Faceoff

The city of Portland has been the driving force at the Oregon Legislature to make police body cameras legal. But while promoting what he says is his dedication to police transparency, Hales has joined a legislative deal that restricts public access to the video.

Hales isn't alone. Portland city commissioners, the state's police unions and district attorneys, and even the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon are lobbying state lawmakers to limit when police are required to release body-camera video to the public.  

"I am surprised that local governments appear to not want more transparency from these police camera recordings," says Greg Peden, lobbyist for the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association. "That's the whole point of having these cameras."

The mayor's office says Hales is trying to strike a balance. "He wants a bill that won't die in committee," says Hales spokesman Dana Haynes. "That's going to mean a compromise between privacy and transparency."

In the wake of police shootings of unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and South Carolina, body cameras are increasingly seen as a necessary tool of police accountability. Portland has its own history of controversial police shootings—and a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice for a "pattern and practice" of excessive force against the mentally ill.

But the use of body cameras has also triggered a national debate about the privacy rights of people being filmed by police—and whether their faces should appear on the 5 o'clock news or the Web. 

Rep. Jennifer Williamson (D-Portland), the bill's sponsor, says lawmakers tried to find a compromise that balanced privacy concerns against public disclosure. "We couldn't figure out a one-size-fits-all," she says.

In general, the cameras would be turned on whenever officers have an encounter that may involve a crime.

But right now in Oregon, it's illegal for a police officer to carry a recording device that could capture the voice and imagine of someone without his or her knowledge.

Lawmakers want to add an exemption that would allow police to record interactions with people using their body cameras. A bill to do that is headed for a House vote before it goes to the Senate. The Oregonian first reported last month on an earlier version of the bill.

But the bill has changed, adding limits on releasing body-camera video.

It's been a long-standing legal principle that people in public have no expectation of a right to privacy.

Yet the bill says that before releasing video to the public or media, police must blur out all faces beyond recognition.

The ACLU of Oregon backed the amendment. "We've been very concerned about the privacy issues surrounding these videos," says ACLU legislative director Kimberly McCullough. "We suggested that the faces get blurred. But if it's not possible to identify the officers involved, that could be problematic. We want this bill to be a tool for accountability."

The blurring of faces could delay the release of the video and allow police agencies to charge large fees for the work—all creating barriers to full disclosure.

"That's ridiculous," says Dan Handelman, who has monitored police reforms for two decades with Portland Copwatch. "If we're going to get [video], the person involved should give permission, and it should be released without the faces blurred out."

The bill also contains a city of Portland-backed amendment that requires citizens to cite the date and time when that footage was taken. 

That means no one—not a citizen watchdog, a newspaper or a person accusing an officer of wrongdoing—can check video records generally to see whether that officer has a history of troubling encounters with citizens.

Portland Police Bureau officials say the city has good reasons for wanting to limit what video gets released. 

Police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson says the costs of retrieving footage could skyrocket if people begin requesting the full recordings from officers' body cameras.

And he says releasing the faces of people recorded by cops raises privacy concerns.

"The fear for some people is they don't want to generate a new genre of reality TV: BodycamTV.com," Simpson says. "I don't know if that's in anybody's best interest."

There's no questioning Hales' enthusiasm for police video—under selective circumstances.

In Hales' second month in office, a cellphone video exonerated officers in the shooting of a federal fugitive outside Adventist Medical Center in East Portland. Hales urged police to release the video, which showed Merle M. Hatch cursing officers before charging them ("Saved by the Cell," WW, Feb. 27, 2013).

Hales wanted videos of shootings released quickly, he told WW then. "Let's get it out," he said, snapping his fingers. "If you're doing the right thing, transparency is your friend."

Last month, Hales and Portland police officials brought the cellphone video of the Hatch shooting to an Oregon House hearing, using it as an example of the benefits of police body cameras.

Hales also asked lawmakers to put tight limits on what footage the cops would be required to give citizens.

Hales said he was only trying to protect the privacy of people filmed by police.

"These requests can amount to hundreds of hours of footage and present significant privacy concerns," Hales testified, "as police interactions often take place inside homes and involve traumatic and sensitive interactions with citizens."

Haynes, the mayor's spokesman, now says Hales isn't trying to hide police behavior from the community. 

"There's one way to make sure people don't see the video," Haynes says, "and that video is perfectly protected from records requests: Don't shoot any video. Don't buy the cameras."

The Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association (of which WW isn't a member) and the Oregon Association of Broadcasters are now asking state lawmakers to change the bill or squash it entirely, rather than create a database of police video the public can't see.

"The public across the country is demanding more transparency from police agencies," says Peden, the ONPA lobbyist. "My assumption is, 99.9 percent of the time the cops get it right, and these recordings will help show that.” 

WWeek 2015