Public to Lose Permission to View Police Body Cameras
posted by Emily Newton | September 8, 2016 | In NewsOver the summer, North Carolina’s governor, Pat McCrory, signed House Bill 972. Under House Bill 972, footage from police body and dashboard cameras will not be considered public record.
According to CNN, before House Bill 972 was signed, there were no uniform laws regarding the release of body camera footage; jurisdictions were free to make their own rules in regards to release of footage from body cams.
“It’s better to have rules and guidelines with all this technology than no rules…” McCrory stated, according to ABC 11.
The governor also feels that House Bill 972 will “…protect those who protect us,” according to the Huffington Post. “If you immediately release a video, sometimes it distorts the entire picture…which is extremely unfair to our law officials.”
In a non-representative poll, each of the fifty-two FSU students questioned unanimously agree that new law is “a bad thing and that body cam footage should be public record.”
Ajante Reyes, FSU junior, sees both sides. “The public should be able to see the videos,” she stated. “But, on the other hand, the more we see, the more we distrust. There are good officers, but (with the videos, it seems) we only see the bad.”
Terrende Semple, FSU freshman and Police Detective, agreed that videos can be misleading. He explained that police can feel for a gun and know it’s there, but it may be out of view of the body cam. “What the law allows us to do and what people know are two different things,” he explained.
House Bill 972 goes into effect October 1.
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