Bill to restrict sharing of police body cam footage sparks transparency concerns

A new bill would restrict the sharing of police body camera footage obtained through public records requests, with the bill’s sponsors saying they are concerned about videos that exploit young women’s interactions with police and are shared widely on social media.

But the measure worries First Amendment advocates who call it an overreach. The new bill comes as lawmakers are also considering a revamp of the Open Public Records Act that transparency advocates say would gut the law, which governs the types of records governments are allowed to withhold from the public.

“Because of, essentially, one bad website or one bad YouTube channel, this is going to criminalize journalism. It’s going to criminalize folks who work in good government and these bills are just bad for transparency,” said attorney Walter Luers.

Under the new bill, anyone who has obtained police body camera recordings through the Open Public Records Act and who is not a subject in the footage wouldn’t be allowed to share that footage without written consent from each party seen in the recording. The bill carves out disclosure exceptions if there is a “legitimate public health or safety purpose or compelling public interest” in the video’s publication.

The bill’s sponsors say there has been a rise in “bad actors” requesting police footage to exploit young women on social media accounts. A two-minute TikTok video showing a 23-year-old arguing with police before being arrested for driving under the influence has amassed more than 900,000 views. A 17-minute interview cops had with a 36-year-old woman accused of throwing a bottle through a liquor store window garnered nearly 235,000 views on a YouTube account that has more than 5 million followers.

“It’s being used to demean people, just be really mean-spirited by putting something like that out,” bill sponsor Assemblyman Sean Kean (R-Monmouth) said. “Someone has a bad night, or they get charged with a DWI or something, and the whole world can know about it and play it thousands and thousands of times — I just don’t see what the benefit to society is.”

Kean conceded that his bill “isn’t the final answer” but said the issue needs to be addressed quickly. He said suggesting the bill impedes transparency is a “mischaracterization of what we’re trying to do here.”

Penns Grove Police Director Rich Rivera, who has advocated for greater police transparency, said his department hasn’t seen any uptick in requests for these kinds of videos. He called the bill a “knee-jerk reaction to try and correct social norms,” and questioned how someone could obtain written consent from people in police body cam videos who aren’t identified.

Rivera added that body camera footage has revealed bad behavior among police — a police chief caught drunken driving, say — and wondered if the bill would limit access to videos that could hold cops accountable.

“It’s just one of those instance where we’re slow to catch up because technology is ever changing, but the way society is, we can’t overregulate it through legislation,” he said. “These situations are what they are — they take place in public and they’re in there for public consumption.”

Luers suggested one fix: Pixelating subjects’ faces in body camera footage would protect their identities and make the videos less valuable for people who want to promulgate them for entertainment purposes.

“I agree that some reform is necessary, because there’s websites abusing this. But it goes way too far,” Luers said.