bart
van der Sloot, Maurice Schellekens, Linnet Taylor, Nadya Purtova, Dmitry Trubnikov,
Claudia Quelle, Silvia de Conca, and Tim Clemans for comments on previous versions and
drafts of this paper; all of the individuals who consented to participate in the empirical research
described herein; and all those who facilitated access to (and within) both of the police
departments studied, especially Chief Clifford Cook (Bellingham Police Department) and
Chief Frank Straub (Spokane Police Department; chief until 2015) and their respective
command staffs who graciously allowed access to their departments. Portions of this research
were funded by the University of Washington (Information School) and under a grant from
the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) (project number 453-14-004).
1330 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... 1331!
I. INCREASING (AND COLLATERAL) VISIBILITIES ................................................. 1336!
II. PRIOR RESEARCH ON BODY-WORN CAMERAS ................................................. 1341!
1. STUDIES BASED OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES ............................. 1345!
2. STUDIES BASED IN THE UNITED STATES ........................................ 1348!
B. LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP ............................................................................. 1353!
III. METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................. 1357!
A. NEW LEGAL REALISM AND SOCIO-LEGAL RESEARCH ........................... 1357!
B. LEGAL RESEARCH ................................................................................... 1359!
C. EMPIRICAL DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS ..................................... 1360!
1. THE FIRST SURVEY ........................................................................ 1361!
2. THE SECOND SURVEY .................................................................... 1361!
3. THE THIRD SURVEY ....................................................................... 1362!
4. QUALITATIVE FIELDWORK ............................................................. 1363!
IV. THE LEGAL IMPLICATIONS OF BODY-WORN CAMERAS ................................. 1363!
A. PUBLIC DISCLOSURE EXEMPTIONS FOR BODY-WORN VIDEO IN OTHER
STATES ................................................................................................... 1365!
B. PUBLIC DISCLOSURE LAW IN WASHINGTON ........................................... 1370!
C. PUBLIC DISCLOSURE OF BODY-WORN CAMERA FOOTAGE
IN WASHINGTON .................................................................................... 1376!
1. PRA EXEMPTIONS PRIOR TO HOUSE BILL 2362 ............................ 1376!
2. THE EXEMPTIONS ADOPTED IN HOUSE BILL 2362 IN 2016 ............ 1379!
V. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS ....................................................................................... 1381!
A. DEMOGRAPHICS OF THE SAMPLE ............................................................ 1381!
B. POLICE OFFICER ATTITUDES TOWARDS CAMERAS, PUBLIC DISCLOSURE,
AND PRIVACY ......................................................................................... 1384!
1. ACCESS TO FOOTAGE AND CIVILIAN PRIVACY .............................. 1385!
2. ACCESS TO FOOTAGE AND OFFICER PRIVACY ............................... 1387!
3. PUBLIC ACCESS TO BODY-WORN VIDEO ....................................... 1388!
4. INITIAL SUMMARY OF FINDINGS .................................................... 1392!
VI. DISCUSSION .................................................................................................... 1393!
CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 1396!
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1331
I personally would never provide my personal information to an officer with a cam-
era. It all ends up on the internet. That is wrong, and unsafe.
Patrol Officer
Body
-
worn videos are the new cat videos.
Police Department IT Director
INTRODUCTION
September 2014. Inside the headquarters of a municipal police department in
Washington State.
I sit against the wall in an overcrowded room as about two dozen police officers
pull small black cameras out of square white boxes. Most of them appear eager to
see what is inside, and they begin to talk excitedly amongst themselves as they try to
figure out how to attach the cameras to their uniforms. A representative from the
camera manufacturer
1
explains to the officers what to expect from their new body-
worn cameras. As the trainer explains how to activate and deactivate the cameras,
electronic beeps fill the room as a number of the officers initiate their first recordings.
All of the officers, except two, have volunteered to wear the cameras as part of the
department’s initial body-camera pilot program. The other two, just as all other new
recruits and lateral transfers into the department, are required to begin using a camera
as soon as their field training is complete. The officers have a variety of reasons for
volunteering to wear the cameras, but many claim they want to be able to document
evidence and counter unfounded claims of misconduct. Others hope that the footage
will show citizens just how mundane most police work actually is, and that most
police officers are not hell-bent on violating peoples’ rights.
As the trainer shows sample videos of officers using electronic control devices
(for example, TASERs) to subdue uncooperative suspects, the officers in the room
express excitement about the video they see on the screen, and ask how they should
mount their own cameras to get a similar perspective. As they try out various mounts,
one officer turns to another and, as he struggles to get the camera situated on his
uniform, says to the other, “Don’t look at me like I’m a monkey; I’m just bad with
technology.” Another officer turns to his neighbor and says, “I guess I won’t say
anything stupid; I’m sure at least one person in the room is recording right now.” The
good humor in the room is evident as the officers play with the cameras for another
few minutes. Eventually, one officer asks jokingly, “Where’s the direct-to-YouTube
button?” The subsequent commentary makes it obvious that some of the officers feel
that they should have the ability to post videos of citizens to YouTube, just as citizens
have been doing—with videos of the police—for years. “If citizens can do it,” an-
other officer tells me after the training, “why can’t we also benefit from the ability
to record in public places?”
In fact, just a few days after this initial training meeting, the department (and
others across the state) received a blanket request, under state access to information
law, for all video footage generated by body-worn cameras or dashboard cameras
mounted in patrol vehicles (for the text of this request, see Figure 1, below). Armed
1. The department chose to purchase and use cameras marketed by TASER
International, Inc., sold under the AXON label.
1332 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
with legal advice from their city’s legal office that almost all of the footage must be
disclosed without any form of redaction, the department struggles to process hun-
dreds of hours of early footage, a process that takes them three times longer than the
length of the video itself.
This is a public records request for the police department.
I'm requesting all dash and body camera videos not involved in pending
litigation.
I would like the requested videos to be uploaded to Youtube by the
department at https://www.youtube.com/user/[redacted] or another
channel. If the department doesn't want to upload them to its own
Youtube account then I would like it to consider uploading it to Youtube
via an account I create and maintain. If uninterested in doing that I would
like it to consider uploading the videos to a website, FTP server or cloud
storage system like Dropbox or Google Drive.
I would like the videos uploaded in installments beginning with the
oldest.
Figure 1. Text of the public records request received by the department in Sept. 2014.
2
Within a couple of months, the department had disclosed all of the test videos
created by the officers during this training meeting, along with many other videos
recorded by the officers in the next few weeks as they interacted with civilians during
their shifts. As the department disclosed the footage, the (then) anonymous requestor
uploaded it directly to his YouTube channel. Within weeks, it became clear that the
state’s freedom of information law was functioning—in this case—as a legally sanc-
tioned direct-to-YouTube alternative for police body-camera footage, albeit pushed
online by private actors and not the police officers themselves.
After the initial disclosures hit YouTube, the commentary offered by officers at
the outset of my subsequent ride-alongs changed dramatically. During my very earli-
est rides with officers at this and one other department in the state, officers were
generally quite vocal about the benefits they expected to see from the cameras (for
example, that they would capture evidence of criminal wrongdoing by civilians and
give the officers an increased ability to counter false claims of misconduct). How-
ever, after the blanket request for all footage became common knowledge, the domi-
nant refrain I heard at the outset of rides over the next few months was the officers’
dismay that all of their footage is likely bound to be visible to anyone on the internet.
The officers target their frustration at what they perceive as a significant violation of
privacy; however, they are not only concerned about violations of their own privacy,
2. Videos disclosed to this requestor were posted to an anonymous YouTube channel at
https://www.youtube.com/user/policevideorequests. The Seattle Police Department re-
sponded by holding a hackathon and ultimately hiring the person who had filed the original
request (Tim Clemans). See Jessica Glenza, Seattle Police Post Blurry Body-Camera Videos
to YouTube in Transparency Bid, GUARDIAN (Mar. 9, 2015, 4:39 PM), http://www.theguardian
.com/us-news/2015/mar/09/seattle-police-posting-body-camera-footage-youtube-transparency
[https://perma.cc/6PLX-29WP].
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1333
but also the privacy of the citizens they contact during their shifts. As one Police
Sergeant explained:
I feel that it is important to document how well our officers perform their
duties and their high level of professionalism while at work. My only
reservation about the [body-camera] program is that all the footage is
subject to a public records request and could possibly put a victim into
further harm or ridicule if the footage is viewed by a person [who] does
not have any legitimate interest in the incident.
A few months later, while sitting around a table eating lunch with a group of five
officers in a different part of the state, an officer loads a video that he recorded a few
weeks earlier onto his laptop. He stands and places the laptop on the table in front of
me and says, emphatically, “Here, tell me this should be on YouTube.” On the screen,
I see the view from the officer’s chest as he quickly exits his vehicle and runs across
a lawn and through the open front door of a private home. As he enters the house, I
hear multiple people screaming and a woman wailing loudly. Quite a few people are
crowded into the small living room. Suddenly, I see the officer turn and take a small
infant (who I later learn was two months old) from the wailing woman. The infant’s
head and arms hang limply as the officer carefully transfers the baby’s body to the
floor and begins to attempt to resuscitate it, unsuccessfully. In the background, I see
a couple of additional small children, held back by another adult, before I turn away
from the screen in shock at what I have just seen. There is no legitimate reason for
the public to access this video, the officer claims. The officers around the table nod
and quietly voice their agreement.
3
A day or two later, I stand inside a couple’s living room with two officers as the
couple tries to explain why the wife had called 911 and accused the husband of
threatening violence. The husband is drunk—and drinking continuously while talk-
ing to an officer wearing a camera on his chest—and tells a rambling story about
how much trouble his wife has caused him over the years. Perhaps he should leave
her and move on. Perhaps he loves her. On the other hand, she has caused him noth-
ing but grief, and she makes his life miserable. Accepting the officer’s “if you think
that’s what needs to be done, then what are you going to do about it?” as an affirma-
tion of his tentative plan to leave his wife, the man says, “Now, don’t try to force me
into anything . . . I see what you are trying to do here.” Moments later, he says,
“Maybe what I really should do is stop drinking”—and he takes another sip from his
beer can. Turning to me, he asks, “Who are you?” I have been in the room as long as
the officer has been, about ten minutes at this point, but this is the first time the man
has really noticed me standing off to the side. He stares at me intently for a few
moments. “He’s with us,” the officer says. “He’s evaluating how we work while
wearing these cameras.” “Oh, that’s good,” the man replies, and his attention moves
back to the officer. Even if he were sober, he probably would not realize that this
conversation was likely bound for YouTube and virtually unlimited visibility. If he
did, would he or his wife (who was talking to a second officer in the far corner of the
3. Interestingly, as noted in Part IV, infra, footage of the bodies of deceased persons was
made exempt from public disclosure in Washington State as of June 9, 2016.
1334 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
small living room) have let the police into their house in the first place? Would the
wife have even called to report her husband’s threats?
During the course of my ride-alongs and interviews with dozens of officers over
the next year and a half, it became intensely clear that many officers—especially the
veterans—are extremely knowledgeable about the practical ins and outs of many
laws that regulate their conduct, in particular those relating to when officers can stop
or detain individuals, make arrests, conduct searches, or seize property. Because they
frequently find themselves the subjects of citizens’ smartphone cameras, officers also
clearly understand that citizens have a legal right to film them while they work. How-
ever, the advent of body-worn camera programs in these two departments has forced
officers into the middle of a situation filled with legal ambiguity and uncertainty, and
it is not clear to officers where, how often, and when they need to record—and when
they should not—or what role public disclosure and privacy laws ought to play in
these decisions. Department policies provide some guidance, but officers remain
concerned about the legal ambiguity that exists because no state laws clearly address
these questions (at least at the outset of the programs). Additionally, the fact that
members of the public have broad access to most of the officers’ videos—including
those filmed inside homes and with citizens in very sensitive personal situations—
makes many officers uncomfortable. These concerns have led a number of officers
to express sentiments similar to the following statement by a Police Captain:
Not everything should be filmed (i.e., rape victim or child abuse inter-
views), and our public disclosure laws are too liberal to keep those [vid-
eos] out of the hands of people who would exploit or abuse such video[s].
In some circumstances, however, the ability of an officer to choose not to record
a citizen contact may have significant (positive) implications for a citizen’s privacy
interests. However, officers express the concern that, if they choose not to record an
interaction, the media and the public will distrust their decision and assume the of-
ficer was acting badly. Additionally, by not recording, the officers will not capture
potentially exculpatory evidence to ward off unfounded complaints of misconduct.
This state of affairs led one officer to explain:
Right now (in the state of Washington) officers are making discretionary
decisions to turn off the camera to protect the public’s privacy (due to
the freedom of information act). In reality, officers shouldn’t be the ones
having to make that decision. Recordings should only be for people le-
gally attached to a case, not for YouTube videos. If an officer decides to
turn a camera off because they are taking a sexual assault case, there is
going to be serious argument by the defense once it goes to trial.
The combination of legal ambiguity, questions about the long-term impacts the
cameras will have on police practice and officer-citizen interactions, and the privacy
implications of broad public disclosure laws, suggests the need for empirically
grounded and evidence-driven policy reform. Although body-worn camera adoption
in the United States may have been initially perceived as a response to officer-
involved violence and a need to capture evidence of officer misconduct—or deter
such conduct in the first place—usage of the cameras may end up significantly
impacting the nature of police-civilian interactions in ways not intended or even
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1335
envisioned at the time the technology was deployed—and the wide public release of
body-worn camera footage will likely contribute to these changes. Indeed, despite
early empirical research indicating that the use of body cameras has resulted in de-
creased use of force by officers,
4
subsequent research has found that this may only
be true when officers are not allowed much discretion about when to turn cameras
on,
5
and that wearing a camera may—in some circumstances—also increase the risk
of assaults on officers by civilians.
6
This Article presents the findings from an empirical examination of the legal and
social implications of body-worn camera adoption by two police departments in
Washington State from September 2014 to June 2016. In particular, this study fo-
cuses on the public disclosure of body-worn camera footage under Washington
State’s Public Records Act (PRA),
7
provides an analysis of state privacy and access
to information law, and presents empirical findings related to officer attitudes to-
wards—and perceptions of—the impact of these laws on their work, their own per-
sonal privacy, and the privacy of the citizens they serve. The motivating questions
behind this research are: What are the legal and social implications of body-worn
camera adoption in a jurisdiction with liberal public disclosure laws (and particularly
under Washington State law)? How do frontline police officers in these two depart-
ments understand the legal and practical implications of public disclosure law in this
context? And, finally, what implications does body-camera adoption have on officer
and civilian privacy? The research reported here is multidisciplinary, drawing on
law, legal theory, and legal research; empirical fieldwork conducted with police
officers, including interviews, ride-alongs, and surveys of police officers in two
departments that have recently begun using body-worn cameras; and the application
of theory and/or conceptual methodologies from the fields of surveillance studies and
criminology/criminal justice.
The remainder of this Article proceeds as follows: Part I briefly outlines some of
the increasing tensions between police surveillance and civilian-initiated inverse
surveillance (of which requesting public records is only one small part of a much
larger picture) and the particularly important questions raised by public disclosure of
police surveillance video under public records laws. Part II outlines much of the
major existing scholarly literature on the implications of body-worn cameras,
4. See BARAK ARIEL & TONY FARRAR, POLICE FOUNDATION, SELF-AWARENESS TO BEING
WATCHED AND SOCIALLY-DESIRABLE BEHAVIOR: A FIELD EXPERIMENT ON THE EFFECT OF
BODY-WORN CAMERAS ON POLICE USE-OF-FORCE (2013); Barak Ariel, William A. Farrar &
Alex Sutherland, The Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Use of Force and Citizens’
Complaints Against the Police: A Randomized Controlled Trial, 31 J. QUANT CRIMINOLOGY
509 (2015).
5. Barak Ariel, Alex Sutherland, Darren Henstock, Josh Young, Paul Drover, Jayne
Sykes, Simon Megicks & Ryan Henderson, Report: Increases in Police Use of Force in the
Presence of Body-Worn Cameras are Driven by Officer Discretion: A Protocol-Based Subgroup
Analysis of Ten Randomized Experiments, 12 J. EXPERIMENTAL CRIMINOLOGY 453 (2016).
6. Barak Ariel, Alex Sutherland, Darren Henstock, Josh Young, Paul Drover, Jayne
Sykes, Simon Megicks & Ryan Henderson, Wearing Body Cameras Increases Assaults
Against Officers and Does Not Reduce Police Use of Force: Results from a Global Multi-Site
Experiment, 13 EUR. J. CRIMINOLOGY 744 (2016).
7. WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.001 (2017).
1336 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
primarily from an empirical perspective and the criminal justice/criminology
literature, but also from legal scholarship. Part III provides detailed information
about the methodology employed throughout this study (both legal and empirical),
including the theoretical commitments that underlie the choice of methods and
analysis. Part IV provides an in-depth legal analysis of Washington State public
records and privacy law in the context of body-worn camera use by law enforcement.
Part V presents empirical findings drawn from interviews, observations, and an
analysis of survey responses from police officers (building on the narrative
introduction at the outset of the paper). Part VI integrates the legal, theoretical, and
empirical components of this study and summarizes the implications that this study
has for broader public policy and legal change. Finally, in conclusion, I present a
normative argument for limiting public access to body-worn camera footage to some
degree while still maintaining adequate space for robust civilian oversight and police
accountability.
I. INCREASING (AND COLLATERAL) VISIBILITIES
In the aftermath of police-involved killings in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York,
in 2014, the adoption of body-worn camera technologies by police departments
around the country has come under much greater scrutiny. The racial tensions be-
tween nonwhite communities and their local law enforcement agencies around the
country were exacerbated by the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott,
and others at the hands of white police officers. Violent protests often followed, and
calls for mandatory camera adoption started to become a common occurrence in the
media. Post-Ferguson, civil liberties organizations, communities, and a variety of
commentators came out publicly in favor of outfitting officers with body-worn
cameras.
Information, seen as some “thing” that facilitates knowledge
8
and grants power to
its holder over the information subject,
9
can enable power of some over others.
Through vertical surveillance, police gain evidentiary information (as “know-
ledge”)
10
—and possibly investigatory information through subsequent analysis, if
allowed—about civilians. And through public disclosure of footage in which other
civilians are the primary subjects, citizens can engage in increasingly revealing forms
of horizontal surveillance, potentially generating shifts in power relationships among
ordinary people.
The use of wearable cameras also has the potential to alter or disrupt the nature of
nonreported, “peacekeeping” aspects of policing and the attendant discretion that
officers have historically had for their activities not resulting in arrests. Wearable
cameras may serve to exacerbate the compromised position of the patrol officer, who
is often under the “dual pressure[s] to ‘be right’ and to ‘do something,’” even in
stressful or dangerous situations).
11
The use of body-worn cameras can be a two-
edged sword. It promises some benefits, but also poses important problems. The use
8. Michael K. Buckland, Information as Thing, 42 J. AM. SOC’Y INFO. SCI. 351 (1991).
9. See CRAIG FORCESE & AARON FREEMAN, THE LAWS OF GOVERNMENT: THE LEGAL
FOUNDATIONS OF CANADIAN DEMOCRACY 481–84 (2d ed. 2011).
10. See Buckland, supra note 8, at 351.
11. See EGON BITTNER, ASPECTS OF POLICE WORK 97 (1990).
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1337
of such systems is not necessarily inimical to freedom (and its attendant privacy and
speech concerns), but significant checks need to be employed to ensure against the
possibility of arbitrary interference and the improper use of power generated through
the accumulation of information and potential intimidation implicit in these surveil-
lance practices. In a modern society where surveillance has become a stable and ac-
cepted element of everyday life, it is appropriate to consider the role of research “to
make surveillance strange again, and therefore open to rigorous examination and
possibly change.”
12
In the United States, the rights of citizens to document government action and
access public records have a strong foundation in First Amendment principles. How-
ever, states also have legitimate interests in collecting certain types of information to
promote efficiency, public safety, and law enforcement. These interests are also regu-
lated by constitutional law (for example, the Fourth Amendment
13
) and other
personal privacy rights scattered among various state and federal laws. Often the
types of “personal information” that law and/or courts consider “public” or “private”
is dependent on spatial and property-based considerations, and courts commonly re-
fer to notions of property when deciding these cases.
14
As state surveillance continues
to capture more and more potentially sensitive personal information about individual
citizens (or noncitizen residents and others), broad freedom of information (FOI)
laws and other transparency initiatives may come into significant tension with
individual privacy rights when they would require states to disclose sensitive per-
sonal information about individual citizens simply because the information happens
to be included within a government record.
15
Additionally, as police officers are outfitted with mobile surveillance devices,
such as body-worn cameras, which are not constrained by property or spatial limita-
tions (that is, they can be worn into private residences or anywhere else the officer
chooses to be), the tensions between privacy, state surveillance, and public access
become increasingly escalated. Sensitive personal information captured in video
footage from officers’ cameras has already begun to appear on YouTube, Facebook,
and other online repositories as a consequence of access-prioritizing FOI laws in
some states—and notably in Washington State where these tensions have been felt
very acutely in the past couple of years. Breakdowns between law and policy, on one
hand, and technological development, on the other, require us to rethink our infor-
mation policy—that is, from a legal and regulatory standpoint, how should we bal-
ance information access and information control in a way that properly balances pub-
lic access to records and democratic oversight with personal privacy and an effective
criminal justice system?
Despite longstanding tensions between government power and citizen oversight,
public record keeping is a relatively recent phenomenon that largely emerged in the
12. David Murakami Wood & C. William R. Webster, Living in Surveillance Societies:
The Normalisation of Surveillance in Europe and the Threat of Britain’s Bad Example, 5 J.
CONTEMP. EUR. RES. 259, 260 (2009).
13. U.S. CONST. amend. IV.
14. See, e.g., Florida v. Jardines, 133 S. Ct. 1409 (2013); United States v. Jones, 565 U.S.
400 (2012).
15. See Daniel J. Solove, Access and Aggregation: Privacy, Public Records, and the
Constitution, 86 MINN. L. REV. 1137 (2002).
1338 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
twentieth century.
16
Public access to this information is often a prerequisite to citi-
zens exercising power or seeking redress for potential rights violations stemming
from secret (or not highly visible) activities of others.
17
As such, an imbalance in
information access between a people and their government can tip the scales of power
and limit the ability of the people to exercise democratic oversight and control those
they have put in power to represent them.
18
FOI laws often provide a great deal of
access to government records and can serve as a powerful and effective means for
empowering oversight by journalists and ordinary citizens. In a very real sense, these
laws provide a legal mechanism for citizen-initiated surveillance from underneath
—sometimes called sousveillance, inverse surveillance,
19
or reciprocal surveil-
lance.
20
The concept of inverse or reciprocal surveillance (which may take numerous
forms) grants citizens greater power to check government abuse and force even
greater transparency.
21
Watching the watchers, of course, may involve numerous methodologies beyond
just requesting and analyzing public records. The miniaturization and decreasing cost
of camera technologies has also empowered citizens to record matters of public inter-
est, including the actions of police officers and other public officials. YouTube and
Facebook (et al.) are replete with images and video of police officers interacting with
civilians, and provide a platform for the “secondary visibility”
22
of official police
(mis)conduct. On the other hand, these same technological developments have also
led to increased information acquisition about individual persons by states (vertical
surveillance) as well as by other civilians (horizontal surveillance). In some ways,
access to information has increased dramatically in recent decades; in others, politi-
cal implementation of information policies has created what Jaeger calls
“information politics,” meaning “the manipulation of information access for political
16. Id.
17. FORCESE & FREEMAN, supra note 9.
18. Id.
19. Steve Mann, Jason Nolan & Barry Wellman, Sousveillance: Inventing and Using
Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments, 1
SURVEILLANCE & SOC’Y 331 (2003).
20. DAVID BRIN, THE TRANSPARENT SOCIETY: WILL TECHNOLOGY FORCE US TO CHOOSE
BETWEEN PRIVACY AND FREEDOM? (1998); KEVIN D. HAGGERTY & RICHARD V. ERICSON, THE
NEW POLITICS OF SURVEILLANCE AND VISIBILITY 10 (2006); Gary T. Marx, Surveillance and
Society, in 2 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOCIAL THEORY 8156 (George Ritzer ed., 2005).
21. See Bryce Clayton Newell, Crossing Lenses: Policing’s New Visibility and the Role
of ‘Smartphone Journalism’ as a Form of Freedom-Preserving Reciprocal Surveillance, 2014
U. ILL. J.L. TECH. & POL’Y 59 [hereinafter Newell, Crossing Lenses]; Bryce Clayton Newell,
Local Law Enforcement Jumps on the Big Data Bandwagon: Automated License Plate
Recognition Systems, Information Privacy, and Access to Government Information, 66 ME. L.
REV. 397 (2014) [hereinafter Newell, Big Data Bandwagon]; Bryce Clayton Newell,
Technopolicing, Surveillance, and Citizen Oversight: A Neorepublican Theory of Liberty and
Information Control, 31 GOV’T. INFO. Q. 421 (2014); Bryce Clayton Newell, The Massive
Metadata Machine: Liberty, Power, and Secret Mass Surveillance in the U.S. and Europe, 10
ISJLP 481 (2014).
22. Andrew John Goldsmith, Policing’s New Visibility, 50 BRIT. J. CRIMINOLOGY 914 (2010).
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1339
gain.”
23
However, the reality cuts both ways: governments and citizens both
potentially have much greater access to information about the activities of the other
than they have in the past—and this information has the potential to produce and
influence power on both sides.
24
As described in the beginning paragraphs of this Article, requests for body-camera
footage under state FOI law began almost immediately after agencies began deploy-
ing cameras. Within months, sensitive video footage of interviews with alleged
prostitutes in hotel rooms, and other officer-citizen interactions and arrests, began to
be posted to YouTube after the agencies were required to disclose almost every
recording made by the cameras under broad state FOI law. Beyond body-camera
footage, automated license plate recognition (ALPR) and facial recognition (and
other biometric) technologies have also advanced to the point where vehicles and
individuals can be identified, located, and tracked in public (and even not-so-public)
spaces in real (or nearly-real) time, resulting in large databases of information about
individuals’ movements being held by various public and private entities, much of
which is also publicly accessible under some state FOI regimes.
25
In Washington and
a few other states, databases like these have been released to members of the public
under state FOI laws, and the controversy surrounding the public disclosure of the
information has resulted in some states exempting ALPR data from future release. If
sensitive personal information is disclosed by public agencies (including the police)
under legal FOI requirements, this information could easily contribute to violations
of individual privacy interests. Under some current regulatory frameworks, the
visibility of individual citizens (innocent, presumed innocent, or guilty) is inextrica-
bly tied to the visibility of the state.
This reality is closely connected to the doctrine of “practical obscurity,” first
incorporated into U.S. law by the U.S. Supreme Court in the context of federal Free-
dom of Information Act litigation in 1989.
26
The doctrine is based on the presumption
that the disclosure of certain public records in aggregated form “could reasonably be
expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
27
In U.S. Dep’t
of Justice v. Reporters Committee, the U.S. Supreme Court stated that
the issue here is whether the compilation of otherwise hard-to-obtain
information alters the privacy interest implicated by disclosure of that
information. Plainly there is a vast difference between the public records
that might be found after a diligent search of courthouse files, county
archives, and local police stations throughout the country and a com-
puterized summary located in a single clearinghouse of information.
28
23. Paul T. Jaeger, Information Policy, Information Access, and Democratic Participa-
tion: The National and International Implications of the Bush Administration's Information
Policies, 24 GOV’T. INFO. Q. 840, 851 (2007).
24. See FORCESE & FREEMAN, supra note 9.
25. See Newell, Big Data Bandwagon, supra note 21.
26. U.S. Dep’t of Justice v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of Press, 489 U.S. 749, 762 (1989).
27. Id. at 779.
28. Id. at 764.
1340 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
As Hartzog and Stutzman have put it, “[T]he Supreme Court found a privacy interest
in information that was technically available to the public, but could only be found
by spending a burdensome and unrealistic amount of time and effort in obtaining
it.”
29
In that sense, the personal information contained in the otherwise disclosable
public records was “practically obscure because of the extremely high cost” to pri-
vacy and the “low likelihood of the information being compiled by the public.”
30
On the other hand, the collateral social consequences of criminal justice
involvement in various social processes have been documented in a variety of con-
texts.
31
These so-called collateral consequences
refer to the negative effects of criminal justice involvement that typically
manifest outside of the traditional sentencing framework. Rather than be-
ing imposed by the decision of a sentencing court, these effects occur by
default through associated social processes.
32
When personally identifying information captured by an officer’s body-worn
camera is subject to public disclosure under FOI laws designed to keep government
power in check, violations of individual privacy become part of the unintended
collateral damage to these ends of transparency and accountability. The combination
of police use of body-worn cameras and liberal public disclosure rules and agency
disclosure practices is making, or has the potential to make, civilians increasingly
visible (and their interactions with the police less obscure) in the process of routine
police work—a form of what I term collateral visibility. This increased visibility of
both states and citizens has been driven, at least in part, by advancements in technol-
ogy and the methods of surveillance that such technological change has enabled. As
such, collateral visibility is a direct result of police technology adoption within a
social context devoid of adequate
33
ex ante legal regulation—that is, when the adop-
tion and deployment of technology works as a form of policy making by procurement
on the part of the police department. The consequences of these developments (and
our society’s legal, technological, and political responses) have important ramifica-
tions for individual freedom and highlight tensions between individual interests in
free speech, privacy, and security.
29. Woodrow Hartzog & Frederic Stutzman, The Case for Online Obscurity, 101 CALIF.
L. REV. 1, 21 (2013).
30. Id.
31. See, e.g., Jeremy Travis, Invisible Punishment: An Instrument of Social Exclusion, in
INVISIBLE PUNISHMENT: THE COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES OF MASS IMPRISONMENT 15 (Marc
Mauer & Meda Chesney-Lind eds., 2002); John Hagan & Ronit Dinovitzer, Collateral Conse-
quences of Imprisonment for Children, Communities, and Prisoners, 26 CRIME & JUST. 121
(1999); Forrest Stuart, Becoming “Copwise”: Policing, Culture, and the Collateral Conse-
quences of Street-Level Criminalization, 50 L. & SOC’Y REV. 279 (2016).
32. Stuart, supra note 31, at 280–81 (emphasis omitted) (citations omitted).
33. By “adequate,” I mean the existing law doesn’t provide clear and satisfactory legal
guidance to agencies, individual officers tasked with using the technology, courts, or the public
as to how the surveillance technology at issue should (or should not) be used or regulated
within the context of the broader legal framework into which the technology has been, or will
be, deployed.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1341
Footage from a body camera may well have provided better evidence of what
transpired between Michael Brown and Officer Darren Wilson than what was actu-
ally available from conflicting eyewitness testimony and after-the-fact civilian video.
However, the potential for police body cameras to increase transparency and
accountability needs to be considered side by side with a consideration of the privacy
risks inherent in the use of such technologies, as well as the inherent limitations of
the technology itself to stand in as a neutral observer (which is questionable). It is
also important that little or no research has yet addressed many of the questions that
surround the adoption of body-worn cameras,
34
including the impact of access to
information law on police department administration, personal privacy, and other
civil liberties. When technologies touted as tools to make law enforcement officers
more visible in cases where alleged misconduct occurs also lead to drastic increases
in civilian visibility, we need to think critically about how to regulate the use of these
systems of surveillance. We cannot ignore the unintended consequences—such as
the collateral visibility and horizontal surveillance of and between civilians enabled
by public disclosure—that make our lives more transparent, not just to government
agents, but also to our neighbors and the world at large. If not, we may find that the
walls of our homes become transparent to the world anytime we invite a police of-
ficer though the front door.
II. PRIOR RESEARCH ON BODY-WORN CAMERAS
Research on the technical, social, political, and legal aspects of body-worn camera
adoption is becoming increasingly common, although much work needs to be done
to fully understand the full ramifications of police use of these technologies. In the
early years of body-worn camera adoption in the United States, the empirical litera-
ture was fairly sparse, although we have now seen the results of a number of im-
portant studies, and many other related research projects are currently ongoing in
multiple countries around the world.
35
However, to date, very little research has been
conducted on the impact that public disclosure of body-worn camera footage might
have on police officers, law enforcement agencies, or members of the public who
happen to be caught on tape. Likewise, these and more general questions about what
happens (or should happen) to the data generated by police body cameras have also
become important issues for further research.
36
34. See MICHAEL D. WHITE, POLICE OFFICER BODY-WORN CAMERAS: ASSESSING THE
EVIDENCE 6 (2014).
35. See CYNTHIA LUM, CHRISTOPHER KOPER, LINDA MEROLA, AMBER SCHERER &
AMANDA REIOUX, EXISTING AND ONGOING BODY WORN CAMERA RESEARCH: KNOWLEDGE
GAPS AND OPPORTUNITIES (2015).
36. See Elizabeth E. Joh, Beyond Surveillance: Data Control and Body Cameras, 14
SURVEILLANCE & SOC’Y 133, 136 (2016) (“[I]n the rush to respond to calls for greater police
accountability, many American police departments lack consistent, clear, or—in some cases
—any, formal policies regarding how to control that data. Without clear limits, body-worn
cameras may become just another tool for law enforcement rather than a mechanism for police
accountability.”); Randy K. Lippert & Bryce Clayton Newell, Debate Introduction: The Pri-
vacy and Surveillance Implications of Police Body Cameras, 14 SURVEILLANCE & SOC’Y 113,
114 (2016) (“Both empirical evidence and critical evaluation of the possible effect of body-
1342 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
Generally, the perceived benefits of body-worn cameras include increased
transparency and accountability, improved citizen perceptions of police, more civil
police-citizen interactions, evidentiary benefits in criminal prosecutions or for
countering claims of misconduct, and improving police officer training.
37
On the
other hand, oft-cited potential problems include the invasion of citizen and/or police
officer privacy, health and safety concerns due to wearing head-mounted cameras
over long periods of time, and the need for significant investment in training, policy
development, and technical infrastructure.
38
Earlier research investigating the effects
of in-car cameras claimed substantial value to law enforcement, including enhancing
officer safety, improving agency accountability, reducing agency liability, simplify-
ing incident review, enhancing new recruit and in-service training (post-incident use
of videos), improving community/media perceptions, strengthening police leader-
ship, advancing prosecution/case resolution, enhancing officer performance and
professionalism, increasing homeland security, and upgrading technology policies
and procedures.
39
A growing number of studies have been conducted to examine various implications
of police use of body-worn cameras, and studies are currently ongoing (or findings are
worn camera adoption should play a role in setting future policies for possible camera deploy-
ment and for managing the downstream impacts—for example, the redaction and public
disclosure of body-camera images.”); Alexandra Mateescu, Alex Rosenblat & danah boyd,
Dreams of Accountability, Guaranteed Surveillance: The Promises and Costs of Body-Worn
Cameras, 14 SURVEILLANCE & SOC’Y 122, 125 (2016) (“[B]ody-worn cameras have already
been at the center of the same protracted disputes over interpretation and authoritativeness as
the dashboard camera and citizen video recording footage that have been capturing police
incidents for decades. The difference from the latter is that video data remains in the often-
guarded hands of law enforcement.”); Emmeline Taylor, Lights, Camera, Redaction . . . Police
Body-Worn Cameras: Autonomy, Discretion and Accountability, 14 SURVEILLANCE & SOC’Y
128, 131 (2016) (“Cameras could be considered the equivalent of the police notebook, but
only if it is accepted that pages of the notebook can be rewritten, edited, modified; even torn
out entirely. That is why redaction, or more specifically, limiting the discretion of police offic-
ers to select when to record, is critical to ensuring they bring greater transparency, fairness and
accountability.”).
37. WHITE, supra note 34, at 6–7.
38. Id. at 7–9.
39. INT’L ASS’N CHIEFS POLICE, THE IMPACT OF VIDEO EVIDENCE ON MODERN POLICING
(2005); see also INT’L ASS’N CHIEFS POLICE, IMPACT OF VIDEO EVIDENCE ON MODERN
POLICING (2003); INT’L ASS’N CHIEFS POLICE, IMPACT OF VIDEO EVIDENCE ON MODERN
POLICING: RESEARCH AND BEST PRACTICES FROM THE IACP STUDY ON IN-CAR CAMERAS
(2004).
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1343
forthcoming) in multiple states, including Florida,
40
Arizona,
41
Nevada,
42
California,
43
and Washington
44
(as well as additional projects in the UK,
45
Brazil,
46
South Africa,
47
and Kenya
48
). Generally, these studies have been designed to test hypotheses through
the application of quantitative methodologies, from randomized control trials to the
administration of survey questionnaires. Qualitative approaches to these questions
have, to this point, been rather rare, and if they have been employed, have been used
only to supplement quantitative analyses.
49
Despite the emergence of some new
studies in recent years, at least one prominent researcher in this space concluded as
recently as 2014 that we still have “little evidence to support or refute many of the
claims” of either the proponents or critics of body-camera adoption because there are
still so many “outstanding questions regarding the impact and consequences of body-
worn cameras.”
50
A number of important studies have been published since that time,
but many questions still remain unanswered, and many existing results have not been
replicated.
In sum, we have some evidence that body camera usage may reduce and help
resolve citizen complaints
51
(although we don’t always know exactly why), result in
40. See Wesley G. Jennings, Lorie A. Fridell & Mathew D. Lynch, Cops and Cameras:
Officer Perceptions of the Use of Body-Worn Cameras in Law Enforcement, 42 J. CRIM. JUST.
549, 550–56 (2014) (noting ongoing study with the Orlando Police Department).
41. Paul Atkinson, ASU Studies Impact of Police Body Cameras in Arizona, Washington,
ASU NEWS (Apr. 29, 2015), https://asunews.asu.edu/20150429-michael-white-body-worn
-cameras-study [https://perma.cc/ZAF5-FUZP].
42. Colton Lochhead, 400 Officers Involved in Metro Body Camera Study, LAS VEGAS
REVIEW-JOURNAL (Nov. 12, 2014), http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/400-officers
-involved-in-metro-body-camera-study-video [https://perma.cc/2JVC-GCQ7].
43. Research on Body-Worn Cameras and Law Enforcement, NAT’L INST. JUST. (Jan. 3,
2017), http://www.nij.gov/topics/law-enforcement/technology/pages/body-worn-cameras.aspx
[https://perma.cc/N48M-EL9L].
44. See Rachel Alexander, Police Body Cameras Focus of Two Studies, SPOKESMAN-REV.
(May 10, 2015), http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/may/10/police-body-cameras-focus
-of-two-studies [https://perma.cc/5HE9-CQ5E]; Body Camera Pilot Program and Academic
Phase, SPOKANE CITY: POLICE DEP’T, https://my.spokanecity.org/police/accountability/body
-cameras [https://perma.cc/62MJ-UQPB].
45. Natalie Davison, College of Policing Researchers Help Met Police with Body Worn
Video Pilot, COLLEGE OF POLICING (May 8, 2014), http://college.pressofficeadmin.com
/component/content/article/45-press-releases/737 [https://perma.cc/KY74-9TZ8].
46. GRAHAM DENYER WILLIS, ROBERT MUGGAH, JUSTIN KOSSLYN & FELIPE LEUSIN,
SMARTER POLICING: TRACKING THE INFLUENCE OF NEW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN RIO DE
JANEIRO (2013).
47. DAVID BRUCE & SEAN TAIT, A ‘THIRD UMPIRE’ FOR POLICING IN SOUTH AFRICA:
APPLYING BODY CAMERAS IN THE WESTERN CAPE (2015).
48. Smart Policing, IGARAPÉ INST., https://igarape.org.br/en/apps/smart-policing/
[https://perma.cc/X4GQ-GLFQ].
49. Additionally, corporate evaluation firms or police department personnel have man-
aged many of these studies, and only a few have been designed and run by independent aca-
demic researchers. Other studies have been managed by think tanks, such as the Igarapé Insti-
tute, in collaboration with commercial entities like Google Ideas.
50. WHITE, supra note 34, at 6.
51. See, e.g., ARIEL & FARRAR, supra note 4; LYNNE GROSSMITH, CATHERINE OWENS,
1344 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
decreased use of force
52
(at least when officers don’t have wide discretion to turn on
and off their cameras), provide useful evidence to support criminal prosecutions and
guilty pleas
53
(although some of this evidence is only anecdotal or based on self-
reported feedback from officers), and increase rates of citations when officers might
otherwise exercise their discretion to merely issue warnings while also decreasing
rates of arrests and stop-and-frisks.
54
We also have evidence that officers generally
become more approving of the cameras after having used them or after having
worked with officers who have used them,
55
but we also have conflicting evidence
about whether cameras actually civilize police-citizen encounters or provoke more
violence from civilians.
56
Body-camera footage has also been useful in documenting
police misconduct—although not all states and departments have been especially ea-
ger to release such footage—as well as providing exculpatory evidence for officers
subject to false or misleading complaints.
Recent reports have summarized much of the current body of relevant empirical
research.
57
However, these summaries have generally been published outside tradi-
tional venues for U.S. legal scholarship. To situate my current project within this
literature, but also to describe this literature for a legal audience, I outline below
some of the major notable findings from studies based on research conducted both
in and outside the United States.
WILL FINN, DAVID MANN, TOM DAVIES & LAURA BAIKA, COLLEGE OF POLICING AND THE
MAYOR’S OFFICE FOR POLICING AND CRIME, POLICE, CAMERA, EVIDENCE: LONDON’S CLUSTER
RANDOMISED CONTROLLED TRIAL OF BODY WORN VIDEO (2015); Barak Ariel, Alex
Sutherland, Darren Henstock, Josh Young, Paul Drover, Jayne Sykes, Simon Megicks & Ryan
Henderson, “Contagious Accountability”: A Global Multisite Randomized Controlled Trial
on the Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Citizens’ Complaints Against the Police, 44
CRIM. JUST. & BEHAV. 293 (2017); Ariel et al., supra note 4; Wesley G. Jennings, Mathew D.
Lynch & Lorie A. Fridell, Evaluating the Impact of Police Officer Body-Worn Cameras
(BWCs) on Response-to-Resistance and Serious External Complaints: Evidence from the Or-
lando Police Department (OPD) Experience Utilizing a Randomized Controlled Experiment,
43 J. CRIM. JUSTICE 480 (2015).
52. See, e.g., ARIEL & FARRAR, supra note 4, at 8–9; Ariel et al., supra note 5, at 454;
Ariel, et al., supra note 4, at 510.
53. See, e.g., GROSSMITH ET AL., supra note 51, at 20–24; CATHERINE OWENS, DAVID
MANN & RORY MCKENNA, COLLEGE OF POLICING, THE ESSEX BODY WORN VIDEO TRIAL: THE
IMPACT OF BODY WORN VIDEO ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE OUTCOMES OF DOMESTIC ABUSE
INCIDENTS 1–2 (2014).
54. See, e.g., Justin T. Ready & Jacob T.N. Young, The Impact of On-Officer Video Cam-
eras on Police–Citizen Contacts: Findings From a Controlled Experiment in Mesa, AZ, J.
EXPERIMENTAL CRIMINOLOGY 445 (2015).
55. See, e.g., Jennings et al., supra note 40, at 551–55.
56. See, e.g., Ariel et al., supra note 6, at 750–53.
57. See, e.g., LUM ET AL., supra note 35, at 5–19; Timothy I.C. Cubitt, Rebecca Lesic,
Gemma L Myers & Robert Corry, Body-Worn Video: A Systematic Review of Literature,
AUSTL. & N.Z. J. CRIMINOLOGY, 1, 18 (2016).
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1345
1. Studies Based Outside the United States
In the United Kingdom, body-worn cameras have been utilized and studied for a
number of years. In 2007, the Home Office’s Police and Crime Standards Directorate
summarized internal research conducted during the Plymouth Basic Command
Unit’s (BCU) Head Camera Project.
58
In their forward to the report, Ministers
McNulty and Scotland outline a glowingly positive vision for the future of body-
worn video, focusing on the potential for the footage to provide evidence and to pre-
vent crime.
59
They claim that because “[a] picture paints a thousand words,” the
resulting video recordings of police-citizen interactions
will capture compelling evidence of the activities of suspects and will
enable the raw emotion and action from the scene to be replayed in the
courts in a manner that could never be captured in written statements.
The courts can see and hear the incident through the eyes and ears of the
officer at the scene, thereby gaining a real understanding of the actions
of the accused and the challenges that face the Police Service today.
60
The BCU’s initial testing began in 2005, with a single head-mounted camera used
by a police sergeant in the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.
61
In early 2006, an-
other head-mounted camera was used as part of a domestic violence enforcement
initiative that led to international media attention after footage was used as part of a
successful prosecution in March of that year.
62
Another five cameras were deployed
shortly thereafter.
63
Initial findings from these early deployments included a signifi-
cant increase in the quality of evidence gathered at incidents.
64
These early positive
findings led to a number of additional body-camera pilots around the country, and
the BCU began an extended trial in October of 2006 that included the use of fifty
additional head-mounted cameras.
65
Following a Home Office evaluation of the ex-
tended trial, the directorate found that body-worn video had provided more accurate
evidence, served as a valuable training tool, saved time in a variety of situations (for
example, by reducing the need for elaborate written reports, increasing guilty pleas,
and deterring complaints), provided important context surrounding the use of deadly
or nonlethal force by officers, caused reluctant witnesses to testify in domestic vio-
lence cases and strengthened the ability of prosecutors to prosecute these cases, and
decreased antisocial behavior by those subject to the recordings.
66
Potential draw-
backs reported were minimal, largely limited to the needed technical infrastructure
58. MARTIN GOODALL, POLICE AND CRIME STANDARDS DIRECTORATE, GUIDANCE FOR THE
POLICE USE OF BODY-WORN VIDEO DEVICES 30–33 (2007).
59. See id. at 5.
60. Id.
61. Id. at 6, 30.
62. Id. at 30.
63. Id.
64. Id. at 6.
65. Id. at 6, 30.
66. Id. at 7–8, 32–33.
1346 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
(that is, data storage capabilities) and related personnel requirements,
67
or other tech-
nical problems.
68
In another report published in 2011, a consulting group evaluated body-worn
camera programs by police in Aberdeen and Renfrewshire, Scotland.
69
In
Renfrewshire, the Strathclyde Police had begun using three head-mounted cameras
in 2006, expanding to thirty-eight in 2009.
70
In Aberdeen, eighteen cameras were
initially deployed by the Grampian Police in 2010, quickly expanding to thirty-
nine.
71
The evaluation indicated a decrease in incidents of crime in the areas most
saturated with cameras compared to the previous year and in comparison to the larger
area as a whole, though these results cannot be considered a causal outcome of the
body-worn camera pilot due to the nonexperimental nature of the study.
72
As in the
earlier Home Office study, ODS Consulting also reported anecdotal evidence that
the use of the cameras contributed to an increase in guilty pleas by defendants in
criminal prosecutions,
73
as well as some evidence that the video was useful to counter
complaints of misconduct.
74
In 2014, the College of Policing (UK) conducted a four-month randomized
controlled trial (RCT) of body-camera adoption on domestic abuse outcomes in the
criminal justice system in Essex, UK.
75
In that RCT, seventy officers wore cameras
as part of the treatment group, and another 238 were assigned to the control (no cam-
era) group.
76
The researchers found some evidence that body-worn camera use in
domestic abuse incidents increased the number of criminal charges filed, but cau-
tioned that officers reported not always turning on their cameras during these
incidents as well as technical problems.
77
In that study, officers also reported that
having body-worn cameras increased their confidence in their ability to get convic-
tions, improved evidence gathering, and increased officer accountability.
78
Officers
also reported that the existence of body-worn camera footage of an initial domestic
abuse incident made victims and witnesses more confident and more likely to stay in
the criminal justice process.
79
In another example, the Igarapé Institute’s Smart Policing project has outfitted
officers in Brazil, South Africa, and Kenya with body-camera systems consisting of
smartphones and open-source recording, streaming, and management software
80
67. Id. at 8.
68. Id. at 33.
69. ODS CONSULTING, BODY WORN VIDEO PROJECTS IN PAISLEY AND ABERDEEN: SELF
EVALUATION 1 (2011), http://www.bwvsg.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/BWV-Scottish
-Report.pdf [https://perma.cc/GN6Z-KG47].
70. Id.
71. Id. at 5.
72. Id. at 7–8.
73. Id. at 9.
74. Id. at 1–12.
75. OWENS ET AL., supra note 53, at 1.
76. Id.
77. Id. at 1–2, 14–18.
78. Id. at 2, 5.
79. Id. at 5, 17.
80. BRUCE & TAIT, supra note 47, at 12; see also WILLIS ET AL., supra note 46, at 2; Smart
Policing, supra note 48.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1347
called “CopCast.”
81
The system allows for passive, on-device recording, as well as
live streaming via Wi-Fi or 3G/4G connections.
82
In the South African context, an
initial review of the CopCast pilot found that officers reported that “suspects tend to
be more respectful and calm during routine traffic checks” when they realize officers
are wearing a camera, and that officers also feel more confident and safer knowing
that an incident will be recorded.
83
Reportedly, officers were generally enthusiastic
about the cameras, primarily for reasons related to obtaining cooperation from civil-
ians and collecting evidence to support arrest and prosecution.
84
Bruce and Tait also
heard from officers that they have changed behavior to ensure encounters are rec-
orded.
85
One officer mentioned that during traffic stops: “I tell the motorist that my
supervisor is watching the entire process via live video streaming. People seldom
feel the need to negotiate when they know they are being watched.”
86
Bruce and Tait also discuss privacy concerns raised by the use of body-worn
cameras and the potential for public access to body-worn camera footage, finding
good reasons to “protect members of the public against gratuitous embarrassment.”
87
Officer privacy was also raised as a potential roadblock to successful adoption, espe-
cially when officers might have reasons to resist or subvert the requirement to wear
a camera.
88
More recently, Ariel and Sutherland et al. replicated the methodology of the
controversial Rialto study (discussed infra in Part II.2) in seven police agencies in
various parts of the United States and United Kingdom.
89
The study was designed as
a randomized control trial to test for statistically significant differences in rates of
formal complaints filed against officers as a consequence of the presence of body-
worn cameras and on rates of officer use of force. In regards to complaints, the
researchers found significant reductions in the total number of formal complaints
(93%), although “posttreatment between-group differences were not statistically
significant”—a finding the researchers explained by reference to their idea of “conta-
gious accountability.” As described in their article,
[w]hatever the precise mechanism of the deterrence effect of being
watched and, by implication, accountability, all officers in the depart-
ments were acutely aware of being observed more closely, with an en-
hanced transparency apparatus that has never been seen before in day-to-
day policing operations. Everyone was affected by it, even when the
81. The open-source code for the CopCast project is available at https://github.com
/igarape [https://perma.cc/8VYG-H5NE]. The CopCast project also involved collaboration
from Google Ideas (now Jigsaw) in New York City and a number of local partners in Brazil,
South Africa, and Kenya. Smart Policing, supra note 48.
82. BRUCE & TAIT, supra note 47, at 28.
83. Id. at 17.
84. Id. at 24.
85. Id. at 18.
86. Id.
87. Id. at 20–21.
88. Id. at 30.
89. Ariel et al., supra note 51, at 298.
1348 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
cameras were not in use, and collectively everyone in the department(s)
attracted fewer complaints.
90
In regards to officer use of force, the researchers found no overwhelming evidence
of reduction due to the deployment of body-worn cameras, with some departments
experiencing decreases and others experiencing increases.
91
However, they did find
that officers wearing cameras were more likely to be assaulted by civilians than offic-
ers who were not wearing cameras.
92
Finally, in another recent article, Drover and Ariel documented the development of
a randomized controlled trial within the West Midlands Police (UK) and discussed les-
sons and challenges, primarily targeted at police department administrators interested
in implementing a body-worn camera program and/or experimental evaluation.
93
2. Studies Based in the United States
In the United States, both academic and commercial studies of body-camera
adoption have been conducted over the past few years. In perhaps the most widely
cited study to date within the United States, researchers from Cambridge University
partnered with the Police Chief at the Rialto (California) Police Department to con-
duct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of that department’s body-camera program,
beginning in 2012.
94
The most prominent findings from that study, namely signi-
ficant decreases in officer use of force as well as the number of formal citizen com-
plaints, were initially published in a report on the Police Foundation’s website in
early 2013.
95
Coming just months prior to the police-involved killing of Michael
Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and a federal district court judgment in New York
requiring the NYPD to begin piloting cameras,
96
these findings have been cited rou-
tinely in media reports and by advocacy groups in support of requiring officers to
wear body cameras. However, as mentioned earlier, more recent research by some
of the same researchers has significantly tempered (or at least refined) the positive
implications reported in the earlier study, finding that camera use did not decrease
use of force (and in some cases it increased)
97
and that assaults against officers in-
creased in some cases.
98
In the early Rialto Study, the researchers randomly assigned police shifts to either
experimental (treatment) or control conditions, during which officers were required
to wear or not wear body-cameras during the experimental shifts.
99
The experimental
90. Id. at 301, 306.
91. Ariel et al., supra note 5, at 460–61.
92. Ariel et al., supra note 6, at 750.
93. Paul Drover & Barak Ariel, Leading an Experiment in Police Body-Worn Video
Cameras, 25 INT'L CRIM. JUST. REV. 80, 80–81 (2015).
94. ARIEL & FARRAR, supra note 4, at 2; Ariel et al., supra note 4, at 510–11.
95. ARIEL & FARRAR, supra note 4.
96. Floyd v. City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 540, 667 (S.D.N.Y. 2013); Floyd v.
City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 668 (S.D.N.Y. 2013), vacated in part, Ligon v. City of
New York, 743 F.3d 362 (2d Cir. 2014).
97. Ariel et al., supra note 5, at 459–61.
98. Ariel et al., supra note 6, at 750–52.
99. Ariel et al., supra note 4, at 510–11.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1349
design involved all front-line patrol officers in the department (n = 54), and was
primarily aimed at determining the effect of body-worn camera usage on use of force
and citizen complaint numbers.
100
Interestingly, the researchers found that officers
used force roughly half as often during shifts assigned to the treatment condition than
they did on shifts when they were not wearing cameras.
101
There was also a signifi-
cant reduction in overall uses of force across conditions, ranging from a 64.3% to
58.3% decrease compared to the previous three years (twenty-five instances during
the twelve month study period, compared to seventy, sixty-five, and sixty-seven in
each of the preceding years, respectively).
102
In terms of citizen complaints, the reported between-groups treatment effect was
not statistically significant, largely due to the low number of total complaints filed
during the study period (n = 3; two during treatment, one during control condi-
tions).
103
However, the decrease in total complaints compared with the previous three
years was significant, dropping between 88% and 94%, or from “0.7 complaints per
1,000 [total citizen] contacts to 0.07 per 1,000 contacts.”
104
Despite generally propos-
ing that body-worn cameras present largely positive results, the researchers also cau-
tioned that additional research is needed to determine whether the presence of a cam-
era reduces the likelihood of victims reporting crimes, as well as questions about
victims’ rights.
105
In 2013, the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) conducted a large-scale
survey of police department use of body-worn cameras with support from the U.S.
Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).
106
PERF sent surveys to 500 police departments—receiving responses from 254 agen-
cies for a 51% response rate—finding that, as of July 2013, over 75% of reporting
agencies did not use body-worn cameras, and nearly one-third of agencies that did
use cameras did not have any written policy.
107
The PERF research team also inter-
viewed forty police executives and convened a conference for more than 200 police
agency representatives.
108
Police administrators generally cited greater accountabil-
ity and transparency as positive outcomes from body-worn camera deployment,
including fewer complaints against officers—both through civilizing police-civilian
encounters at the outset and by decreasing formal complaints by showing footage to
civilians who come to the department seeking to file a complaint, resulting in civil-
ians “literally turn[ing] and walk[ing] back out.”
109
100. Id. at 519.
101. Id. at 523.
102. Id. at 524.
103. Id.
104. Id.
105. Id. at 525.
106. LINDSAY MILLER & JESSICA TOLIVER, POLICE EXEC. RESEARCH FORUM,
IMPLEMENTING A BODY-WORN CAMERA PROGRAM: RECOMMENDATIONS AND LESSONS
LEARNED (2014).
107. Id. at 2.
108. Id.
109. Id. at 5.
1350 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
PERF also reported that body-worn camera footage can be used as a useful
training tool, allowing easier identification and correction of internal problems,
110
and as a useful tool for collecting better evidence for use in investigations and court
proceedings.
111
The PERF report discusses a number of privacy implications raised
by body-worn camera use, including the potential for cameras to enter private homes,
to gather up-close surveillance footage that could be incorporated into facial recogni-
tion programs, or to enable voyeurism (for example, a “person [might] be able to
obtain video that was recorded inside a neighbor’s home”) through liberal public
disclosure or posting to online repositories,
112
and the privacy intrusions possibly
generated by certain data storage, retention, and disclosure policies.
113
In addition to
these privacy-based concerns, PERF recommends against “always-on” recording
policies, partially based on privacy concerns, suggesting that “[t]here are situations
in which not recording is a reasonable decision.”
114
In its research, PERF found that most agencies with formal policies did not require
officers to have their cameras always recording.
115
Most commonly, agency policies
allowed for some level of officer discretion, and directed officers to record encoun-
ters during “calls for service and during law enforcement-related encounters and
activities, such as traffic stops, arrests, searches, interrogations, and pursuits.”
116
PERF also reported that at least one state has changed its all-party consent require-
ment for officers wearing body-worn cameras and that a number of agencies are
requiring officers to announce that they are recording—although in others, such as
Kansas, police only tell civilians the cameras are recording if they are asked.
117
In another study, completed between October 2012 and September 2013, the
Mesa (Arizona) Police Department deployed fifty TASER Axon Flex (head-
mounted) cameras, primarily to study “the system’s impact on reducing civil liabil-
ity, addressing departmental complaints and enhancing criminal prosecution.”
118
The
study design required fifty officers to wear cameras (nearly half volunteered and the
rest were assigned) and compared these officers with another set of “demograph-
ically similar” officers in the same department
119
(presumably, all of these officers
had chosen not to volunteer). In a final report compiled by the police department, the
research found that those officers who had volunteered were 60.5% more likely to
activate and use the body cameras than the officers who had been assigned.
120
Additionally, after the department modified its body-camera policy to allow officers
110. Id. at 7–8.
111. Id. at 9.
112. Id. at 11. It appears that a neighbor could request this sort of footage in at least a
couple of states (Washington and New Mexico, for example). Id. at 15.
113. Id. at 15–16.
114. Id. at 12.
115. Id. at 13.
116. Id.
117. Id. at 14.
118. LEE RANKIN, MESA POLICE DEP’T, END OF PROGRAM EVALUATION/RECOMMENDATIONS:
ON-OFFICER BODY CAMERA SYSTEM 1 (2013), http://issuu.com/leerankin6/docs/final_axon
_flex_evaluation_12-3-13-; WHITE, supra note 34, at 17 (citation omitted).
119. WHITE, supra note 34, at 18.
120. RANKIN, supra note 118, at 1.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1351
greater discretion about when to record (from “[w]hen practical, officers will make
every effort to activate the on-officer body camera when responding to a call or have
any contact with the public” to activating the cameras when the officers “deem it
appropriate”), the rate of use dropped by 42%.
121
Officers wearing the cameras also
received fewer departmental complaints (40% decrease) and use of force complaints
(75% decrease) during the study period, compared to the prior twelve months.
122
Interestingly, at the outset of the study, the Mesa Police Department evaluation
team identified the single biggest challenge to body camera adoption as integrating
the footage into the public disclosure process under Arizona state law.
123
In particu-
lar, the department’s records supervisors insisted that “they are unable to complete
the review of on-officer video,” primarily because “the process is extremely time
consuming and they do not have the personnel to absorb the increased workload.”
124
As a consequence, the individual officers who filmed the video in the first place are
sent the footage and are required to “review the video in its entirety” and identify
elements of the video that need to be redacted, including “NCIC/ACJIS information,
personal biographical information, juvenile faces, undercover officers, informants,
nudity, and other sensitive information as determined by the staff attorney.”
125
The
patrol officers are required to provide descriptions of materials to be redacted as well
as timestamp information before redaction can take place.
126
During the study period,
the department reported receiving an average of three to four requests for body-
camera footage per month.
127
Of these thirty-six to forty-eight requests (the exact
total is not reported) over the twelve-month period, only three videos were forwarded
by officers to the department’s video unit for redaction, amounting to less than six
hours of total footage requiring some redaction.
128
However, the total time to com-
plete the redaction of these three clips took department personnel approximately 30.5
hours,
129
more than five times the total running length of the videos.
An initial survey of officers participating in the body camera program conducted
by the department in conjunction with researchers at Arizona State University re-
vealed that over 80% of officers felt the cameras would produce better evidence; over
76% felt the footage would be helpful to prosecute domestic violence cases where
victims were unwilling to testify; 45% felt citizens would act more respectfully to-
wards officers wearing cameras; almost 77% felt the cameras would make them act
more professionally; 81% indicated the cameras would make them more cautious
when making decisions; and fewer than half of the respondents believed their fellow
officers would be receptive to having a camera on scene.
130
However, only 23.5%
indicated that the department should adopt body cameras.
131
121. WHITE, supra note 34, at 31 (citation omitted).
122. RANKIN, supra note 118, at 1.
123. Id. at 5.
124. Id. at 12.
125. Id.
126. Id.
127. Id.
128. Id. at 12–13.
129. Id. at 13.
130. Id. at 11.
131. Id.
1352 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
In another recently published quasi-experimental study with the Mesa Police
Department, Ready and Young found that officers assigned to wear body-worn cam-
eras were more likely to initiate contacts with civilians and issue citations but less
likely to make arrests or conduct stop-and-frisks.
132
In their study, involving 100
officers, Ready and Young had officers fill in field contact reports on random days
throughout a ten-month period.
133
Analysis of the completed forms also revealed that
officers were more likely to make arrests during the period when camera activation
was discretionary (by departmental policy) compared to when activation was manda-
tory.
134
Officers who wore cameras were more likely than those who did not to report
the cameras were helpful, and officers who had volunteered to wear a camera were
more likely to report that the cameras were helpful than those who were assigned to
wear a camera non-voluntarily.
135
Importantly, this study provides evidence that
when police officers are wearing body-worn cameras they “are more risk averse and
cautious about their actions.”
136
In an ongoing body-worn camera study with the Orlando (Florida) Police
Department, Jennings, Fridell, and Lynch have reported findings from an initial sur-
vey of officers.
137
In their study, Jennings, Fridell, and Lynch received ninety-one
responses to a survey (voluntary response, out of ninety-five officers who volun-
teered to participate in the research and almost 400 eligible officers) of patrol officers
in the Phoenix Police Department designed to examine officer perceptions about
body-worn cameras.
138
The survey was distributed before officers began using cam-
eras in the field, to serve as a baseline for further research.
139
Officers were asked to
respond to questions measuring their level of agreement with various statements on
a Likert scale, from one to five (“strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”).
140
Re-
sponses indicated that 62.7% of officers agreed or strongly agreed that their depart-
ment ought to adopt body-worn cameras, 77% said they would feel comfortable
wearing body-worn cameras, and 18.7% agreed that body-worn cameras would
increase officer safety.
141
Fewer than half (40.7%) of the officers felt that body-worn
cameras would “improve citizen behavior,” and only 19.8% felt body-worn cameras
“would improve their own behavior”—though 29.7% felt it would promote their own
“by-the-book” behavior, and 42.9% felt it would promote “‘by-the-book’ behavior
of other officers.”
142
Most (84.4%) believed body-worn cameras would not decrease
“their likelihood of responding to calls for service.”
143
In terms of use of force, few
officers (3.3%) believed that body-worn cameras would decrease “their own use of
132. Ready & Young, supra note 54, at 445.
133. Id. at 448–49.
134. Id. at 452.
135. Id.
136. Id. at 454.
137. Jennings et al., supra note 40, at 550–51.
138. Id.
139. Id. at 550.
140. Id. at 551.
141. Id.
142. Id.
143. Id.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1353
force,” though more felt they would decrease external (30.8%) and internal (27.5%)
complaints against officers.
144
In preliminary results from research with the Phoenix (Arizona) Police
Department, in which researchers equipped half of the 100 patrol officers in the
department’s Maryvale Precinct with body-worn cameras, officers reported concerns
about the “potential negative impact” that the cameras might have for officers,
including internal “fishing expeditions” and internal investigations of misconduct not
generated by citizens.
145
Katz and Kurtenbach also reported increased productivity
(daily arrests per officer with body-worn camera increased by 16%) and decreased
complaints against officers wearing body-worn cameras (44%).
146
B. Legal Scholarship
In legal scholarship, body-worn camera use by law enforcement has received
some attention and, although much of the literature discussing the cameras is norma-
tive in nature, it is not generally empirical or substantively doctrinal. Rather than
providing in-depth legal analysis of the implications raised by body-worn cameras
or new empirical findings, many of these articles reference body-worn camera use
either as an element of broader police reform arguments,
147
in reference to the deci-
sions in the Floyd v. City of New York
148
case about the NYPD’s stop and frisk pol-
icy,
149
or in discussions about police oversight or accountability.
150
However, a few
pieces of scholarship have addressed body-worn camera adoption head on. The
144. Id. Jennings, Fridell, and Lynch also address a number of additional questions not summa-
rized here, and perform analysis on differences by demographic variables. See id. at 551–52.
145. Charles Katz & Mike Kurtenbach, Deploying Officer Body-Worn Cameras in
Phoenix, OFF. JUST. PROGRAMS DIAGNOSTIC CTR. (Aug. 6, 2014), https://www.ojpdiagnostic
center.org/blog/deploying-officer-body-worn-cameras-phoenix [https://perma.cc/UK3Y-GCDR].
146. Id.
147. See, e.g., Stephen Rushin, Structural Reform Litigation in American Police Depart-
ments, 99 MINN. L. REV. 1343, 1421 (2015) (citing body cameras as a possible way to ensure
police accountability and oversight).
148. Floyd v. City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 540 (S.D.N.Y. 2013); Floyd v. City of
New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 668 (S.D.N.Y. 2013).
149. See, e.g., Rachel A. Harmon, Federal Programs and the Real Costs of Policing, 90
N.Y.U. L. REV. 870 (2015); Kami Chavis Simmons, The Legacy of Stop and Frisk: Addressing
the Vestiges of a Violent Police Culture, 49 WAKE FOREST L. REV. 849 (2014); Waleska Suero,
Note, Lessons from Floyd v. City of New York: Designing Race-Based Remedies for Equal
Protection Violations in Stop & Frisk Cases, 7 GEO. J.L. & MOD. CRITICAL RACE PERSP. 139 (2015).
150. See, e.g., Martina Kitzmueller, Are You Recording This?: Enforcement of Police
Videotaping, 47 CONN. L. REV. 167, 178 (2014) (examining the push for body worn cameras
after the 2014 Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, in the context of an analysis of
law enforcement video and evidence retention requirements); Newell, Crossing Lenses, supra
note 21, at 84–92; Developments in the Law—Policing Immigrant Communities, 128 HARV.
L. REV. 1706, 1771 (2015) (body cameras as a response to border policing violence); Travis
S. Triano, Note, Who Watches the Watchmen? Big Brother’s Use of Wiretap Statutes To Place
Civilians in Timeout, 34 CARDOZO L. REV. 389, 412–14 (2012) (exceptions to eavesdropping
laws for police body cameras would defeat the purpose of the law and provide the state with
imbalanced power to record civilians relative to the right of civilians to record police).
1354 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
following paragraphs summarize a few, but not all, of these articles.
Most directly relevant to the issues of privacy and public disclosure, Fan provides
a useful and insightful analysis of body camera-related policies and laws relevant to
the one hundred largest police agencies in the United States, with a focus on issues
of public disclosure, overexemption of body-camera footage from disclosure, and
privacy.
151
Fan argues that overbroad exemptions for body-camera footage reduces
incentives to adequately “reconcile the important values of privacy and transpar-
ency” at issue, while also “defeating the key purposes behind public support for body
cameras” (for example, transparency and accountability).
152
Fan also argues for a
“default rule” requiring police officers to ask permission from victims and witnesses
prior to recording, “rather than put[ting] the burden on victims and witnesses to re-
quest that recording cease.”
153
In earlier work, Harris argued that body-worn cameras provide a possible way to
help ensure Fourth Amendment compliance by police officers,
154
but that the cam-
eras in themselves would not be a panacea.
155
Harris claimed that the “versatility” of
body-worn cameras in police practice “makes the idea one of the most promising
possibilities for assuring police accountability and compliance with the law to come
along in many years,”
156
and that “any mechanism we can find that might enhance
Fourth Amendment compliance by police seems worth exploring.”
157
Harris sup-
ported these arguments by presenting anecdotal evidence (drawn from news stories)
of police officer acceptance and appreciation of the cameras, and of the potential
benefits to both evidence collection and accountability.
158
To ensure the body-worn
cameras achieved the intended purpose (Fourth Amendment compliance), Harris ar-
gues that (1) “commanding officers [should] have unfettered access to all recordings”
for accountability, training, and other purposes;
159
(2) footage and cameras should be
tamperproof to some degree;
160
and (3) law or policy must “require officers to record
every interaction with citizens.”
161
This latter requirement should be supported, in
Harris’s view, by a presumption in favor of the defendant’s version of events in cases
where the arresting officer did not activate their camera or when footage of the arrest
is not available.
162
151. Mary D. Fan, Privacy, Public Disclosure, Police Body Cameras: Policy Splits, 68
ALA. L. REV. 395 (2016). In a student note, Farden has also provided an analysis of
Washington State privacy law in the context of body-worn camera deployment within the
state. Katie Farden, Note, Recording a New Frontier in Evidence-Gathering: Police Body-
Worn Cameras and Privacy Doctrines in Washington State, 40 SEATTLE U. L. REV. 271 (2016).
152. Fan, supra note 151.
153. Id.
154. David A. Harris, Picture This: Body-Worn Video Devices (Head Cams) as Tools for
Ensuring Fourth Amendment Compliance by Police, 43 TEX. TECH L. REV. 357, 359–60
(2010).
155. Id. at 366–71.
156. Id. at 359–60.
157. Id. at 363–64.
158. Id. at 362–63.
159. Id. at 364–65.
160. Id. at 366.
161. Id. at 365 (emphasis in original).
162. Id.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1355
In a criminal case in which the legality of the search and seizure is at
issue because it produced evidence the state wishes to have admitted
against the defendant in court, absence of a recording of the relevant
search and seizure would give rise to a presumption that the defendant’s
version of events should be accepted, absent (1) a compelling reason
explaining the failure to record, and (2) a finding that the defendant’s
version of events could not be believed by a reasonable person.
163
Finally, Harris offered some words of caution, citing a study by Kahan, Hoffman,
and Braman,
164
showing evidence that different groups of people were likely to have
different interpretations of the appropriateness of police officer conduct depicted in
video footage and, specifically, that certain groups of individuals were less likely to
agree with the Supreme Court’s conclusion that police dash camera footage at issue
in Scott v. Harris
165
demonstrated that the officer’s choice to use deadly force was
quite clearly justified.
166
Nevertheless, Harris continued to promote a positive image
of the role of body-worn cameras as an accountability tool.
167
More recently, Professor Howard Wasserman has written a short series of essays
framing the call for greater body-worn camera adoption after Michael Brown was
shot by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, as the result of a “moral
panic.”
168
Despite this generally negative premise, Wasserman states that, “Expan-
sive use of body cameras appears, on balance, to be good policy,”
169
but emphasizes
that the problem is the rhetoric that would have us believe that body-worn cameras
are a “magic bullet” or panacea.
170
Wasserman also argues that expansive adoption
may have unintended consequences because (1) we don’t have much empirical evi-
dence about the impacts of body-worn camera adoption; (2) video footage is limited
in its ability to serve as an unbiased, objective, and all-seeing witness and people are
163. Id.
164. Dan M. Kahan, David A. Hoffman & Donald Braman, Whose Eyes Are You Going to
Believe? Scott v. Harris and the Perils of Cognitive Illiberalism, 122 HARV. L. REV. 837, 841 (2009).
165. Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372 (2007).
166. Harris, supra note 154, at 368–69.
167. Id. at 369 (“But even so, this should not keep us from seeing the advantages of [body-
worn video] as a tool for Fourth Amendment compliance because what is most important is
that head cams can improve police behavior when officers know their actions can be
observed.”).
168. Howard M. Wasserman, Moral Panics and Body Cameras, 92 WASH. U. L. REV. 831,
831 (2015) [hereinafter Wasserman, Moral Panics]; Howard M. Wasserman, Epilogue: Moral
Panics and Body Cameras, 92 WASH. U. L. REV. 845 (2015) [hereinafter Wasserman,
Epilogue].
169. Wasserman, Moral Panics, supra note 168, at 832. Wasserman later states that,
“While body cameras are a good idea and police departments should be encouraged and sup-
ported in using them, it is nevertheless important not to see them as a magic bullet. The public
discussion needs less absolute rhetoric and more open recognition of the limitations of this
technology.” Id. at 833.
170. Id. at 833.
1356 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
also prone to interpret video evidence differently; and (3) we don’t know the implica-
tions of various policy choices that need to be made during the implementation of a
body-worn camera program.
171
Elsewhere, I have tried to situate discussion about body-worn cameras within a
broader literature and by including theory and research from criminology, criminal
justice, and surveillance studies research.
172
Some of this work has specifically fo-
cused on the relationship between citizen (bystander) video and the adoption of body-
worn cameras by police. In these discussions about the privacy implications of
body-worn cameras, I have argued for limited public disclosure of body-worn camera
footage (especially when it depicts the inside of a private residence or other private
space), limited data retention, and limited use of the cameras inside private homes.
173
In an unsigned (anonymous) student note in the Harvard Law Review, the
author(s) of that piece argue that body-worn cameras (in comparison to citizen video)
offer accountability benefits at an “unprecedented scale” as a consequence of the
amount of evidence police-mounted cameras would provide, but that this benefit may
be outweighed or underappreciated due to the “locus of control” remaining with “the
very organization[s] meant to be held accountable.”
174
The essay also describes
drawbacks related to privacy, administrative burden (cost), the questionable objectiv-
ity of video evidence, and the general rise of the surveillance state.
175
Finally, in a series of debate pieces, a number of scholars from law, criminology,
and other fields have argued that the positive benefits from body-camera adoption
may hinge on whether or not usage policies (or law) limit officer discretion,
176
that
current privacy laws and police practices are inadequate to properly protect privacy
rights,
177
and that current police accountability regimes must be modified by more
than just the addition of body-mounted cameras in order to really contribute to in-
creased police accountability and transparency
178
—including significant updates to
data retention and sharing policies.
179
171. Id. at 837–42. Relatedly, Wasserman elaborated in his follow-up essay, where he dis-
cussed the video of an NYPD officer choking and killing Eric Garner, stating that “the Garner
case highlights the need to avoid the moral panic trap and to be realistic in our expectations.
It reminds us that video never speaks for itself. No matter the wide public perception of the
story told in the Garner video, most or all of the grand jurors saw something different and
decided accordingly. It also reminds us that video must be viewed in conjunction with witness
testimony, not as a substitute for testimony or as a basis for ignoring testimony in favor of a
singular video narrative.” Wasserman, Epilogue, supra note 168, at 847.
172. See Lippert & Newell, supra note 36; Newell, Crossing Lenses, supra note 21, at 84–89.
173. Newell, Crossing Lenses, supra note 21, at 89–90, 92–93.
174. Developments in the Law—Considering Police Body Cameras, 128 HARV. L. REV.
128 HARV. L. REV. 1794, 1805 (2015).
175. Id. at 1808–14.
176. Taylor, supra note 36, at 131.
177. See Thomas K. Bud, The Rise and Risks of Police Body-Worn Cameras in Canada,
14 SURVEILLANCE & SOC’Y 117, 118 (2016); Darren Palmer, The Mythical Properties of Police
Body-Worn Cameras: A Solution in the Search of a Problem, 14 SURVEILLANCE & SOC’Y 138,
142 (2016); Tjerk Timan, The Body-Worn Camera as a Transitional Technology, 14
SURVEILLANCE & SOC’Y 145, 148 (2016).
178. Mateescu et al., supra note 36, at 123–26; Palmer, supra note 177, at 142–43.
179. Joh, supra note 36, at 136.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1357
III. METHODOLOGY
In this article, I draw upon legal research and findings from original empirical
fieldwork and data collection with police officers in two municipal police depart-
ments in Washington State from September 2014 to June 2016. The empirical data
presented herein is only a small part of the data collected in a larger study of body-
camera adoption in these departments, and is limited to data relevant to the intersect-
ing questions about body-worn cameras, privacy, and public access to body-worn
camera footage raised in this article. Below, I first outline some of the theoretical
underpinnings that have informed the choice of methods and analysis. Subsequently,
I discuss each method individually in some detail.
Washington State provides a particularly useful jurisdictional boundary for this
research because of a confluence of factors, including the breadth of the state’s public
records law and its recently confirmed precedence over state privacy law,
180
provi-
sions in the state’s Privacy Act
181
that restrict audio recording in some circumstances
without the consent of all parties to a conversation, and the fact that the recent release
of largely unredacted body-worn camera footage to members of the public within the
state has forced questions about privacy versus disclosure into the public spotlight
—and, in 2016, resulted in a number of additional body-camera related exemptions
being added to the state’s public disclosure law. To be sure, Washington is not alone
in experiencing the ramifications of the adoption of body-worn cameras, but the con-
flicts between privacy and public disclosure have come to a head in Washington like
in no other state to date, and the lessons learnt in Washington have the potential to
inform the regulation of body-camera use in other jurisdictions.
A. New Legal Realism and Socio-Legal Research
This current research fits well into the tradition of the law and society movement,
active for the past few decades in the United States, and is informed by movements
within legal and socio-legal philosophy that privilege an empirical account of law.
Some of the more quantitative aspects of this work are informed by the Empirical
Legal Studies (ELS) movement, which has been primarily driven by large-n quantita-
tive studies focused directly on law itself. However, much of this study’s more
qualitative and interdisciplinary focus draws inspiration from the philosophy
embedded in a separate, though less well known, empirical socio-legal studies move-
ment, namely New Legal Realism (NLR). NLR privileges an interdisciplinary and
multi-method approach to understanding law in a broader social context, and is re-
lated in many ways to Tamanaha’s proposals for a social theory of law based in
pragmatism and realist thought.
182
NLR is a form of socio-legal research that “is ulti-
mately optimistic, maintaining that law is a world of action and our responsibility is
to participate in it.”
183
180. See Fisher Broadcasting–Seattle TV LLC v. City of Seattle, 326 P.3d 688 (Wash. 2014).
181. See Privacy Act, WASH. REV. CODE ANN. §§ 9.73.010–.270 (West Supp. 2016).
182. BRIAN Z. TAMANAHA, REALISTIC SOCIO-LEGAL THEORY: PRAGMATISM AND A SOCIAL
THEORY OF LAW 26–57 (1997).
183. Victoria Nourse & Gregory Shaffer, Varieties of New Legal Realism: Can a New
World Order Prompt a New Legal Theory?, 95 CORNELL L. REV. 61, 137 (2009).
1358 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
These movements toward more empirical scholarship in law have been driven by
efforts to push back on the legal formalism and legal positivism that dominated legal
philosophy at least until “old” Legal Realism took hold in the United States in the
1920s. NLR is also opposed to the new formalism advanced by neoclassical law and
economics, or the “straightforward application of microeconomic (or price-
theoretic) analysis to the law.”
184
This neoclassical law and economics approach,
championed by Richard Posner and the Chicago School, prioritizes the economic
incentive of wealth maximization and the rational actor.
185
As a point of clarity, the NLR movement itself is not entirely homogenous.
Nourse and Shaffer have divided NLR into three camps of researchers: the behavior-
ists, contextualists, and institutionalists.
186
The research presented in this Article fits
most clearly within the contextualist account of NLR, an account that broadly
encompasses most of the law and society movement (as opposed to the predomi-
nantly quantitative ELS and to other socio-legal approaches primarily initiated out-
side the legal academy—for example, within sociology or anthropology).
NLR is an emerging philosophical tradition in legal philosophy. It extends and
modifies “old” legal realist thought, from a top-down focus on courts, judges, and
legal institutions, to a bottom-up approach that seeks to understand the law first by
focusing on the impact and everyday interactions of laypersons with the law.
187
De-
spite its bottom-up focus, NLR also values the integrated study of “law on the
books,” legal practice, legal institutions, and the lawmaking process. NLR also es-
pouses an interdisciplinary empirical approach to legal scholarship that combines
both quantitative and qualitative methods to achieve a better understanding of the
human experience and the dilemmas facing the rule of law and legal institutions. In
this sense, it fits within post-positivistic empiricism and also contains aspects of cer-
tain types of pragmatism, or the blending of practical and theoretical accounts of law
in society.
Competing traditions within socio-legal studies have prioritized either
quantitative (positivist) or qualitative (interpretivist) methodologies in studying law
and its role and impact in society, reflecting the differing epistemological positions
claimed by these movements. This study attempts to balance the weaknesses and
strengths of these opposing views by pragmatically prioritizing “what works” to un-
cover “what is” (facts or truth, though not necessarily absolute) and how my partici-
pants (that is, police officers) ascribe meaning (and what that meaning is, as best as
I can tell based on my perception of it) to the world of variables (legal and otherwise)
that surround the use of body-worn cameras. This approach is generally aligned with
the contextualist account of NLR
188
and Tamanaha’s pragmatic and realistic social
theory of law.
189
Based on these methodological and epistemological commitments, the data
collection methods (field observations, interviews, surveys, legal research) and meth-
184. Id. at 64–65.
185. Id. at 65–66.
186. Id. at 70.
187. See id.
188. Id. at 79–85.
189. TAMANAHA, supra note 182.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1359
ods of analysis (grounded theory and doctrinal legal analysis) employed in this pro-
ject have been conducted iteratively throughout the project. For example, earlier
interviews and survey responses informed changes to the focus areas of subsequent
interviews and survey questions. The purpose of the multiple surveys over time was
not purely to collect quantitative data for longitudinal comparison, but also to inform
the other forms of data collection occurring at the same time (and vice versa in re-
gards to other methods). This iterative and reflective approach to data collection was
designed to complement and inform the different stages of coding and data analysis
(grounded theory) that developed as the project progressed.
B. Legal Research
Doctrinal legal research is the study and analysis of legal texts (for example,
statutes and judicial decisions) and rules with the aim of developing and understand-
ing legal doctrine.
190
It involves “a synthesis of various rules, principles, norms,
interpretive guidelines and values.”
191
However, knowing doctrine itself does not
provide a complete picture of the law—that requires application of legal rules and
doctrine “to the particular facts of the situation under consideration.”
192
Doctrinal
legal research has long dominated the legal academy—of which it is the “core legal
research method”—but “[u]ntil relatively recently there has been no necessity to ex-
plain or classify it within any broader cross-disciplinary research framework.”
193
Relatedly, very little academic legal research contains any methodological descrip-
tion, and when it does—typically when the research is interdisciplinary, it involves
empirical data collection or is comparative—an article’s methods section only de-
scribes the social scientific methodologies employed (for example, sampling, case
selection, etc.). As stated by Hutchinson and Duncan, “the doctrinal method is often
so implicit and so tacit that many working within the legal paradigm consider that it
is unnecessary to verbalise the process.”
194
That is not to say the method should not
be described in any detail, but merely to situate the method within its real-world
context: well-utilized and practiced by lawyers and legal academics, but under theo-
rized and under critiqued within and outside the discipline.
In the instant research, I conducted legal research into the regulation of the use of
body-worn camera technologies by law enforcement agencies in Washington State,
including state constitutional law, statutory law, decisions by Washington State
courts, and federal case law related to the Fourth Amendment to the United States
Constitution. To this end, I searched Washington law using Westlaw®, and I also
conducted general Google and Google Scholar (case law) searches to identify other
relevant issues and sources. For comparison, I also conducted searches of Westlaw’s
legal database and referred to various state legislature websites and news sources to
190. See Paul Chynoweth, Legal Research, in ADVANCED RESEARCH METHODS IN THE
BUILT ENVIRONMENT 28, 29 (Andrew Knight & Les Ruddock eds., 2008).
191. Terry Hutchinson & Nigel Duncan, Defining and Describing What We Do: Doctrinal
Legal Research, 17 DEAKIN L. REV. 83, 84 (2012) (quoting AUSTRALIAN LAW DICTIONARY
197 (Trischa Mann & Audrey Blunden eds., 2010)).
192. Chynoweth, supra note 190.
193. Hutchinson & Duncan, supra note 191, at 85.
194. Id. at 99.
1360 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
determine whether legislatures in other states had proposed or adopted statutory laws
regulating body-worn camera use (or public access to footage) in their jurisdictions.
In Westlaw, I searched for statutes and cases using the following search string:
“body worn camera!” OR “body worn video” OR “body camera!” OR
“on-officer camera!” OR “on-officer video”
C. Empirical Data Collection and Analysis
In this project, I draw upon some of the findings from my own on-going empirical
project, including fieldwork conducted with police officers in the Spokane and
Bellingham (Washington) police departments. The findings presented herein are
primarily sourced from interviews, observational data, and three surveys adminis-
tered during both departments’ on-going body-worn camera programs, which each
began in September 2014. The three surveys were conducted, respectively, in fall
2014, May/June 2015, and June 2016, and the qualitative fieldwork occurred during
the same timeframe.
At the midpoint of the study, the Bellingham Police Department (BPD) employed
over 110 sworn personnel, with over 60 personnel assigned to patrol (including K-
9), and over 50 nonsworn civilian personnel. The department has jurisdiction of 31.7
square miles, and serves a population of over 83,000 citizens. The Spokane Police
Department (SPD) employed over 310 sworn personnel, with over 140 personnel
assigned to Patrol, and just over 100 non-sworn civilian personnel. The department
has jurisdiction of roughly 76 square miles, and serves a population of over 210,000
citizens.
No experimental (that is, treatment/control) conditions were implemented during
the initial rollout of either department’s body-worn camera program although the
SPD implemented an experimental deployment starting in May 2015, partway
through the current study. Instead, each department allowed most officers to volun-
teer (opt-in) to wear a camera (BPD only mandated camera use by new recruits and
lateral transfers to the department). Both departments used TASER AXON Flex cam-
eras and/or TASER AXON Body cameras
195
and the departments also utilized
TASER’s Evidence.com digital evidence management platform for storage, access,
and analysis of the captured footage.
The surveys were designed primarily to elicit police officer attitudes and
perceptions about body-worn cameras, and also included questions about privacy and
public disclosure of body-worn camera footage under state FOI law (that is, the
Washington State PRA). The research was approved by the University of Washing-
ton’s Human Subjects Division (IRB), and the electronic versions of the survey
questionnaires were administered using the University of Washington’s proprietary
Catalyst survey system under the “anonymous/IRB” setting, which does not track IP
addresses or timestamp information related to responses. Participation in all research
procedures was voluntary, and respondents were asked to agree only after being
195. For more information about these particular cameras, see Axon Body 2, AXON,
https://www.taser.com/products/on-officer-video [https://perma.cc/LYQ4-FFVC].
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1361
presented with an information statement outlining the nature of the research as well
as the possible risks and benefits of participation.
1. The First Survey
The first questionnaire (Survey 1) was administered in the fall of 2014, just at—
or shortly after—the point when each department began issuing body-worn cameras
to officers.
196
The first set of questionnaires was distributed on paper to BPD officers
attending a body-camera orientation and training meeting in September 2014, just
prior to the cameras being deployed into the field as part of the department’s body-
camera program. Twenty-nine officers returned valid responses to the paper
administration, with twenty-four of those reporting that they were going to be wear-
ing cameras during the upcoming deployment. Subsequently, a link to an electronic
version of the questionnaire was emailed to the remaining officers in the department,
resulting in twenty-one additional valid responses prior to the survey closing on
December 22, 2014. As a consequence, some of these responses were received just
prior to the camera deployment (n = 29) and some were received afterwards, during
the first three months of the program (n = 21).
At SPD, the first survey was distributed electronically to officers via email on
October 20, 2014 (about 1.5 months after the department’s body-worn camera
program began) and closed on December 22, 2014. Ninety-eight officers returned
valid responses during this two-month period, with twenty-one respondents (21.4%)
reporting they were already wearing cameras, and another sixty-five (66.3%)
reporting they expected to wear one in the future during the ongoing deployment.
The initial questionnaire contained thirty-one questions, although some matrix
questions contained multiple rows, resulting in a total number of requested response
items of forty-six to forty-eight depending on responses to certain demographic ques-
tions. Three of these questions asked for qualitative written answers and the rest were
presented in the form of multiple-choice questions or as five-point Likert scales.
Roughly four of the survey questions related to public disclosure of body-worn cam-
era footage
197
and a number of additional questions asked about other privacy-related
issues. The questionnaire did not ask respondents for their names and the electronic
version did not track IP addresses. In total, 148 valid responses were received for
Survey 1 across both departments.
2. The Second Survey
The second survey (Survey 2), which was a modified and expanded version of the
first, was administered entirely online in both departments. It was available from
May 23, 2015, to June 29, 2015. Officers were emailed a link to the questionnaire
and were asked to participate in the follow-up survey, regardless of whether they had
196. The timing of the survey distributions was impacted by a number of considerations,
including finalizing access to the departments for purposes of the research. It would have been
ideal to administer the first questionnaire prior to any deployment by each department, but it
was not possible to do so for the SPD.
197. Additionally, some of the officers’ responses to one of the free response questions
also encompassed concerns about public disclosure.
1362 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
taken the first. The questionnaire included most of the questions from the first (to
facilitate some longitudinal comparison) as well as some additional questions that
emerged during the qualitative fieldwork or that sought information about how offic-
ers had used the cameras (for those who had) during the intervening months between
the surveys.
The base questionnaire included forty-three to forty-five items (for those who had
not used a camera), four of which sought a qualitative response, with an additional
twelve items asked only of those officers who had previously been assigned a cam-
era. One new question related to public disclosure was added. The questionnaire, like
the first, did not ask respondents for their names and did not track IP addresses. In
total, 133 valid responses were received for Survey 2, forty-nine from BPD (40.8%
of whom reported having previously used a body-worn camera) and eighty-four from
SPD (41.7% having previously used a body-worn camera).
3. The Third Survey
The third survey (Survey 3) was also largely based on the earlier questionnaires
but included some modifications (again, building on additional issues of interest that
emerged from the qualitative research). Survey 3 was available from June 1, 2016,
to June 30, 2016. Officers were emailed a link to the questionnaire and were asked
to participate in a follow-up survey, regardless of whether they had taken either of
the previous surveys. In addition to questions from the earlier surveys, this question-
naire also included some additional questions based on legislative developments in
the interim and that were designed to elicit more specific responses to questions about
how (or whether) officers inform civilians about the presence of the cameras and the
attendant public disclosure risks, how officers perceive citizens react to the presence
of the cameras, use of cameras in medical facilities or to record victim or witness
statements, and how officers reacted to recent changes in state public disclosure law.
The base questionnaire included fifty-seven to fifty-nine items (for those who had
not used a camera), four of which sought a qualitative response, with an additional
eighteen items asked only of those officers who indicated they had previously been
(or currently were) assigned a camera. The questionnaire, like the first two, did not
ask respondents for their names and did not track IP addresses. In total, 126 valid
responses were received for Survey 3, fifty-six from BPD (67.9% reporting having
used a body-worn camera) and seventy from SPD (72.9% reporting body-worn cam-
era use).
In addition to the addition of items (questions), the format of some of the Likert-
scale response items were also modified—whereas the first two surveys included
neutral responses as the fifth and final response choice (generally labeled “unsure”
or “neutral”), the neutral response option for these questions on the third survey was
presented as the median (for example, third of five) response choice (and was labeled,
for example, “neither agree nor disagree” or “neither a positive nor a negative
development”). The choice to alter the format of these Likert-scale items was made
to enable additional comparison between the results from Survey 3 and recently re-
ported results presented by other researchers studying officer attitudes in other police
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1363
agencies.
198
However, the movement of the neutral option from position five to posi-
tion three, and the change in label, do complicate (and compromise, to some extent)
the validity of internal comparisons between the first two surveys and Survey 3. In
fact, on Survey 3, the neutral response choice was often selected more frequently per
question than on the first two surveys, indicating that the earlier placement had the
effect of forcing respondents to commit to a more polarized position on the first two
surveys. Thus, when the neutral choice was selected more frequently, the percentages
of respondents indicating, for example, that they agreed or disagreed with a particular
statement fell. This methodological limitation should be considered when interpret-
ing the results presented below.
4. Qualitative Fieldwork
In addition to the surveys described above, I also conducted ride-alongs with
officers in both departments—and while doing so observed the officers throughout
the course of their shifts and conducted informal interviews with officers. Some addi-
tional data was collected during short, informal conversations with other officers in-
side the police stations or when small groups of officers gathered for breaks or meals.
The introduction to this Article is one example of the analysis generated by this
qualitative work. I was generally announced to officers during shift briefing meetings
(roll call) or by email before a shift, and was often able to approach officers on my
own (either in person or via email) and request to ride with particular officers. In
some cases, and especially in the early stages of the research, a supervisor would
email a set of officers who were wearing cameras and ask them to accommodate me
as a rider during a shift. Most officers who responded to my requests were willing to
allow me to accompany them. Over time, some officers recognized me when I
showed up at the station, and this recognition also led to additional requests for rides
(and subsequent rides) with a number of officers. At a late stage in the project, two
graduate students also completed ride-alongs (using the same general methodology)
and contributed to the project. In total, the project encompassed forty ride-alongs
with twenty-nine different officers, ranging from a few hours to entire ten-hour-and-
forty-minute shifts, as well as numerous informal discussions with other officers and
department administrators. In all cases, we made simple field notes during breaks or
downtimes during a shift, which we developed further and expanded after a shift had
ended (generally within a few hours).
IV. THE LEGAL IMPLICATIONS OF BODY-WORN CAMERAS
The use of body-worn cameras implicates a number of privacy concerns, despite
potentially providing significant evidence for oversight and police accountability
purposes. These privacy concerns can be divided into two main areas: (1) privacy
violations stemming from the surveillance activities of the state, including the collec-
tion of evidence via body-worn camera recordings and the nature of consent or notice
198. See, e.g., Jennings et al., supra note 40. This comparison will be made in another
paper, as many of the affected response items are outside the scope of the findings reported in
this Article.
1364 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
required for such recording to occur in the first place, and (2) privacy violations
occurring as a consequence of subsequent access to the recordings, including the
public disclosure of body-worn camera footage. In this Article, I primarily address
the second of these two concerns. The following three subsections address the
legislative response to body-camera adoption in Washington State, followed by a
broader discussion of the privacy implications raised by the use of body-worn cam-
eras within the state. As of August 1, 2015, only a few states had enacted legislation
directly applicable, and in response to, the possibility (or reality) of body-worn cam-
era adoption,
199
but by early 2016 legislatures around the country had begun to
propose and debate a variety of potential laws,
200
although some of these do not di-
rectly relate to privacy or public disclosure issues. Of course, body-camera record-
ings are also subject to public disclosure exemptions in many states through provi-
sions that are not specifically targeted at body cameras, including restrictions on
disclosing private information (such as names, addresses, social security numbers,
motor vehicle information, etc.), law enforcement investigatory records, and aural
communications, among others. However, in the following paragraphs, I outline and
summarize the body-camera specific provisions in state laws that exempt footage
from public disclosure.
201
199. In 2014, Pennsylvania enacted legislation that explicitly allows officers enforcing fish
and game laws to wear body cameras and exempts officers enforcing these laws from the
state’s all-party consent requirements. 30 PA. STAT. AND CONS. STATE. ANN. § 901(c) (2014);
34 PA. STAT. AND CONS. STAT. ANN. § 901(b.1) (2014). Additionally, in Vermont, the legisla-
ture has enacted a law requiring the state’s Law Enforcement Advisory Board to “study and
make recommendations as to whether officers authorized to carry electronic control devices
[e.g. TASERS] should be required to wear body cameras.” VT. STAT. ANN. tit. 20 § 2367(g)(1)
(2016). In Arizona, the legislature enacted a law that establishes a “body camera study
committee” tasked with researching body camera usage in the state and recommending policy.
S.B. 1300, 52d Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Ariz. 2015) (the committee has the power to seek
cooperation from public agencies, including police departments within the state). A 2015
California bill, approved in June, paves the way for the California Highway Patrol to conduct
a body camera program. S.B. 85, 2015 Leg. (Ca. 2015). In May 2015, Colorado enacted a
body-worn camera grant program. COLO. REV. STAT. ANN. § 24-33.5-519 (2015); cf. MD.
CODE ANN. PUB. SAFETY § 3-511 (2015) (tasking the Maryland Police Training Commission
to establish and publish a body-camera policy); OR. REV. STAT. § 133.741 (2015) (requiring
police agencies to develop policies for body-worn camera use); UTAH CODE ANN. § 77-23-210
(LexisNexis Supp. 2015) (requiring police department policy to include language requiring
officers to wear body-worn cameras while executing warrants); H.B. 7103, 2015 Leg., June
Special Sess. (Conn. 2015) (requiring “training in the use of body-worn recording equipment
and the retention of data created by such equipment” as part of use of force reforms).
200. For a nice summary, see Fiona Blackshaw & Dan Matos, Police Body-Worn Cameras:
Where Your State Stands, URB. INST. (last updated Jan. 1, 2017), http://apps-staging.urban.org
/features/body-camera-update/ [https://perma.cc/DL4U-QGJG]. See also ABRAMS INST.,
POLICE BODY CAM FOOTAGE: JUST ANOTHER PUBLIC RECORD (2015), http://isp.yale.edu/sites
/default/files/publications/police_body_camera_footage-_just_another_public_record.pdf [https://
perma.cc/SS67-NPD2].
201. The discussion includes all state statutory provisions discoverable in Westlaw using
the search string defined above as of July 1, 2016.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1365
A. Public Disclosure Exemptions for Body-Worn Video in Other States
In May 2015, Florida enacted legal exemptions for body-worn camera footage
under the state’s freedom of information law. Under Florida Statute section 119.071,
body-camera footage is exempt from disclosure if it was (1) recorded inside a “pri-
vate residence,” (2) recorded inside a “facility that offers health care, mental health
care, or social services,” or (3) recorded “in a place that a reasonable person would
expect to be private.”
202
A number of exceptions apply, however, including general
exceptions for law enforcement agencies acting in accordance with their official du-
ties and for sharing with other government entities.
203
Law enforcement officers are
also required to disclose body-worn camera footage to persons recorded by a body-
worn camera,
204
a legal representative of such a person,
205
or a person who “lawfully
resided, dwelled, or lodged” at the property where and when the recording took
place.
206
Recordings may also be disclosed pursuant to a court order in a number of
circumstances.
207
Oklahoma state law was updated in June 2015 to make body-camera recordings
clearly subject to public disclosure when they capture certain types of incidents or
content, including the use of force by a police officer, pursuits, traffic stops, arrests
(and events leading to arrests), detentions, and any other “exercise of authority by a
law enforcement officer that deprives a citizen of his or her liberty,” among others.
208
On the other hand, the law also outlines types of information contained in audio-
visual records that may be redacted by law enforcement prior to disclosure, such as
recordings that contain nudity, death or deceased bodies, certain nonpublic personal
and medical information, certain acts of violence, and information that would
identify a minor or that would identify a police officer subject to an internal
investigation.
209
Effective June 10, 2015, a South Carolina law exempts body-camera footage from
the public record,
210
providing only narrow exemptions requiring disclosure to sub-
jects of a recording, criminal defendants when the video is related to their case, civil
202. FLA. STAT. ANN. § 119.071(2)(l)(2) (West Supp. 2016).
203. § 119.071(2)(l)(3).
204. § 119.071(2)(l)(4)(a).
205. § 119.071(2)(l)(4)(b).
206. § 119.071(2)(l)(4)(c).
207. § 119.071(2)(l)(4)(d)(I) (“In addition to any other grounds the court may consider in
determining whether to order that a body camera recording be disclosed, the court shall con-
sider whether: (A) Disclosure is necessary to advance a compelling interest; (B) The recording
contains information that is otherwise exempt or confidential and exempt under the law;
(C) The person requesting disclosure is seeking to obtain evidence to determine legal issues
in a case in which the person is a party; (D) Disclosure would reveal information regarding a
person that is of a highly sensitive personal nature; (E) Disclosure may harm the reputation or
jeopardize the safety of a person depicted in the recording; (F) Confidentiality is necessary to
prevent a serious and imminent threat to the fair, impartial, and orderly administration of
justice; (G) The recording could be redacted to protect privacy interests; and (H) There is good
cause to disclose all or portions of a recording.”).
208. OKLA. STAT. tit. 51 § 24A.8(10.a) (West Supp. 2017).
209. § 24A.8(9).
210. S.C. CODE ANN.§ 23-1-240(G)(1) (West Supp. 2016) (“Data recorded by a body-worn
1366 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
litigants when the video is related to their pending civil action, and persons who have
had property seized or damaged during incidents captured on footage.
211
The law
also allows law enforcement agencies the ability to release other footage at the
agency’s discretion.
212
Oregon updated its public records act, effective June 25, 2015, to exempt all audio
and video records created by on-officer body cameras, by default, “unless the public
interest requires disclosure in the particular instance.”
213
When footage is subject to
disclosure under the public-interest exception, the law requires the disclosing agency
to edit the video “in a manner as to render the faces of all persons within the recording
unidentifiable.”
214
Connecticut law also exempts some body-worn camera footage from disclosure
under a new law effective as of July 6, 2015,
215
although this exemption only applies
to six defined situations (and the law also prohibits police officers from using body-
worn cameras in these contexts unless authorized by an agreement between the
agency and the federal government).
216
In New Jersey, the legislature has not adopted new body-camera-specific legis-
lation related to public disclosure, but the state Attorney General issued a directive
in 2015 that situated certain body-worn camera videos as exempt from disclosure
under preexisting exemptions for records; for example, videos that would reveal
surveillance and tactical information are exempt.
217
Additionally, the directive states
camera is not a public record subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.”).
211. § 23-1-240(G)(5)(a)-(f) (West Supp. 2016).
212. § 23-1-240(G)(3) (West Supp. 2016).
213. OR. REV. STAT. § 192.501 (2015).
214. § 192.501(40)(c).
215. See CONN. GEN. STAT. § 29-6d(g)(2) (Supp. 2016) (“No record created using body-
worn recording equipment of an occurrence or situation described in subdivisions (1) to (6),
inclusive, of this subsection shall be deemed a public record for purposes of section 1-210 of
the general statutes. No record created by a police officer using body-worn recording equip-
ment of (A) the scene of an incident that involves a victim of domestic or sexual abuse, or (B)
a victim of homicide or suicide or a deceased victim of an accident, shall be subject to disclo-
sure under the provisions of section 1-210 of the general statutes to the extent that disclosure
of such record could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal
privacy.”).
216. The statute defines these six situations as follows: “[N]o police officer shall use body-
worn recording equipment to intentionally record (1) a communication with other law enforce-
ment agency personnel, except that which may be recorded as the officer performs his or her
duties, (2) an encounter with an undercover officer or informant, (3) when an officer is on
break or is otherwise engaged in a personal activity, (4) a person undergoing a medical or
psychological evaluation, procedure or treatment, (5) any person other than a suspect to a
crime if an officer is wearing such equipment in a hospital or other medical facility setting, or
(6) in a mental health facility, unless responding to a call involving a suspect to a crime who
is thought to be present in the facility.” § 29-6d(g)(1).
217. JOHN J. HOFFMAN, ATTORNEY GENERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT DIRECTIVE NO. 2015-1,
16 (July 28, 2015), http://www.nj.gov/oag/dcj/agguide/directives/2015-1_BWC.pdf [https://
perma.cc/25EN-XFJW] (citing N.J. STAT. ANN. § 47:1A-1.1 (West 2015) (exempting records
that reveal “security measures and surveillance techniques which, if disclosed, would create a
risk to the safety of persons”); N.J. ADMIN. CODE § 13:1E–3.2(2) (2016) (exempting records
that may reveal “surveillance, security, tactical, investigative, or operational techniques”)).
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1367
that agencies should not “show or disseminate the recording to a civilian or a non-
law enforcement entity, or to disseminate it to the public” unless “the County
Prosecutor or designee, or Director of the Division of Criminal Justice or designee,
determines that disclosure to that particular person entity or the public is warranted
because the person's/entity's/public’s need for access outweighs the law enforcement
interest in maintaining confidentiality.”
218
Texas law, effective September 1, 2015, requires certain agencies to develop
policies that cover public-disclosure issues,
219
establishes specific requirements that
must be met by members of the public to request body-camera footage, and exempts
from disclosure footage that was not required to be filmed under the law or the rele-
vant agency’s usage policy (or that “does not relate to a law enforcement purpose”)
220
as well as
any portion of a recording made in a private space, or of a recording
involving the investigation of conduct that constitutes a misdemeanor
punishable by fine only and does not result in arrest, without written
authorization from the person who is the subject of that portion of the
recording or, if the person is deceased, from the person's authorized
representative.
221
The law also exempts footage related to incidents where police use deadly force,
unless the agency determines release furthers a law enforcement purpose or after all
criminal and administrative matters have concluded,
222
and makes nonapproved re-
lease of body-camera footage by a police department employee a criminal
(misdemeanor) offense.
223
As of January 1, 2016, Illinois law, among other things, exempts most body-
camera footage from public disclosure and requires redaction (rather than withhold-
ing) in those circumstances where footage is subject to release.
224
The general
presumption of nondisclosure applies to all body-camera footage, but the law does
allow for disclosure to the subject of the police-citizen encounter captured on the
218. Id. at 20–21.
219. TEX. OCC. CODE ANN. § 1701.655(b)(4) (West Supp. 2016) (requiring agencies
receiving grants to purchase body cameras to develop policies that include “guidelines for
public access, through open records requests, to recordings that are public information”); see
also § 1701.662 (outlining procedures for agencies to follow if they want to withhold body-
camera footage from public disclosure, by seeking an opinion from the state Attorney
General); § 1701.663 (establishing procedures for agency public information personnel to
respond to “voluminous requests” for body-camera footage); cf. UTAH CODE ANN. § 77-7a-
105(2) (West Supp. 2016) (requiring agencies using body cameras to make their usage policies
publicly accessible).
220. TEX. OCC. CODE ANN. § 1701.661(h) (West Supp. 2016).
221. § 1701.661(f).
222. § 1701.660.
223. § 1701.659. A 2016 Utah law also prohibits officers from “duplicating or distributing
a recording except as authorized by the employing law enforcement agency.” UTAH CODE
ANN. § 77-7a-106(4) (West Supp. 2016).
224. 50 ILL. COMP. STAT. ANN. § 706/10-20(b); 5 ILL. COMP. STAT. ANN. 140/7.5(cc) (West
Supp. 2017).
1368 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
requested video,
225
as well as the disclosure of “any recording which is flagged due
to the filing of a complaint, discharge of a firearm, use of force, arrest or detention,
or resulting death or bodily harm”
226
except those in which the subject of the encoun-
ter maintains a “reasonable expectation of privacy, at the time of the recording” (un-
less the subject consents to disclosure in writing).
227
Interestingly, these exemptions
only protect the privacy interests of the subject of the police encounter, not bystand-
ers or others caught on video who were not specifically subject to police attention at
the time of the recording. Additionally, if the subject was arrested during the rec-
orded incident (regardless of whether the arrest was legal or the suspect is ultimately
judged guilty for an offense), the suspect loses his or her reasonable expectation of
privacy
228
—meaning that the video is disclosable and not subject to withholding
from public disclosure.
Also effective on January 1, 2016, a Nevada law defines records made by a body-
worn camera as a public record subject only to certain exceptions; namely, such rec-
ords can only be “[r]equested on a per incident basis,” and, if a record contains
“confidential information” that cannot be redacted, it must only be made available
for inspection.
229
In Washington, D.C., a 2016 law exempts from disclosure all body-camera
footage filmed by the Metropolitan Police Department inside private residences or
related to incidents “involving domestic violence . . . stalking . . . or sexual as-
sault.”
230
The District’s mayor is also required to publicly disclose information about
various aspects of the Metropolitan Police Department’s body-camera program,
including information about public requests and agency disclosure determinations.
231
D.C. law also establishes some guidelines for agencies to deal with public requests
for footage
232
and requires the Mayor to establish rules about public access to
footage.
233
Utah law, effective as of May 10, 2016, exempts from public disclosure all “audio
and video recordings created by a body-worn camera” inside a home or residence,
except when the recording depicts the commission of a crime, any law enforcement
action that results in bodily injury or death, any incident where an officer discharges
a weapon, any instance in which an “officer [is] involved in a critical incident,” or
any time the recording is related to any complaint against the officer or agency or
has been requested by a “subject featured in the recording.”
234
225. 50 ILL. COMP. STAT. ANN. § 706/10-20(b)(3) (West Supp. 2016).
226. § 706/10-20(b)(2).
227. § 706/10-20(b)(1).
228. § 706/10-20(b).
229. NEV. REV. STAT. ANN. § 480.365(2) (LexisNexis Supp. 2016).
230. D.C. CODE § 2-534(a)(2a) (Supp. 2016).
231. § 5-116.33(a).
232. § 2-532(c)(2) (outlining general guidelines); § 2-532(d)(2)(C) (extending time re-
quired for the production of records in circumstances where the agency’s “inability to procure
a vendor” able to redact requested video within the statutory 25-day time period).
233. § 5-116.32.
234. UTAH CODE ANN. § 63G-2-302(2)(g) (West Supp. 2016).
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1369
North Dakota law specifically exempts from disclosure any “image” captured by
a law enforcement officer or firefighter that is recorded in a “private place”
235
(presumably meaning that the audio from such recordings is not also exempt).
A Kansas law, effective July 1, 2016, defines body-worn video as a “criminal
investigation record” under the state open records act.
236
Such a designation makes
disclosure subject to both general exemptions
237
and specific exemptions for criminal
investigation records under the law.
238
As a general matter, criminal investigation
records are not publicly disclosable under the open records act, and access may only
be granted by a court order, which is also subject to a specific balancing test.
239
In
addition to these requirements, the 2016 law additionally restricts disclosure to per-
sons who are “a subject of the recording,” their “parent or legal guardian” (if the
subject of the recording is a minor), an attorney for the person or their legal guardian,
or an heir, executor, or administrator of the estate (if the subject of the recording is
deceased).
240
On top of all of these restrictions, the Kansas Open Records Act only
requires agencies to provide requestors with the right to inspect (watch or listen to)
body-worn camera recordings
241
but not to provide copies of the video files
themselves,
242
and it also allows agencies to require fees for providing such
inspection (as a service).
243
North Carolina amended its public records law, effective October 1, 2016, largely
restricting public access to recordings and granting law enforcement agencies signifi-
cant discretion in deciding when to disclose them.
244
Notably, the new law states that
body-worn video recordings are “not public records” or “personnel records” under
the public records act and other state laws,
245
meaning that agencies are under no
legal obligation under the public records law to disclose (that is, to provide for
inspection, not copies) or release (meaning to disclosure a copy of) a recording. In
addition to the discretion the law grants to agencies about whether they comply with
235. N.D. CENT. CODE § 44-04-18.7(9) (2015).
236. KAN. STAT. ANN. §§ 45-254(a), 45-217(c) (West, Westlaw through 2016 Reg. and
Spec. Legis. Sess.).
237. Such exemptions include “a request [that] places an unreasonable burden in producing
public records or if the custodian has reason to believe that repeated requests are intended to
disrupt other essential functions of the public agency.” § 45-218(e).
238. § 45-221(a)(10).
239. Id.
240. § 45-254(c).
241. § 45-218(a).
242. § 45-219(a) (“A public agency shall not be required to provide copies of radio or
recording tapes or discs, video tapes or films, pictures, slides, graphics, illustrations or similar
audio or visual items or devices, unless such items or devices were shown or played to a public
meeting of the governing body thereof . . . .”); § 45-254(b) (“The law enforcement agency
shall allow the person to listen to the requested audio recording or to view the requested video
recording.”).
243. § 45-254(b) (noting that, in regards to providing requestors the right to view or listen
to recordings, agencies “may charge a reasonable fee for such services provided by the law
enforcement agency”).
244. See N.C. GEN. STAT. ANN. § 132-1.4A(b) (West Supp. 2016).
245. Id.
1370 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
a request in the first instance, the law limits the agencies’ ability to disclose (will-
ingly) to anyone other than those persons who are subjects of a recording or their
legal representatives.
246
In responding to requests from such persons, the law pro-
vides a number of optional considerations that agencies may use as the basis to deny
access,
247
and courts may only overturn agency denials based on these factors when
it determines that an agency has “abused its discretion” in denying the request for
inspection.
248
Copies of recordings may only be disclosed pursuant to a court order
and where a particular standard applies to justify the release (for example, when
“[r]elease is necessary to advance a compelling public interest”).
249
Persons who are
granted access to view or listen to a recording under the disclosure/inspection provi-
sion are explicitly not allowed to “record or copy the recording,” and a court order
under that section cannot require release.
250
Quite a few states have also recently proposed legislation to regulate the use of
body-worn cameras or exempt body-worn camera footage from public disclosure,
and judicial decisions are also beginning to note the presence of body-worn cameras,
or deal with the issues raised by body-worn camera use in cases brought to court.
251
In 2015, two bills were introduced into the Washington State Legislature that would
have regulated the use of body-worn cameras; both bills proposed to limit public
access to body-worn camera footage.
252
Both of these bills ultimately died in the
legislature, but in March 2016, the legislature passed a new law exempting certain
body-camera recordings from public access that became effective June 9, 2016. The
following subsections outline public disclosure law in Washington State, generally
and specifically in regards to body-camera footage.
B. Public Disclosure Law in Washington
Washington State has a very broad public records law. It was adopted in 1972 by
popular vote
253
as part of a larger antisecrecy and government transparency meas-
ure.
254
The Washington Supreme Court has called the Public Records Act (PRA) a
“strongly-worded mandate for broad disclosure of public records.”
255
The PRA is
246. § 132-1.4A(c).
247. § 132-1.4A(d).
248. § 132-1.4A(e).
249. § 132-1.4A(g)(1).
250. § 132-1.4A(c).
251. It should be noted that body cameras have been used by police in cases beginning in
the late 1990s. For the earliest cases discussing body camera use, see United States v. Davis,
326 F.3d 361 (2d. Cir. 2003) and Smith v. State, 494 S.E.2d 371 (Ga. Ct. App. 1997).
252. See H.B. 1917, 64th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2015); H.B. 1917 (Substituted Bill),
64th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2015); H.B. 1910, 64th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2015);
S.B. 5732, 64th Leg., 1st Reg. Sess. (Wash. 2015).
253. Initiative Measure No. 276, ch. 1, 1973 Wash. Sess. Laws 1, 31 (1972), https://archive
.org/stream/810223-1972-initiative-no-276/810223-1972-initiative-no-276_djvu.txt [https://
perma.cc/86LL-EMB3]; see Nast v. Michels, 730 P.2d 54, 60 (Wash. 1986).
254. William D. Richard, Comment, Procedural Rules Under Washington’s Public Rec-
ords Act: The Case for Agency Discretion, 85 WASH. L. REV. 493, 495 (2010).
255. Hearst Corp. v. Hoppe, 580 P.2d 246, 249 (Wash. 1978).
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1371
subject to a number of exceptions, most not directly relevant to body-camera record-
ings, and its purpose is stated clearly in the Revised Code of Washington (RCW):
The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that
serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public
servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what
is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed
so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have
created.
256
All public agencies are required to make public records available:
Each agency, in accordance with published rules, shall make available
for public inspection and copying all public records, unless the record
falls within the specific exemptions of [subsection 9] of this section, this
chapter, or other statute which exempts or prohibits disclosure of specific
information or records. To the extent required to prevent an unreasonable
invasion of personal privacy interests protected by this chapter, an
agency shall delete identifying details in a manner consistent with this
chapter when it makes available or publishes any public record; however,
in each case, the justification for the deletion shall be explained fully in
writing.
257
Under the Act, a “public record” is defined broadly as “any writing containing
information relating to the conduct of government or the performance of any
governmental or proprietary function prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state
or local agency regardless of physical form or characteristics” with certain excep-
tions for legislative records held by the state Senate and House of Representatives.
258
The Washington Public Records Act is somewhat unique due to a confluence of sev-
eral factors. First, agencies may not charge for searching, redacting, or otherwise
processing requests, but only for the actual cost of copying physical records.
259
Se-
cond, agencies cannot justify withholding identifiable records because requests are
overbroad.
260
Third, databases (such as ALPR databases) are fully subject to public
disclosure, even when disclosure requires agency personnel to export data into new
files.
261
Fourth, privacy protections under the PRA are very limited, generally require
redaction rather than withholding, and do not cover privacy violations stemming
from the aggregation of multiple pieces of information.
262
Fifth, litigants and their
attorneys may submit PRA requests for records related to litigation while also pursu-
ing discovery at the same time. And finally, sixth, agencies are subject to strict liabil-
ity for violations (for example, withholding disclosable records or redacting
disclosable parts of records), meaning that even disclosure-related violations made
256. WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.030 (West Supp. 2016).
257. § 42.56.070(1) (West 2006).
258. § 42.56.010(3).
259. § 42.56.120.
260. § 42.56.080.
261. Fisher Broadcasting v. City of Seattle, 326 P.3d 688 (Wash. 2014).
262. The general privacy section of the PRA is found at RCW section 42.56.050.
1372 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
in error or good faith may result in financial penalties.
263
According to one general study of government transparency across a variety of
categories (of which public-records access is only one), Washington State ranked
third overall when compared with the other fifty states.
264
Further analysis of the
published dataset from the Public Integrity Investigation survey also confirms that
Washington also ranks third (tied) when only considering the Public Access to Infor-
mation category from that broader survey (see Table 1 below). As additional, though
purely anecdotal, evidence of the broad reach of Washington’s PRA, while conduct-
ing fieldwork with police agencies in Washington over the past few months, I have
heard a number of police officials make the claim that their perception is that
Washington law—as it relates to police disclosure of records—is the most transpar-
ent in the country.
265
Washington courts have interpreted the PRA under the presumption that “full
access to information concerning the conduct of every level of government is a
fundamental and necessary precondition to the sound governance of a free soci-
ety.”
266
In line with its broadly encompassing purpose, access-promoting portions of
the law are to be “liberally construed” while exemptions to the law should be “nar-
rowly construed” to protect and promote the public interest.
267
Additionally, the PRA
is designed to trump other laws (such as the state Privacy Act
268
) when they conflict
with its open-access prerogatives,
269
although other laws that specifically exempt
certain records are held to supplement the PRA rather than as being in conflict.
270
Agencies bear the burden of proving that an exemption is appropriate or that denying
a request is within the law, and courts will presume that disclosure is otherwise re-
quired absent such a showing.
271
In one recent—and particularly relevant—case, the Supreme Court of Washington
held that a particular exemption under the Privacy Act relating to nondisclosure of
police audio and video recordings made by in-car recording systems (so called “dash-
cam” or “dashboard cameras”) prior to the end of litigation was to be narrowly con-
strued to include only cases “where the videos relate to actual, pending litigation.”
272
As such, potential litigation (for example, where a person could bring a suit but had
263. See WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.550 (West 2016).
264. Vickie Kilgore, Washington Gets B- Grade in 2012 State Integrity Investigation, CTR.
FOR PUB. INTEGRITY, (Nov. 2, 2015, 5:06 PM), http://www.stateintegrity.org/washington
_story_subpage [https://perma.cc/4KRH-373S].
265. This of course, is a statement that requires detailed empirical study—and I hope my
future research will begin to answer this and other related questions. However, it does reflect
the perception among many of the administrators and officers with whom I spoke.
266. Nissen v. Pierce Cty., 333 P.3d 577, 581 (Wash. Ct. App. 2014) (citing Neighborhood
All. v. Spokane Cty., 261 P.3d 119, 125 (Wash. 2011)).
267. WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.030 (West Supp. 2016).
268. §§ 9.73.010–.270 (West 2010).
269. § 42.56.030 (West Supp. 2016).
270. Bldg. Indus. Ass’n of Wash. v. State Dep’t. of Labor & Indus., 98 P.3d 537, 541
(Wash. Ct. App. 2004).
271. In re Rosier, 717 P.2d 1353, 1356 (Wash. 1986).
272. Fisher Broadcasting v. Seattle, 326 P.3d 688, 694 (Wash. 2014); see also WASH. REV.
CODE ANN. § 42.56 (West 2006).
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1373
Table 1. Ranking (top ten) of the most transparent states
273
Rank
State
FOI Score
Rank
State
FOI Score
1
Connecticut
166.67
6
Illinois
145.83
2
Nebraska
162.50
6
Pennsylvania
145.83
3
Washington
150.00
8
New Jersey
141.67
3
North Dakota
150.00
9
Idaho
141.67
3
Rhode Island
150.00
10
Arizona
133.33
not actually filed a complaint at the time of the public disclosure response by the
agency) was not a bar to disclosure.
On the other hand, Washington courts have held that the PRA does not trump
constitutional protections.
274
This essentially means that the constitutional rights of
Washington citizens under Article I, Section 7 of the state constitution
275
(including
government employees), to be free from unwarranted “searches and intrusions into
their private affairs” outweighs public disclosure interests.
276
The PRA also recognizes the right to privacy as a possible exemption from
disclosure, though the exemption is narrower than it might appear at first blush. Un-
der the Act, privacy violations are defined as instances where “disclosure of infor-
mation about [a] person: (1) Would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and
(2) is not of legitimate concern to the public.”
277
However, the PRA limits the
application of this right to privacy to the express provisions of the Act
278
that provide
limited grounds for redaction or denial.
273. This ranking is based on scores given to states in the State Integrity Investigation
under that study’s first category: Public Access to Information. This table represents my own
analysis of the data, which is publicly available online. Dataset available at State Integrity
Investigation, CTR. FOR PUB. INTEGRITY, http://www.stateintegrity.org/corruption_risk_index
_raw_data [https://perma.cc/5MG7-HHPU].
274. Nissen v. Pierce Cty., 333 P.3d 577, 581–82 (Wash. Ct. App. 2014); Freedom Found.
v. Gregoire, 310 P.3d 1252, 1257 (Wash. 2013).
275. See WASH. CONST. art. I, § 7.
276. Nissen, 333 P.3d at 581–82 (citing Freedom Found., 310 P.3d at 1256).
277. WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.050 (West 2006). This two-part test originates from
the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652 (Am. Law. Inst. 1977). According to one interpreta-
tion provided to me by a city attorney within Washington State:
[A] court will look to the Restatement in analyzing whether disclosure of particu-
lar information will violate an individual’s right of privacy. The Restatement
specifically provides that “no right to privacy exists for facts that are matters of
public record, such as a person’s date of birth, the fact of his marriage, his
military record, and the fact that he is admitted to the practice of medicine or is
licensed to drive a taxicab. By contrast, disclosure of a person’s sexual relations,
family quarrels, unpleasant or humiliating illnesses, intimate personal letters, and
most details of a person’s life at home could give rise to a right of privacy.”
(Restatement (Second) of Torts at § 652D, comment b). Thus, disclosing a
person’s date of birth will not violate his or her right of privacy.
Privacy and the PRA, legal memo from [undisclosed] city attorney’s office, on file with
the author.
278. WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.050 (West 2006).
1374 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
There are, as a general rule, only three such express privacy-related provisions
within the PRA: (1) RCW section 42.56.230(3), which exempts “[p]ersonal infor-
mation in files maintained for employees, appointees, or elected officials of any
public agency to the extent that disclosure would violate their right to privacy;”
279
(2) RCW section 42.56.230(4), which exempts,
[i]nformation required of any taxpayer in connection with the assessment
or collection of any tax if the disclosure of the information to other per-
sons would (a) Be prohibited to such persons [under certain state laws];
or (b) violate the taxpayer’s right to privacy or result in unfair competi-
tive disadvantage to the taxpayer;
280
and (3) RCW section 42.56.240(1), which exempts “[s]pecific intelligence infor-
mation and specific investigative records compiled by investigative, law enforce-
ment, and penology agencies . . . the nondisclosure of which is essential to effective
law enforcement or for the protection of any person’s right to privacy.”
281
Thus, if an express exemption does not exist within the PRA itself, privacy cannot
be used as a reason to refuse disclosure. In cases where an express privacy exemption
applies, the information must still meet the requirements of RCW section 42.56.050,
stated above. In other cases, specific exemptions apply to bar the release of other
sensitive information, such as information revealing the identity of minors who have
been victims of sexual assault.
282
According to the statute, “[i]dentifying information
means the child victim’s name, address, location, photograph, and in cases in which
the child victim is a relative or stepchild of the alleged perpetrator, identification of
the relationship between the child and the alleged perpetrator.”
283
Other information contained in police reports or other records (presumably to
include body-worn camera footage) are not exempt and must be disclosed.
284
According to the Supreme Court of Washington, even sexually explicit material con-
tained in such reports must be disclosed, regardless of whether such disclosure would
be “highly offensive to a reasonable person” under section 42.56.050, because the
“the legislature considered the ability to gauge the performance of law enforcement
as more than a ‘slight benefit’ to the public, describing it as ‘necessary.’”
285
This limitation on a more general privacy exemption to the PRA was a conscious
choice by the Washington legislature. Section 42.56.050 (formerly RCW section
42.17) was adopted by the legislature in 1987. The text of the bill inserting that provi-
sion into the PRA stated that
279. § 42.56.230(2) (West Supp. 2016).
280. § 42.56.230(3).
281. § 42.56.240(1).
282. § 42.56.240(5); Koenig v. City of Des Moines, 142 P.3d 162, 164–65 (Wash. 2006).
283. § 42.56.240(5).
284. See Koenig, 142 P.3d at 168.
285. Id. at 167–68. This is true even in cases where a requestor seeks records related to a
sexual assault by naming the victim in the request. In such a case, the identifying information
of a child victim must be disclosed (even though the requestor knew it) and the remaining
information about the crime must be disclosed. Id.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1375
[t]he legislature intends to restore the law relating to the release of public
records largely to that which existed prior to the Washington Su-
preme Court decision in In Re Rosier, 105 Wn.2d 606 (1986). The intent
of this legislation is to make clear that: (1) Absent statutory provisions
to the contrary, agencies possessing records should in responding to re-
quests for disclosure not make any distinctions in releasing or not releas-
ing records based upon the identity of the person or agency which re-
quested the records, and (2) agencies having public records should rely
only upon statutory exemptions or prohibitions for refusal to provide
public records.
286
In the case of In re Rosier, the Supreme Court of Washington had found that the
PRA included a general privacy exemption.
287
Subsequent to the legislative change,
courts have limited the privacy-based exemptions to those explicitly enumerated in
the act.
288
These exceptions have been “narrowly tailored to specific situations in
which privacy rights or vital governmental interests require protection.”
289
Should
one of these privacy exemptions apply to a record, agencies may not simply deny a
request. Rather, they must redact the exempt information and disclose the remainder
of the responsive record. As interpreted by one City Attorney’s Office within
Washington State, “[i]dentifying information generally includes name, residential
and business address, telephone number[,] cell phone number, date of birth, other
unique identifying information, such as a unique job title (e.g., the only person with
the title) or particular relationship to a person whose identity is exempt (e.g., a
parent).”
290
Driver’s license numbers are also exempt.
291
As such, police agencies in
Washington State have recently been required to disclose entire databases of ALPR
scans (including unredacted license plate numbers of every vehicle scanned by the
system along with precise geolocation and timestamp information, as well as infor-
mation about plate numbers counted as a “hit” against government watch lists)
292
as
well as dash-camera and body-camera footage. Some of the information contained
in these disclosed files is potentially sensitive personal information about individuals
not being charged with crimes—or, if they are being charged, have not been found
286. Act of May 18, 1987, vol. 2, ch. 403, sec. 1, 1987 Wash. Sess. Laws 1547.
287. In re Rosier, 717 P.2d 1353, 1359 (Wash. 1986).
288. See City of Lakewood v. Koenig, 343 P.3d 335, 338 (Wash. 2014) (“The PRA con-
tains no general exemptions from disclosure to protect individual privacy or vital government
functions.” (citing Progressive Animal Welfare Soc’y. v. Univ. of Wash., 884 P.2d 592 (Wash.
1994))).
289. Lakewood, 343 P.3d at 338 (quoting Resident Action Council v. Seattle Hous. Auth.,
300 P.3d 376, 383 (Wash. 2013)).
290. Privacy and the PRA, supra note 277.
291. Section 42.56.230(5) exempts “[c]redit card numbers, debit card numbers, electronic
check numbers, card expiration dates, or bank or other financial information as defined in
RCW section 9.35.005 including social security numbers, except when disclosure is expressly
required by or governed by other law. . . ” WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.230(5) (West Supp.
2016). RCW section 9.35.005(1)(c) includes driver’s license numbers in the definition of
“financial information.” § 9.35.005(1)(c) (West 2006).
292. See Newell, Big Data Bandwagon, supra note 21.
1376 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
guilty. On top of privacy concerns related to the disclosure of the personal infor-
mation of civilians, these records also disclose very detailed and precise information
about the movements and actions of individual police officers—including when they
are not on duty and/or when they have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
C. Public Disclosure of Body-Worn Camera Footage in Washington
As just discussed, Washington State has a very broad and inclusive public
disclosure law.
293
Body-worn camera footage is generally subject to disclosure under
the PRA,
294
although certain exemptions became effective in June 2016. However,
even despite these considerable new grounds for redacting parts of video recordings,
many of the exemptions to the PRA are unlikely to apply to body-worn camera foot-
age on a routine basis. Agency personnel responsible for responding to public disclo-
sure requests are required to review (and redact, when needed) both the video and
audio of recorded body-worn camera footage prior to disclosure, and this process
takes a tremendous amount of time and agency resources.
295
The following paragraphs first present the state of the law as it existed at the
beginning of the study, concluding with a summary of the recently adopted exemp-
tions for certain body-camera recordings.
1. PRA Exemptions Prior to House Bill 2362
In late 2014, requests for body-worn camera footage, like that discussed above in
the Introduction to this Article, triggered quite a stir amongst Washington police
agencies. The request caused some departments to halt body-worn camera deploy-
ment
296
or consider shelving cameras, and lead the Seattle Police Department to
collaborate with local technologists in its first-ever Hackathon to work towards a
software-based mechanism to automatically redact footage prior to disclosure.
297
The
Seattle Police Department subsequently started proactively posting over-redacted
footage
298
to a public YouTube channel.
299
Additionally, the liberal disclosure of
293. WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.001 (West 2006).
294. See Bill Lucia, Massive Public Records Requests Cause Police To Hit Pause on Body
Cam Programs, CROSSCUT (Nov. 10, 2014), http://crosscut.com/2014/11/body-cams-washington
-seattle-privacy-disclosure/ [https://perma.cc/4MNL-S56P]; Jennifer Sullivan, Man Drops
Massive Records Requests, Will Help Seattle Police with Video Technology, SEATTLE TIMES
(Nov. 21, 2014, 9:19 PM), http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/man-drops-massive
-records-requests-will-help-seattle-police-with-video-technology/ [https://perma.cc/ZRT2-L75B].
295. See RANKIN, supra note 118, at 5, 12.
296. See Lucia, supra note 294.
297. Jennifer Sullivan, ‘Hackathon’ Asks Techies To Aid SPD on Sensitive-Video Issues,
SEATTLE TIMES, (Dec. 14, 2014, 8:48 PM), http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news
/lsquohackathonrsquo-asks-techies-to-aid-spd-on-sensitive-video-issues/ [https://perma.cc
/5W9X-4Q5M].
298. The SPD has applied a few different types of redaction to this footage. Generally,
however, their “over-redaction” has consisted of applying a Gaussian blur to the whole frame
of video and removing the audio stream entirely.
299. Seattle Police Department, SPD Launches YouTube Channel for Bodyworn Video,
SPD BLOTTER (Feb. 25, 2015, 2:03 PM), http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2015/02/25/spd
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1377
body-worn camera footage was further motivated by the fact that the PRA defaults
to a position that records should be disclosed, and placed the burden on government
agencies to articulate why redaction or denials are appropriate under one of the
applicable exemptions,
300
and because the law penalized overbroad secrecy but not
generally over-disclosure.
301
Just months prior to the initial roll out of cameras in both departments that
participated in this study, the Washington Supreme Court decided Fisher Broadcast-
ing,
302
in which the Court held that dash-camera videos were subject to the PRA, and
that the Seattle Police Department violated the law when it refused to disclose videos
to a reporter who had requested them.
303
In that case, the police department argued
that privacy provisions of the state Privacy Act, specifically RCW section
9.73.030(1)(c), limited their ability to produce the requested dash camera videos.
304
The police department argued that the Privacy Act operated as an “other statute”
under the PRA
305
—which would have effectively made it a legitimate basis for an
exemption to disclosure. However, the majority of the court concluded that RCW
section 9.73.090(1)(c), “is a limited exception to immediate disclosure under the
PRA, but it is one that applies only where there is actual, pending litigation.”
306
This
decision effectively confirms that all police footage is publicly disclosable absent
explicit statutory exemptions, and that the Privacy Act cannot bar such disclosure
except when criminal or civil litigation related to the footage has been filed and is
actually ongoing. Indeed, there is no general privacy exemption to the PRA in
Washington law, and the privacy provisions of the PRA itself
307
cannot be claimed
as a stand-alone exemption.
308
That provision reads:
A person’s “right to privacy,” “right of privacy,” “privacy,” or “personal
privacy,” as these terms are used in this chapter, is invaded or violated
only if disclosure of information about the person: (1) Would be highly
offensive to a reasonable person, and (2) is not of legitimate concern to
the public. The provisions of this chapter dealing with the right to privacy
-launches-youtube-channel-for-bodyworn-video/ [https://perma.cc/K78N-DEZ5]. The par-
ticular YouTube channel is accessible online at SPD BodyWornVideo, SPD Blotter Channel,
YOUTUBE, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcdSPRNt1HmzkTL9aSDfKuA [https://perma.cc
/83SA-ACQZ] (last updated Oct. 6, 2016).
300. Fisher Broadcasting v. Seattle, 326 P.3d 688, 691–92 (Wash. 2014); In re Rosier, 717
P.2d 1353, 1356–57 (Wash. 1986).
301. Indeed, the PRA explicitly absolves agencies of liability for harm caused by
disclosure as long as they acted in “good faith.” WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.060 (West
2006) (“No public agency, public official, public employee, or custodian shall be liable, nor
shall a cause of action exist, for any loss or damage based upon the release of a public record
if the public agency, public official, public employee, or custodian acted in good faith in
attempting to comply with the provisions of this chapter.”).
302. 326 P.3d at 688.
303. Id. at 694–95.
304. Id. at 694.
305. WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.070(1) (West 2006).
306. Fisher Broadcasting, 326 P.3d at 695.
307. WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.050 (West 2006).
308. WASH. ADMIN. CODE § 44-14-06002(2) (2015).
1378 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
in certain public records do not create any right of privacy beyond those
rights that are specified in this chapter as express exemptions from the
public’s right to inspect, examine, or copy public records.
309
As such, any explicitly stated exemption from disclosure on privacy grounds was
limited to the extent the above criteria was also met; that is, that the purportedly
exempt information—based on the express provisions in another section of the Act
or another law—must also be “highly offensive to a reasonable person” and “not of
legitimate concern to the public.”
310
If not, it must be disclosed. And, while footage
itself may be disclosable under the PRA, certain additional exemptions did apply that
would require redaction. For example, the federal Driver Privacy Protection Act
311
makes it unlawful for state agencies to disclose personal information connected to a
motor vehicle record (including driver’s licenses). Under Washington law, it is also
unlawful for agencies to disclose “[i]nformation revealing the identity of persons
who are witnesses to or victims of crime or who file complaints with investigative,
law enforcement, or penology agencies, other than the commission, if disclosure
would endanger any person’s life, physical safety, or property.”
312
Victims, wit-
nesses, or complainants may also indicate “a desire for disclosure or nondisclosure,”
and their stated desire should govern decisions about disclosure.
313
However, even a
stated desire for nondisclosure may be subject to the test enumerated in RCW section
42.56.050 (requiring the disclosure to be highly offensive and not of public
concern).
314
State law also exempts certain investigative records compiled by law enforcement
agencies when nondisclosure “is essential to effective law enforcement or for the
protection of any person’s right to privacy.”
315
However, the Washington Supreme
Court has held that this provision should be construed narrowly (like all exemptions)
and did not always constitute a categorical exemption.
316
A categorical exemption
might apply to body-worn camera footage when the footage is an integral part of an
investigative file in an unsolved and ongoing criminal investigation where charges
309. § 42.56.050.
310. Id.
311. 18 U.S.C. §§ 2721–2725 (2012).
312. WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.240(2) (West 2006). This is one provision among a
few additional provision, most of which are not directly applicable to body-worn camera foot-
age. See § 42.56.240 for others.
313. § 42.56.240(2).
314. See Martin v. Riverside Sch. Dist. No. 416, 329 P.3d 911, 914 (Wash. Ct. App. 2014).
Although for many possible complainants, the section 42.56.050 question is only triggered if
RCW sections 42.56.230(3), .230(4), or .240(1) also apply to the case. See Sargent v. Seattle
Police Dep’t, 314 P.3d 1093, 1101–02 (Wash. 2013) (“RCW 42.56.240(2) provides separate
protection by exempting witness identities where ‘disclosure would endanger any person’s
life, physical safety, or property’ or where the witness requests nondisclosure” and police
departments bear “the burden to show that nondisclosure [is] essential to effective law enforce-
ment . . . or that disclosure would endanger a person’s life, physical safety, or property, or that
a witness had requested nondisclosure under RCW 42.56.240(2).”)
315. § 42.56.240(1).
316. Sargent, 314 P.3d at 1097–98.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1379
had not yet been filed.
317
However, in cases where defendants have been identified
and the investigative file has been referred to the prosecuting authority to determine
whether charges will be filed, “nondisclosure is not categorical and automatic” and
legitimate reasons for nondisclosure must be proved by the agency “on a document-
by-document basis.”
318
Because, presumably, most body-worn camera footage will
not be essential to criminal investigations, this exemption may only apply to a small
subset of all recorded videos.
Additionally, section RCW 42.56.230 exempted certain personal information
from disclosure, including information about “students in public schools, patients or
clients of public institutions or public health agencies, or welfare recipients,”
319
chil-
dren enrolled in early care or certain youth programs,
320
personnel files for “employ-
ees, appointees, or elected officials” of public agencies,
321
certain information related
to tax preparation,
322
certain financial information,
323
records “used to prove identity,
age, residential address, social security number, or other personal information re-
quired to apply for a driver’s license or identicard . . . that indicates that an applicant
declined to register with the selective service system” and other records “pertaining
to a vehicle license plate, driver's license, or identicard” or vessel registration,
324
and
“information related to individual claims resolution structured settlement agreements
submitted to the board of industrial insurance appeals.”
325
2. The Exemptions Adopted in House Bill 2362 in 2016
The public disclosure exemptions for body-camera footage enacted in early 2016,
and effective June 9 of that year, exempt all “[b]ody worn camera recordings to the
extent nondisclosure is essential for the protection of any person’s right to privacy,”
a test met by recordings that are considered “highly offensive to a reasonable person”
under the Act, including footage that depicts parts of medical, counseling, or therapy
317. See id. at 1098 (citing Newman v. King Cty., 947 P.2d 712, 716 (Wash. 1997)).
318. Id. at 1098 (citing Cowles Publ’g Co. v. Spokane Police Dep’t, 987 P.2d 620, 623
(Wash. 1999)).
319. WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.230(1) (2006).
320. § 42.56.230(2)(a) (Supp. 2017).
321. § 42.56.230(3).
322. § 42.56.230(4).
323. § 42.56.230(5)–(6).
324. § 42.56.230(7)(a)–(c).
325. § 42.56.230(8). Other exemptions apply to information related to employment and
licensing, section 42.56.250, real estate appraisals, section 42.56.260, other financial and
commercial information, section 42.56.270, preliminary drafts, notes, and intra-agency
memorandums, section 42.56.280, locations of archaeological sites, section 42.56.300, library
patron records, section 42.56.310, educational information, section 42.56.320, certain public
utility information, section 42.56.330, and health care information, section 42.56.360, and
some personal information about health care professionals, section 42.56.350, client records
of domestic violence or sexual assault recovery programs, section 42.56.370, certain infor-
mation about agricultural and livestock operations, section 42.56.380, persons in emergency
or transitional housing, section 42.56.390, certain information held by insurance and financial
institutions, section 42.56.400, and a variety of other reasons.
1380 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
facilities where patients receive or wait for treatment or where “[h]ealth care infor-
mation is shared with patients,” as well as
protected health information . . . ; . . . [t]he interior of a place of residence
where a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy; . . . [a]n intimate
image [as defined in state law]; . . . [a] minor; . . . [t]he body of a deceased
person; . . . [t]he identity of or communications from a victim or witness
of an incident involving domestic violence . . . or sexual assault . . . ; or
. . . [t]he identifiable location information of a community-based domes-
tic violence program . . . or emergency shelter . . . .
326
However, the law also allows requestors to overcome the presumption of
nondisclosure by providing “specific evidence in individual cases” that would refute
the expectations of privacy in regards to particular recordings.
327
The law also re-
quires requestors to provide specific types of information about the recording sought,
including the name of a person involved in the recorded incident; the case number
assigned to the incident; the date, time, and location of the incident; or the name or
identity of a police officer involved in the incident.
328
Additionally, in a radical
departure from the historic openness of the Washington PRA, the new law also im-
poses potentially substantial fees for most requestors,
329
requiring them to “pay the
reasonable costs of redacting, altering, distorting, pixelating, suppressing, or
otherwise obscuring any portion of the body worn camera recording prior to disclo-
sure . . . to the extent necessary to comply with the exemptions.”
330
The Act also enables agencies to require identification from requestors who
request fee waivers to ensure they are eligible under the Act to receive recordings
under such conditions.
331
On the other hand, the Act also requires agencies to “use
redaction technology that provides the least costly commercially available method
of redacting body worn camera recordings, to the extent possible and reasonable.”
332
These new provisions provide significant limits, compared with the prior state of
the law, in regard to the public disclosure of some body-camera recordings, and many
of these limits are consistent with the opinions of officers who I interviewed and
surveyed throughout this study.
326. § 42.56.240(14)(a)(i)–(vii).
327. § 42.56.240(14)(b).
328. § 42.56.240(14)(d).
329. Those exempt from fees include persons “directly involved in an incident recorded by
the requested body worn camera recording” or their attorney, “a person or his or her attorney
who requests a body worn camera recording relevant to a criminal case involving that person,”
an attorney representing “a person regarding a potential or existing civil cause of action involv-
ing the denial of civil rights,” or “the executive director from either the Washington state
commission on African-American affairs, Asian Pacific American affairs, or Hispanic affairs.”
§ 42.56.240(14)(e)(i).
330. § 42.56.240(14)(f)(i).
331. § 42.56.240(14)(e)(iii).
332. § 42.56.240(14)(f)(ii).
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1381
V. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS
In the following sections, I present results from an analysis of survey and
interview responses. The first Subpart outlines various demographic characteristics
of the respondents to the surveys (and interviews), and the second presents findings
related to officer attitudes towards (and perceptions of) the implications that body
cameras might have on public disclosure and privacy. As part of a broader question-
naire, respondents were asked a few closed-ended (usually Likert scale based)
questions on each survey related to these particular issues. More specifically, officers
were asked to provide responses to questions about officer and civilian privacy, the
appropriateness of civilians gaining access to officer body-worn camera footage un-
der state public records laws, and the appropriateness citizens then posting these vid-
eos to the internet (for example, on Youtube.com). On the latter two surveys (and in
later ride-alongs), respondents were asked about the possibility of their department
proactively posting over-redacted body-camera video to the Internet. On the third
survey, respondents were also asked how they felt about newly enacted legal exemp-
tions for certain body-camera footage contained in House Bill 2362.
333
A. Demographics of the Sample
Sex. Across all three surveys, the vast majority of respondents were male (about
87–88%), ranging from 83.7% (BPD, survey 2) to 90.5% (SPD, Survey 2). The low
number of female respondents (ranging from 5.7% to 16.3% by department per sur-
vey) does limit the generalizability of analyzing results by sex, but the response rate
does generally reflect the overall demographic composition of the two departments.
The total population of sworn officers at BPD were approximately 84.0% male and
16.0% female, and the total population of SPD employees (not just sworn officers)
was 75.6% male and 24.4% female.
334
Qualitative interviews and ride-alongs were
also conducted with a sample of officers that generally matched these populations
(predominantly male, but including some female officers as well; five ride-alongs
were conducted with three different female officers).
Table 2. Sex of respondents (by department) across three surveys.
Agency
Survey
n
Male
Female
No response (NR)
BPD
1
50
88.0%
12.0%
—
2
49
83.7%
16.3%
—
3
56
85.7%
12.5%
1.8%
SPD
1
98
88.8%
9.2%
2.0%
2
84
90.5%
7.1%
2.4%
3
70
88.6%
5.7%
5.7%
Combined
1
148
88.5%
10.1%
1.4%
2
133
88.0%
10.5%
1.5%
3
126
87.3%
8.7%
4.0%
333. See supra, Part IV(c)(2).
334. It is likely that the percentage of male sworn officers is higher than this (and female
lower), but I was not able to get precise numbers for just the sworn personnel at SPD.
1382 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
Age and amount of law enforcement experience. Across surveys, a large
majority of respondents generally reported being between thirty-five and fifty-four
years of age, with very few reporting being under twenty-four or older than sixty-
four. Similarly, the qualitative interviews were conducted with officers that were
generally between the ages of twenty-four and fifty-four.
Table 3. Ages of respondents across all three surveys.
Survey
n
18–24
25–34
35–44
45–54
55–64
65+
NR
1
148
0.7%
16.2%
42.6%
33.1%
5.4%
—
2.0%
2
133
—
9.0%
43.6%
37.6%
7.5%
0.8%
1.5%
3
126
0.8%
8.7%
33.3%
44.4%
8.7%
—
4.0%
In terms of years of professional law enforcement experience, the majority of
respondents on each survey reported having worked in a law enforcement capacity
for more than ten years, with only a very small number reporting less than five years
of professional law enforcement experience. In ride-alongs, most officers had more
than five years of experience, but a few were also newer officers (a couple having
only recently completed their field training).
Table 4. Reported time in law enforcement across all three surveys.
Survey
n
< 1 yr
1–2 yrs
3–5 yrs
5–10 yrs
> 10 yrs
NR
1
148
2.0%
0.7%
5.4%
21.6%
68.9%
1.4%
2
133
—
1.5%
1.5%
13.5%
82.0%
1.5%
3
126
—
0.8%
2.4%
14.3%
79.4%
3.2%
Rank/Position. Across the three surveys, regular officers (patrol, traffic, crime
prevention, etc., including both junior and senior patrol officers) constituted between
48.1% and 62.9% of all respondents. Between 24.2% and 28.6% of respondents on
each survey reported serving in higher ranking positions (designated “Supervisor” in
Figure 2), including corporal (SPD only), sergeant, lieutenant, and captain (SPD
only). Additionally, between 7.9% and 10.2% of respondents reported being detec-
tives or investigators. Ride-alongs were conducted primarily with regular patrol
officers, but also included three sergeants, two corporals, and one crime scene
investigator. Additional interviews and informal conversations were conducted with
higher ranking members of the departments’ command staff, civilian staff, and addi-
tional patrol officers.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1383
Figure 2. Reported rank (or position), by survey.
Formal education. In terms of formal education, all respondents on each survey
reported having attended college or university, with a majority on each survey having
earned a four-year (baccalaureate) degree. Roughly 20% of respondents reported having
obtained a two-year (associates) degree, and between 2.7% and 6.8% having obtained a
graduate degree. This question was not typically asked during informal interviews.
Figure 3. Amount of reported formal education, by survey.
Race/Ethnicity. In regards to race, roughly 85% to 87% of respondents on each
survey reported being “White,” with small percentages of respondents identifying as
“Hispanic,” “Black/African-American,” “American Indian/Alaska Native,” “Asian,”
or “Hawaiian/Pacific Islander” (see Table 5, below). These responses generally
match the populations at both departments fairly well, as BPD’s population is
approximately 90% White, 5.4% Asian and Pacific Islander, and 4.5%
Black/African-American (with a few employees who identify as Hispanic in addition
to one of the previous categories). On the other hand, SPD’s population is approxi-
mately 91.9% White, 3.0% Hispanic, 1.5% Black/African-American, 1.5%
48.
1%
27.2%
10.2%
0.0%
14.5%
62.9%
24.2%
8.2%
0.0%
5.3%
48.4%
28.6%
7.9%
0.8%
14.3%
Officer Supervisor (Cpl.,
Sgt., Lt., Capt.)
Detective (or
CSI)
Administration Did not report
Survey 1 (n = 148) Survey 2 (n = 133) Survey 3 (n = 126)
14.9%
18.2%
64.2%
2.7%
0.0%
15.9%
22.0%
55.3%
6.8%
0.8%
13.5%
20.6%
59.5%
4.0%
2.4%
Some
College/No
Degree
2-year degree 4-year degree Grad. Degree No Response
Survey 1 (n = 148) Survey 2 (n = 133) Survey 3 (n = 126)
1384 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
American Indian/Alaska Native, and 1.8% Asian/Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (with an-
other 1.0% “Other”). Ride-alongs were primarily conducted with white officers,
although some informal interviews were conducted with nonwhite officers.
Table 5. Reported racial/ethnic backgrounds of respondents, by survey
Response(s)
Survey 1
Survey 2
Survey 3
n
%
n
%
n
%
White
130
87.8%
116
87.2%
107
84.9%
Black/African American
3
2.0%
2
1.5%
2
1.6%
Asian
2
*
1.4%
2
1.5%
3
***
2.4%
Hispanic
5
*
3.4%
3
*
2.3%
2
*
1.6%
Am. Indian/Alaska Native
3
*
2.0%
4
*
3.0%
2
1.6%
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander
1
0.7%
1
0.8%
1
***
0.8%
Other
2
**
1.4%
4
**
3.0%
3
**
2.4%
No Response
6
4.1%
7
5.3%
11
8.7%
Total
148
-
133
-
126
-
* Includes one or more response where “White” was also selected as a primary racial
category.
** Responses include: [blank], “American,” “‘Merican,” and “Human.”
*** Includes one response indicating both “Asian” and “Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.”
Politics. In terms of politics, the highest percentages of respondents generally
reported their political leanings as being “conservative” (25.6% to 32.5% across sur-
veys) or “moderate conservative” (27.7% to 31.0%), followed by a smaller number
of respondents who reported being “moderate” (16.7% to 22.6%). Only very small
numbers of respondents (fewer than 6%) reported being on the “liberal” side of the
political spectrum, while 7.9% to 10.5% reported being “very conservative.” This
question was not generally discussed during informal interviews.
B. Police Officer Attitudes Towards Cameras, Public Disclosure, and Privacy
At the outset of the body camera deployment, the officers who volunteered to
wear cameras were generally quite positive about the new devices. In one early inci-
dent, captured on an officer’s body camera during the initial trial and evaluation of
the cameras, a man was recorded arguing with an officer prior to leading the officer
on a lengthy foot chase. After the man originally pleaded not guilty for crimes cap-
tured on tape, the department provided his defense attorney a copy of the footage,
resulting in a speedy change of plea. Some of the officers saw these events as strong
evidence that the cameras would capture important evidence and improve their work,
and positive stories like this one influenced initial perceptions of the cameras to some
extent.
On the other hand, many officers continued to feel opposed to the cameras for a
variety of reasons. One officer stated, “[a] witch-hunt is about to begin and the cam-
eras will be used to show us doing something—anything—wrong.” Others had
experiences with the cameras that either improved or eroded their confidence in the
cameras. Privacy concerns in connection to liberal public disclosure rules was a
common refrain, and a number of officers felt that the current public disclosure law
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1385
was inadequate to accommodate the realities faced by the officers and their depart-
ments and the related privacy concerns. A number of officers wanted public disclo-
sure law to strike a balance between prohibiting broad disclosure and allowing law
enforcement the ability to freely record in order to fulfill their responsibilities.
1. Access to Footage and Civilian Privacy
During rides with officers, I was repeatedly told that officers didn’t mind persons
involved in contacts getting access to footage but, in many cases, officers were gener-
ally adamant about not wanting “any anonymous person” to be able to access their
footage, especially as officers felt much of the footage they recorded contained sensi-
tive information about the people they contacted.
335
To a survey question about what
concerns body-worn cameras raise in the minds of officers, one officer responded, “I
have very significant concerns about WA State’s [public disclosure] laws. I do not
believe that the inherent privacy issues of citizens are being addressed. It is unfair
for a family’s personal laundry to be immediately accessible on U-tube, etc.”
These feelings were expressed by a number of respondents on open-ended
questions across the three surveys and in the informal interviews, and were supported
by responses to closed (Likert-scale) questions. The refrain, “We see a lot of bad
people, and good people, on their worst day,” seemed to pervade many officers’
sense that public disclosure law allowed too much access (in terms of content) and
also made access too easy (both in the breadth of requests and in allowing requests
from any member of the public who wanted access).
Officers frequently expressed concern that footage subject to public disclosure
(and the attendant increased visibility for individuals captured on video) could cause
additional harm to victims, especially when “the footage is viewed by a person that
does not have any legitimate interest into the incident.”
I worry about public disclosure laws and victims[’] personal horrors be-
ing released for the public to watch like it is a TV show, or now perpetra-
tors being able to see the inside of victims[’] homes, etc. The public
should not be able to get online and watch what happened to their neigh-
bor during the police contact just because they are nosey.
In particular, multiple officers made statements to the effect that “rape victim[s’]
statements should not be accessible through public disclosure requests,” because re-
lease “could victimize them further.” Alternatively, one officer stated that “victims
should have the option of not being recorded,” because “a public records request
could devastate” them and open their home to the view of anyone who watches the
video. Some officers modified their behavior and often chose not to record certain
situations (or inside homes) when they felt doing so could jeopardize a victim’s or
witness’s privacy. One officer, explaining why he often chose not to activate his
camera when inside private homes, stated (while pointing at his camera), “because I
know where this goes.”
336
335. See the Introduction to this Article for a narrative description of some of the responses
I received from officers during the course of the research.
336. Importantly, the 2016 legislation, which was proposed and enacted after much of the
1386 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
One officer who recorded a lengthy interview with a young woman detained
during a prostitution sting explained to me how he spent time after the video was
posted to YouTube (by the anonymous public records requestor) trying to figure out
how, and whether, he could request the video be taken down for privacy reasons. He
couldn’t believe that such a sensitive interview could be disclosed and published
without being redacted to protect the young woman’s privacy. The interview, which
remained on the internet for almost two years, included the woman stating her name
and talking about her boyfriend and family, as well as the events and activities that
led to her arrest for prostitution. Other officers also reacted quite strongly to these
instances of public disclosure. A sergeant stated:
I feel that it is important to document how well our officers perform their
duties and their high level of professionalism while at work. My only
reservation about the [body camera] program is that all the footage is
subject to a public records request and could possibly put a victim into
further harm or ridicule if the footage is viewed by a person [who] does
not have any legitimate interest in the incident.
Over half of the respondents on each survey indicated that they agreed to some
extent that police use of body-worn cameras would intrude on the privacy interests
of citizens, while disagreement was reported by 37.8%, 36.9%, and 31.0% of
respondents, respectively by survey (see Figure 4). Interestingly, however, this level
of agreement was not shared across both police agencies. When analyzed by depart-
ment, SPD respondents reported substantially higher rates of agreement that the cam-
eras would likely invade civilian privacy, ranging from a low of 55.7% (on Survey
3) to a high of 75.0% (on Survey 2).
337
On the other hand, fewer than half of BPD
respondents agreed with this proposition on all three surveys, ranging from a low of
34.7% (on Survey 2) to a high of 48.0% (on Survey 1).
338
fieldwork was conducted, now provides a categorical exemption for the statements of victims
of sexual assault or domestic violence. See WASH. REV. CODE ANN. § 42.56.240(14)(a)(vi)–
(vii) (2006 & Supp. 2017).
337. The level of agreement on Survey 2 was 64.3%.
338. The level of agreement on Survey 3 was 44.6%.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1387
2. Access to Footage and Officer Privacy
Officers were also asked whether they thought that body-worn camera use would
intrude on the privacy of individual police officers. Often, officers’ concerns about
their own privacy was related to supervisory review directed at finding small policy
infractions (such as using profanity), the need for privacy in regards to things officers
might say while venting after stressful incidents or in regards to critical comments
an officer might make about a supervisor in the presence of a trusted colleague, or
the perceived risk of “Monday-morning quarterbacking” and critique of officers’
actions (by the media and the public) made possible by broad public disclosure rules.
13.5%
37.3%
18.3%
16.7%
14.3%
0.0%
Strongly
agree
Somewhat
agree
Neither agree
nor disagree
Somewhat
disagree
Strongly
disagree
No response
Survey 3 (n = 126)
15.5%
43.2%
16.9%
20.9%
3.4%
0.0%
21.8%
38.3%
22.6%
14.3%
2.3%
0.8%
Strongly
agree
Somewhat
agree
Somewhat
disagree
Strongly
disagree
Unsure No response
Survey 1 (n = 148) Survey 2 (n = 133)
Figure 4. Level of agreement that body camera use would intrude on citizens’ privacy
1388 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
On the surveys, the general distribution of responses to this question was similar
to the distribution of responses about civilian privacy, with roughly half of respond-
ents indicating agreement that body-worn camera use would result in intrusions to
officer privacy (see Figure 5). Responses by the departments were generally more
alike than in regards to the previous question, with the exception of the responses to
Survey 2, where BPD respondents indicated only 36.8% agreement (compared to
56.0% at SPD) and just over 50.0% disagreement.
3. Public Access to Body-Worn Video
Officers generally appear much more accepting of limited-access public
disclosure policies than they are of the broad and all-encompassing public records
law that currently exists in Washington State under the Public Records Act. Some
officers indicated a concern about the costs and personnel required to adequately
handle public disclosure requests. A number of officers also indicated that providing
entertainment to the public was not an appropriate reason to release footage, and
some expressed concern that disclosed video would be edited and taken out of con-
text before being placed online, ultimately giving an inaccurate depiction of events.
Other officers cited safety concerns, attorneys trolling through footage looking for
potential lawsuits, and increased scrutiny from departmental administrations as is-
sues of concern. One officer stated:
15.9%
40.5%
23.0%
12.7%
6.3%
1.6%
Strongly
agree
Somewhat
agree
Neither agree
nor disagree
Somewhat
disagree
Strongly
disagree
No response
Survey 3 (n = 126)
13.5%
39.2%
21.6%
16.2%
9.5%
0.0%
11.3%
37.6%
29.3%
13.5%
8.3%
0.0%
Strongly
agree
Somewhat
agree
Somewhat
disagree
Strongly
disagree
Unsure No response
Survey 1 (n = 148) Survey 2 (n = 133)
Figure 5. Level of agreement that body camera use would intrude on officers’ privacy.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1389
Many times officers seek privately given intelligence from informants
and other persons that is essential to the mission and should not be sub-
ject to public records request . . . . not all body camera video should be
subject to public records request. This video WILL be abused by news
media, lawyers, and all the troll citizens that spend their days trying to
defame police.
Officers also repeatedly made connections between policy discussions about
when and where officers should or should not record and the risk of public disclosure.
A majority of these responses (as well as other discussions I had with officers during
the study) indicated that officers generally felt they should record (or were recording)
less often in certain situations because of concerns about privacy and public disclo-
sure. Relatedly, these officers felt that they “should have a fair amount of discretion”
about when to activate their camera and record, but that “interviews of victims, chil-
dren, social contacts, etc., should not usually be recorded due to public disclosure
laws.” Another officer stated that
Any officer initiated contact should be videotaped . . . this is really what
the public is looking for and provides true transparency into [an] officer’s
own enforcement actions. [However,] officers should have discretion
when responding to private calls. Should my neighbors be able to view
my personal family issues just because a police officer shows up to my
house? What if my autistic son is having a breakdown? How about a
juvenile who is suicidal or arguing with parents over doing the dishes . . .
should this video forever be [accessible] by prospective employers for
all time?
On the other hand, one respondent stated:
If you are going to record, why not record everything? I am not neces-
sarily for the cameras but if we are going to wear them, record it all!
Then maybe public disclosure laws will change so victims don’t become
victims again with their calls being posted for all to see.
When asked whether they would choose to wear a body-worn camera if they had
the choice all over again (or, for the first time if they hadn’t made a decision in the
past), officers responded with mixed impressions. However, for those who indicated
they would not choose to wear a camera, public disclosure and privacy concerns were
a commonly cited reason. Officers frequently stated that there needs to be “better
laws addressing disclosure of the videos.” One officer stated, “[A]lthough I believe
body cameras can be an incredibly useful tool, correct legislation regarding public
disclosure requests and body cameras is not in place at this time.”
Finally, the quotation below evinces a common refrain among those who stated
they would not choose to wear a camera if given the choice again: “I would not wear
a camera today despite the benefits it offers. Right now there are too many unresolved
issues dealing with who, when, and where to record as well as the public disclosure
fiasco.”
In survey responses, when asked how appropriate the respondents felt it was for
citizens to gain access to recordings made by an officer’s body-worn camera, there
was some noticeable difference between the different survey administrations. On
1390 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
Survey 1, 38.5% of officers indicated that broad public access to body-camera foot-
age was either “somewhat appropriate” or “very appropriate,” but this percentage of
positive responses fell substantially to 28.6% on Survey 2 and 12.7% on Survey 3.
Conversely, negative responses (either “somewhat inappropriate” or “not at all
appropriate”) increased slightly from 58.1% on Survey 1 to 66.1% and 61.1% on the
subsequent surveys, respectively.
339
Notably, very few officers felt it was “very
appropriate” for citizens to access police body-worn camera video footage (fewer
than 6% across all three surveys).
When asked a similar question, phrased in terms of agreement that body-worn
camera footage should be accessible under state FOI law, respondents overwhelm-
ingly indicated that they disagreed that officer body-worn camera footage should be
accessible to all members of the public. Similarly, we also see the percentages of
positive responses (“strongly agree” or “somewhat agree”) decreasing over time,
from 20.3% (on Survey 1) to 5.6% (on Survey 3). These trends correspond to the
shift in responses seen above, suggesting that officers became more wary of public
disclosure over time.
339. One important note regarding this question’s modified format on Survey 3 should be
made here, as neutral responses increased dramatically on this question, from below 5% to
almost 25% on the third survey. It appears likely that the placement of the neutral response
choice to the middle of the five-point spectrum influenced the frequency at which respondents
chose this option.
2.4%
10.3%
24.6%
28.6%
32.5%
1.6%
Very
appropriate
Somewhat
appropriate
Not app. or
inapp.
Somewhat
inappropriate
Not at all
appropriate
No response
Survey 3 (n = 126)
5.4%
33.1%
35.1%
23.0%
2.0%
1.4%
5.3%
23.3%
35.3%
30.8%
4.5%
0.8%
Very
appropriate
Somewhat
appropriate
Somewhat
inappropriate
Not at all
appropriate
Unsure No response
Survey 1 (n = 146) Survey 2 (n = 132)
Figure 6. Appropriateness of citizens accessing body-camera footage under FOI law.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1391
1.6%
4.0% 4.0%
19.8%
69.0%
1.6%
Strongly
agree
Somewhat
agree
Neither agree
nor disagree
Somewhat
disagree
Strongly
disagree
No response
Survey 3 (n = 126)
6.1%
14.2%
21.0%
57.4%
1.4%
0.0%
2.3%
4.5%
14.3%
77.4%
1.5%
0.0%
Strongly
agree
Somewhat
agree
Somewhat
disagree
Strongly
disagree
Unsure No response
Survey 1 (n = 148) Survey 2 (n = 133)
Figure 7. Level of agreement that body-worn camera footage should be accessible to all
members of the public under public disclosure (FOI) law.
24.6%
34.1%
20.6%
12.7%
7.1%
0.8%
Strongly
agree
Somewhat
agree
Neither agree
nor disagree
Somewhat
disagree
Strongly
disagree
No response
Survey 3 (n = 126)
22.3%
47.3%
14.9%
13.5%
2.0%
0.0%
30.1%
46.6%
11.3%
9.8%
2.3%
0.0%
Strongly
agree
Somewhat
agree
Somewhat
disagree
Strongly
disagree
Unsure No response
Survey 1 (n = 148) Survey 2 (n = 133)
Figure 8. Level of agreement that body-worn camera footage should be accessible to
members of the public who are captured on the requested footage.
1392 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
However, when presented with a slightly altered version of the previous question
(framed as access only to those individuals who were captured on the body-worn
camera footage itself rather than any member of the public), officers were much more
supportive of disclosure across all three surveys. A majority of respondents on each
survey reported agreement (either “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree”) that
disclosure to these individuals was appropriate. Positive responses increased from
69.6% on Survey 1 to 76.7% on Survey 2, falling somewhat to 58.7% on Survey 3.
340
Correspondingly, officers who chose one of the two negative options (either
“strongly disagree” or “somewhat disagree”) dropped from a high of 28.4% on Sur-
vey 1 to a low of 19.8% on Survey 3. These findings suggest that officers may have
become less averse to limited public disclosure over time, even while generally
becoming more critical of wide public disclosure, as discussed above.
4. Initial Summary of Findings
After the high-profile blanket requests for footage were filed in late 2014, public
disclosure and privacy became a couple of the most commonly cited and discussed
concerns that officers had about the cameras. These concerns may be leading officers
to record less frequently over time, as they fear exposing sensitive information about
the civilians with whom they interact on a daily basis. The findings presented above
do begin to shed light on how officers within the departments studied feel about the
public disclosure issues raised by body-worn camera adoption. These are also the
first empirical findings to address these questions, and more research obviously
needs to be done to give us a better picture of how public disclosure issues are
impacting officers and departments across the country. While other published and
ongoing research has focused primarily on other important variables, public disclo-
sure issues do have the potential to cause significant issues for police
administrators
341
as well as officers and the general public. In the two departments
that participated in this current project, as well as other agencies within the state (e.g.
the Seattle Police Department), public disclosure quickly became a serious issue after
the first blanket request was filed by Tim Clemans in September 2014.
342
One person
charged with responding to records requests for footage confirmed that the process
of previewing and redacting footage took up to three times longer than the length of
the footage itself, and that current staffing levels could not support a high volume of
requests or, indeed, even a single broad request like that filed by Clemans.
343
In one
of the two departments in this study, the threat of the broad request caused
340. However, we also see neutral responses increasing sharply on Survey 3, as noted
above at supra note 339, suggesting that this decline in positive responses may (or may not)
be attributable to the changed placement of the neutral response choice in the Likert scale,
rather than due to any meaningful change in respondent attitudes. Regardless, the results
clearly indicate a much stronger level of agreement with limited public access than in regards
to more liberal access policies.
341. See RANKIN, supra note 118, at 5, 12–13.
342. See Glenza, supra note 2.
343. The Mesa Police Department came to a similar conclusion in an earlier study. RANKIN,
supra note 118, at 12–13.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1393
administration to briefly consider halting or cancelling the program, due to the poten-
tial administrative and fiscal burden of responding to such requests over time.
VI. DISCUSSION
Police use of body-worn cameras implicates privacy interests both by recording
police interactions with civilians and by the subsequent use and/or public disclosure
of the resulting footage, which raises sharp tensions between these privacy interests
and access to government information for oversight or transparency purposes. In the
case of body-worn cameras, despite the public-facing rationale for adopting the cam-
eras as police oversight tools, the primary subjects of the original recordings are actu-
ally the civilians—officers generally acting off screen, behind the cameras mounted
on their bodies. The publication of body-worn camera recordings to the internet or
through other media channels by police agencies or civilians functions—just like the
publication of ALPR data
344
or civilian video
345
—as a form of secondary visibility
of police officers and of civilians alike. The public disclosure of these videos offers
the potential for significant privacy harms.
The use of body-worn camera systems does have the obvious effect of
documenting more encounters, which can then serve as evidence for or against of-
ficer or citizen misconduct. However, too much reliance on audio-visual evidence
could also decontextualize events and also, possibly, diminish the recognition given
by the public and courts to the realities that confront police officers on the ground.
In short, it may lead to judgments about the wrongness/rightness of police action
based on small windows of reality that ignore some relevant context. This may also
affect policing by further diminishing the amount of discretion available to officers.
Indeed, as Bittner found, police have historically kept few records of procedures that
do not involve making arrests
346
and the nature of their work has unavoidably led to
officers having a great deal of discretionary freedom.
347
These facts, combined with
the reality that police work has long been divided into both law enforcement and
peace-keeping activities (which involves officer discretion and action outside the do-
main of making arrests),
348
suggest that wearable cameras (especially those operating
under policies that require frequent or constant recording) might begin to document
wide swaths of police conduct that have heretofore been largely left to the officers
themselves. Thus, in the context of skid row policing investigated by Bittner, the fact
that officers use force to effectuate arrests on the basis of risk (considered in the
aggregate for the area) and personal knowledge, rather than mere individual culpabil-
ity, may be antithetical to the wider public’s notions about legitimate police work.
Bittner stated:
When arrests are made, there exist, at least in the ideal, certain criteria
by reference to which the arrest can be judged as having been made more
or less properly, and there are some persons who, in the natural course
344. See Newell, Big Data Bandwagon, supra note 21, at 398–99.
345. See Newell, Crossing Lenses, supra note 21, at 60.
346. See BITTNER, supra note 11.
347. Id. at 48.
348. Id. at 31–32.
1394 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
of events, actually judge the performance. But for actions not resulting
in arrest there are no such criteria and no such judges.
349
However, with the rise in the number of cameras present in public, and the advent
of the officer-mounted wearable camera, these nonarrest situations are becoming
increasingly documented and, as a consequence, there are potentially numerous
judges (police administrators, elected officials, the media, or the public) and a variety
of criteria against which individual officer conduct may begin to be judged. Indeed,
this reality sits behind the concerns that officers frequently expressed about “Monday
morning quarterbacking” and being judged by evidence that is taken out of context
or that fails to capture the officer’s subjective experience of a situation. These reali-
ties are exacerbated by the ease of uploading footage to the internet and the availabil-
ity of police records under public disclosure and freedom of information laws. The
resultant footage can be viewed, searched, and analyzed by superiors, and when
accessible to the public under state disclosure laws, provides very broad-ranging ac-
cess to records of such police work. This reality also suggests that what it means to
do a good job “keeping the peace” could be defined more by outside forces than by
the officers themselves. This will likely create tensions between the officers’ self-
perception as separate and distinct “skilled practitioners” and the public’s preferred
perception of police as subservient to society.
350
Some argue that wearable cameras promise to document police abuse and also
preserve evidence to exonerate officers falsely accused of improper conduct.
351
A
transparent monitoring system, this argument suggests, would encourage proper
behavior on both sides and restore trust in policing. Others argue that police would
only behave more appropriately under surveillance if they know someone is actually
going to watch what their cameras record (that is, active monitoring/oversight) and
349. Id. at 37.
350. See id. at 33; Steve Herbert, Tangled Up in Blue: Conflicting Paths to Police Legiti-
macy, 10 THEORETICAL CRIMINOLOGY 481, 481–82 (2006). Additionally, whether officers en-
gage in forms of resistance to mandated surveillance or citizen-initiated surveillance (for
example, by selectively recording interactions with citizens, confiscating cameras/cellphones,
and/or destroying footage) also poses some fascinating, and important, empirical research
questions that bear heavily on any attempts to normatively define proper policies, laws, or
regulations. See, e.g., HAGGERTY & ERICSON, supra note 20; Andrew Grenville, Shunning
Surveillance or Welcoming the Watcher? Exploring How People Traverse the Path of
Resistance, in SURVEILLANCE, PRIVACY, AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
(Elia Zureik et al. eds., 2010); Gary T. Marx, A Tack in the Shoe and Taking Off the Shoe:
Neutralization and Counter-neutralization Dynamics, 6 SURVEILLANCE & SOC’Y 294, 296
(2009); Gary T. Marx, A Tack in the Shoe: Neutralizing and Resisting the New Surveillance,
59 J. SOC. ISSUES 369, 369–71 (2003); Torin Monahan, Counter-Surveillance as Political
Intervention?, 16 SOC. SEMIOTICS 515, 515 (2006); Lisa A. Shay, Gregory Conti & Woodrow
Hartzog, Beyond Sunglasses and Spray Paint: A Taxonomy of Surveillance Countermeasures,
2013 IEEE INT’L SYMP. ON TECH. & SOC’Y 191, 191; Dean Wilson & Tanya Serisier, Video
Activism and the Ambiguities of Counter-Surveillance, 8 SURVEILLANCE & SOC’Y 166,
166–67 (2010).
351. See, e.g., Neill Franklin, Body Cameras Could Restore Trust in Police, N.Y. TIMES:
ROOM FOR DEBATE (Oct. 22, 2013, 4:44 PM), http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/10/22
/should-police-wear-cameras/body-cameras-could-restore-trust-in-police [https://perma.cc/PJ8L-89XG].
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1395
that wearable cameras shouldn’t replace written reports including legal justifications
for officer actions.
352
As we see from the empirical findings presented in Part V, infra, officers may not
be strongly opposed to all forms of public disclosure and public accountability, but
they do appear to maintain an interest in their own practical obscurity and in captur-
ing and providing audio and video evidence that can at least provide more (if not the
full) context from a contested police-citizen interaction. That is, they disapprove of
policies and legal requirements that would make their day-to-day work activities
much more directly visible to the public (for example, liberal public access to record-
ings and proactive disclosure to YouTube), but they don’t generally object to visibil-
ity in all its forms (for example, they often approve of limited disclosure to persons
depicted in the recordings). These findings can be seen as a reflection of the officers’
conceptions of themselves as “skilled practitioners” who ought to be shielded from
unnecessary outside meddling. In the case at hand, limiting public disclosure of cer-
tain (parts of) body-worn camera recordings because of the ease of discovery and
vast nature of potential visibility, does make both the officers and the civilians they
encounter more practically obscure. In that regard, the recent legislative action to
exempt certain types of body-camera footage from public disclosure is a positive step
forward. However, the legislative choice to limit the applicability of the new law to
body-worn camera recordings, rather than all forms of police video, is an unfortunate
one, as it lacks the ability to adequately address future developments—or even cur-
rent use of dashboard cameras, drones, or other recording devices—that may also
generate recordings of the type prohibited if the camera is worn on an officer’s body.
Relatedly, preserving the rights of citizens to conduct reciprocal surveillance is
also an important aspect of this overall question.
353
Significant questions also remain
about whether (and to what extent) these cameras could also be used to intimidate or
chill legitimate speech and other protected activities or even whether individuals will
be less likely to report crime or call the police for assistance because of the additional
collateral visibility that would be foisted upon them due to a liberal public disclosure
regime. Additionally, long-term storage and archiving of police footage could pose
a threat to privacy interests of innocent citizens, as the release of such footage under
state disclosure laws threatens to “embarrass” innocent bystanders caught on tape or
individuals who ask police for help in sensitive circumstances (while also serving the
ends of citizen oversight as a form of reciprocal surveillance). Despite these con-
cerns, the ACLU originally claimed that wearable police cameras are a “win-win”
situation, stating that, “Although we [the ACLU] generally take a dim view of the
proliferation of surveillance cameras in American life, police on-body cameras are
352. See, e.g., Nancy La Vigne, Body Cameras for Police Could Be One Smart Step, N.Y.
TIMES: ROOM FOR DEBATE (Oct. 23, 2013, 3:22 PM), http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate
/2013/10/22/should-police-wear-cameras/body-cameras-for-police-could-be-one-smart-step
[https://perma.cc/6TJR-WHMT].
353. See, e.g., Andy Sellars, Empower Civilians To Record the Police, N.Y. TIMES: ROOM
FOR DEBATE (Oct. 22, 2013), http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/10/22/should
-police-wear-cameras/empower-civilians-to-record-the-police [https://perma.cc/RB6Z-T3XG];
see also Newell, Crossing Lenses, supra note 21, at 87; Newell, Big Data Bandwagon, supra
note 21, at 399.
1396 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
different because of their potential to serve as a check against the abuse of power by
police officers.”
354
This is not a claim that should be made lightly without a deeper empirical
understanding of the effect of these systems in society (and the forms of police officer
resistance to the surveillance attendant in body-worn camera deployment that may
become clear from such research).
Many of the proposed benefits of body cameras, as well as significant causes for
concern, are tied to the concept of police visibility (with its potential to change the
dynamics of police-citizen encounters, to either exonerate or implicate officers in
wrongdoing, or to provide evidence of citizen misconduct). Police departments have
“a clear interest in how their personnel and activities become visible to others and in
what is revealed as a result to outsiders,”
355
implicating the “information politics”
imagined by Jaeger.
356
Left to their own devices, a move towards secrecy is obvi-
ously a strong possibility—a possibility that is limited by robust access laws. This
reality points towards the importance of understanding police conduct (and possible
reactions to body-worn camera deployment) through the lens of criminological the-
ory and concepts, such as those offered by Goldsmith’s articulation of “policing’s
new visibility” and his argument that any value to the police of increased visibility
was contingent “upon maintaining ‘normal appearances’ and delivering ‘proper
performances.’”
357
Herbert’s theory about how subservience, separateness, and
generativity affect and are interwoven into police officer conduct;
358
and a recogni-
tion of how body-worn cameras and increased visibility might impact officer
discretion during what Bittner called the “peacekeeping” aspects of policing
—potentially restricting officers’ abilities to “act alternatively” to diffuse situations
without issuing citations or making arrests.
359
CONCLUSION
Despite decades of increasingly safer streets and fewer instances of serious police-
citizen violence in America,
360
the police continue to hold a highly criticized role in
society.
361
Indeed, most recent press about police use of new technologies has fo-
cused on the negative implications that these developments have on citizen privacy
—which is an important concern—but less attention has been given to balancing
these privacy interests with the important societal interest in promoting effective and
efficient police work. The tensions between these competing—and legitimate—aims
354. JAY STANLEY, POLICE BODY-MOUNTED CAMERAS: WITH RIGHT POLICIES IN PLACE, A
WIN FOR ALL 1 (2013), https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/police_body-mounted_cameras.pdf
[https://perma.cc/BHS8-X789].
355. Goldsmith, supra note 22, at 915 (emphasis in original).
356. See Jaeger, supra note 23, at 840.
357. Goldsmith, supra note 22, at 915 (internal citations omitted).
358. Herbert, supra note 350, at 482–83.
359. BITTNER, supra note 11, at 36.
360. See COMMUNITY RELATIONS SERVICE, U.S. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, PRINCIPLES OF GOOD
POLICING: AVOIDING VIOLENCE BETWEEN POLICE AND CITIZENS (2003), http://www.justice
.gov/archive/crs/pubs/principlesofgoodpolicingfinal092003.pdf [https://perma.cc/V6ND-KMA4].
361. This is, of course, not a new phenomenon. See BITTNER, supra note 11, at 89–102.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1397
is substantial. In the context of police use of wearable camera systems, limiting the
scope of law enforcement data collection and retention to protect citizen privacy
might also protect the privacy of the police officers using these systems (both for
better and for worse): disclosure of the resultant footage to the public under freedom
of information laws or through proactive agency disclosure practices can allow citi-
zens to track the historical policing patterns of individual officers and scrutinize of-
ficer conduct, especially if the systems are always on or include metadata (for exam-
ple, GPS data). Thus, wearable cameras become a useful means of watching the
officers themselves. In this context, the more recognizable tensions between protect-
ing privacy and ensuring efficacious policing are compounded by a direct tension
between privacy interests and freedom of information as citizen oversight—an im-
portant form of freedom-preserving reciprocal surveillance. This form of checking
government power resists the reification of potential domination.
One possible response, limiting public access to footage (as done in Washington
as well as elsewhere in recent months), protects the privacy of innocent individuals
and police officers, but it also limits the ability of the public to conduct oversight.
Such oversight, with its attendant right to access information about government ac-
tion, also serves important First Amendment interests in facilitating informed speech
and enhancing democratic governance. As Fan has argued, overbroad access limita-
tions are antithetical to the transparency and accountability arguments that motivated
the adoption of the cameras in the first place (at least by civil society actors, as law
enforcement may well have had alternative reasons).
362
Exempting footage from
disclosure, to some extent, should be required, but beyond targeted and thoughtfully
crafted exemptions, broad limitations are more like a Band-Aid than an actual solu-
tion—they don’t really cure the problem and they get in the way of allowing us to
see what’s really underneath.
Additionally, the answer may not lie completely at the level of limiting or
allowing access in state or federal freedom of information laws, with courts assigned
a primary adjudication role. We may want to consider other models, such as external
review boards or something like Fan’s “bounded access” model,
363
allowing tiered
levels of disclosure to those whose interests are at stake or who may play a role in
adjudicating claims. However, regardless of the approach—whether carefully drafted
and targeted exemptions or alternative oversight/access models—there are a few
variables that must be accounted for to properly determine whether footage should
be publicly accessible through FOI mechanisms. Each of these recommendations
seeks to limit the potential for domination as well as the risks of collateral visibility
by balancing oversight interests with the obscurity of personal information not neces-
sary to that oversight. These recommendations are based on the theory that “the
achievement of privacy for individuals, families, and groups in modern society has
become a matter of freedom rather than the product of necessity,”
364
that “freedom
362. Mary D. Fan, Private Data, Public Safety: A Bounded Access Model of Disclosure,
94 N.C. L. REV. 161 (2015).
363. Id. at 206–07.
364. ALAN F. WESTIN, PRIVACY AND FREEDOM 21–22 (1967).
1398 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 92:1329
from surveillance, whether public or private, is foundational to the practice of in-
formed and reflective citizenship,”
365
and that “[p]rivacy . . . is an indispensable
structural feature of liberal democratic political systems.”
366
First, access should always be granted to the individual(s) depicted in the footage,
especially the subjects of the police-citizen interactions depicted. Without this rule,
body-worn cameras would play the part of state surveillance with no corresponding
oversight function—eviscerating the very possibility of oversight by those directly
harmed by the police. This rule allows those charged with crimes or claiming police
misconduct to bring evidence to light that may (or may not) help prove their case and
it also respects the rights of individuals to be informed about what information the
state’s surveillance has captured about them so that they can exercise their right to
control subsequent use of such information. Because the personal information of
bystanders, victims, witnesses, and even suspects, are not likely to be needed to
demonstrate police misconduct, blurring, or otherwise obscuring or redacting
identifiable information about these individuals prior to disclosure should be built
into public disclosure laws and agency policies.
Second, excluding wider public access to the recorded footage may sometimes
restrict the ability of the public and news media to serve important functions as
watchdogs. This limit to citizen oversight, at a basic level, reduces the effective
antipower
367
available to society and risks reifying dominating structures within
government and law enforcement agencies. When the footage is recorded in public
spaces, because of the claim that presence in public may involve a waiver of the right
to limit access to such information, the public’s interest in access to footage may
outweigh the full denial of requests for that footage, but this concern can be
accommodated by requiring the anonymization of the faces of those individuals
whose identities are not key to the oversight purposes of such access (innocent
bystanders, for example).
368
Third, footage captured within a person’s home (or other private areas such as
medical or mental health facilities or, perhaps, homeless shelters) should, by default,
be protected more stringently than footage captured in public spaces or less sensitive
locations. I do not discuss the notion of property much at all in this article, but prop-
erty rights, like speech and privacy rights, also serve important liberty interests.
Property rights also (rightly) encapsulate privacy interests—and in this case, spatial
property rights should protect informational privacy interests in footage filmed in
nonpublic spaces, and particularly inside private homes. Likewise, because of the
enhanced claim to privacy in a person’s home as opposed to in a public space (for
example, a park or public sidewalk), public access to such footage under FOI laws
should only be allowed when the person whose property and privacy interests are at
issue consents to such disclosure.
365. Julie E. Cohen, What Privacy Is For, 126 HARV. L. REV. 1904, 1905 (2013).
366. Id.; see also JULIE E. COHEN, CONFIGURING THE NETWORKED SELF: LAW, CODE, AND
THE PLAY OF EVERYDAY PRACTICE (2012); Andrew Roberts, A Republican Account of the
Value of Privacy, 14 EUROPEAN J. POL. THEORY 320, 321 (2015).
367. Philip Pettit, Freedom as Antipower, 106 ETHICS 576, 588 (1996).
368. I recognize that this undoubtedly places significant pressure and administrative
burden on agencies subject to disclosure laws, but I believe decisions about adopting body-
worn cameras should be made with these requirements in mind.
2017] COLLATERAL VISIBILITY 1399
Fourth, recordings that pertain to sensitive conversations or contexts (for example,
statements by victims of crime, and especially of domestic violence or sexual of-
fenses; certain witnesses; confidential informants; and minors) should also generally
be exempt or at least redacted—and this redaction should be broad enough to limit
the risk of re-identification of individuals captured on video, including through re-
identification techniques not yet realized but that are likely on the near-to-mid-term
horizon (that is, those that are reasonably predictable within the relevant scientific
domain).
These limits to public disclosure would protect individuals from interference and
domination by states or private agents, as well as from the prying eyes of neighbors
and the voyeuristic tendencies of strangers. These recommendations do require that
we push back against (generally) applauded transparency initiatives and limit the
applicability of FOI regimes (as Washington and some other states have recently
done) and the ability of police agencies to proactively publish certain recordings
without first taking steps to redact sensitive personal information. However, the gain
in privacy protections for innocent individuals is worth the cost.
