Arizona bills require police to wear body cameras

Proponents say the cameras could provide more transparency in police interactions with the public and reduce police liability from frivolous lawsuits.

But at least one agency — the Pima County Sheriff’s Department — said they are unnecessary and could cost the county up to $10 million it doesn’t have, in part due to state cuts. Critics also cite privacy concerns.

The bills would require a recording of all interactions with the public “likely to result in a criminal investigation or arrest.”

“The genesis of the bill comes from the community distrust issues that we’ve seen,” said Rep. Reginald Bolding, D-Phoenix.

Bolding, the only African American member of the Arizona Legislature, said many of his constituents have shared such concerns with him.

Bolding said his bill isn’t intended to make the job of police more difficult.

“This is not aimed to hamper or blame law enforcement for anything that’s happened nationally,” Bolding said.

He said the bill would seek to add accountability and transparency to police actions, and ultimately to protect police from frivolous allegations of wrongdoing.

But Pima County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Chris Nanos questioned the value of outfitting deputies with cameras when such a small number of the estimated 150,000 annual public contacts deputies make generate complaints.

Nanos said Pima County has seen few complaints against deputies for excessive use of force, averaging about 15 per year over the past five years. Of those, only a three or four have been sustained, he said.

“When they’re sustained they’re dealt with in an appropriate manner because we do not tolerate it,” Nanos said. “If you’re buying cameras to make your staff comply with the rules, you have bigger problems,” he said.

Nanos said an initial analysis by the department estimates the costs of cameras, data storage and processing of records requests at $8 million to $10 million per year.

He said the department would have to purchase nearly 1,200 cameras for deputies and corrections officers. The department estimates the cameras alone would cost more than $1.3 million.

Neither of the bills in the Legislature provides a funding source.

Bolding said the Joint Legislative Budget Committee has begun to look at cost estimates for local police forces to implement body camera policies. He said local governments could also look to outside funding sources like federal grants to pay for the program.

“I think to say there’s no funding is the easy way out,” he said.

But it’s not just the hardware costs that worry Nanos. He said the proposals present policy challenges for law enforcement, such as whether police would have discretion on what they record.

For example when police enter people’s homes to investigate domestic violence, sexual assault or child abuse allegations.

“You’re asking us to come into people’s homes dealing with very private issues,” he said.

A second bill, by Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, sets some guidelines for what police can and can’t record.

Situations like conversations with non-suspects and conversations with other police investigating an incident would not be recordable.

Some Arizona police departments have already experimented with body cameras.

“I’m hugely supportive of body cameras,” Surprise Police Chief Mike Frazier said, whose department bought 89 cameras for about $250,000 using funds from Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) seizures.

He said one of the benefits has been to more quickly resolve complaints of officer’s improper conduct.

In the past, Frazier said, complaints often came down to a matter of an officer’s word against the person making the accusation. With video, there’s proof of what happened.

“I think the costs (of cameras) are far less than having an incident when you have to pay out millions of dollars,” Frazier said.

Cameras also have a value in maintaining accountability and are useful in training of new officers, he said.

The possibility of police daily accumulating volumes of new digital information presents a potential problem for local governments.

“We’re looking at least a 20 percent growth rate per year,” said Jesse Rodriguez, chief information officer for Pima County.

He said the county already pays more than $2 million per year on data storage and plans to spend more than $2.2 million next year.

Rodriguez said as more government work is done digitally storage requirements grow rapidly.

“The need for storage is increasing faster than the costs for storage are dropping,” he said, noting that it has become less expensive over the years to store data digitally.

But he said if police start accumulating high-definition video by the hundreds of hours each day, the storage needs would soon become overwhelming, and would likely require contracting with outside companies that specialize in digital archiving.

The retention time for all those new files is something governments would have to manage as well.

In some violent criminal cases, for example, records must be maintained for 99 years.

The Kavanagh bill addresses the issue of records retention simply, by saying police recordings would not be considered public records and could only be released by court order.

That concerns civil libertarians, who have generally supported body camera legislation.

“Over and over again, we see the absence of transparency,” said Dan Pochoda, senior counsel with the ACLU of Arizona.

Pochoda said the ACLU thinks outfitting police with cameras has potential to bring additional transparency in government, and policies can be put in place to protect the privacy of crime victims.

“The underlying concept is a plus,” he said. “We think it’s well worth exploring.”