Civil libertarians see danger in bill that seeks to delay release of body camera recordings

It would be two years before the release of police dash camera recordings revealed the final moments of Ricardo Diaz Zeferino, an unarmed man fatally shot when Gardena officers unleashed a volley of gunfire on three men mistakenly suspected of stealing a bicycle.

The recordings were ordered unsealed in 2015 by a federal judge, who, in a scathing opinion, said the public had a rightful interest in seeing the recordings, especially after authorities spent taxpayer money to keep them from view.

Now, civil libertarians say they fear attempts to block or delay release of body and dash cam footage could become common if a bill moving through the state Legislature becomes law.

Public safety groups, led by the powerful 66,000-member Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, are pushing legislation that would provide officers three days’ notice before the public release of any audio or video recording.

The aim is to provide officers time to seek an injunction blocking any release if they feel it would endanger their safety.

“The intention is if there is bona fide harm to a police officer and her family, there was an avenue for them to prevent it,” said the bill’s author, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles).

The bill sailed through the Assembly on a 71-1 vote, and the Senate’s Public Safety Committee will discuss it Tuesday.

The proposed legislation comes as public sentiment seems to favor more transparent policing and as departments nationwide seem more willing to equip officers with body and dash cameras, buttressed by a growing body of research that shows public airing of such video can enhance community relations.

But there has also been pushback. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, for example, has equipped hundreds of police cruisers with dash cams and is seeking to deploy 7,000 body cameras. But Beck said he had no plans to release footage to the public.

The debate pits open-government advocates against those seeking greater privacy protections for police.The Legislature is weighing several other bills that would determine how much the public gets to know about controversial uses of force and misconduct caught on police videos.

“There is a clear aim to give unprecedented right to block the release of a public record that no other public official has,” said Kevin Baker, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of California’s Center for Advocacy & Policy. “It will have the clear effect of pulling down the blue curtain so the public doesn’t get to see what our police officers are doing.”

The California Police Chiefs Assn. has also opposed the bill, arguing against a universal rule. The group’s president, Ken Corney, the police chief in Ventura, said there were scenarios where a release might de-escalate issues surrounding an incident.

“There may be cases where the officer wants it released, and under this that can’t happen,” he said.

California Newspaper Publishers Assn. general counsel Jim Ewert said the bill gives police veto power “to control public access to body cam footage in which the officer appears — including situations that may prove potentially embarrassing or worse for the officer.”

“When an officer runs to get an injunction it would take weeks if not months before a court would resolve whether to make a video public,” Ewert said. “Three days could be three years.”

Nearly 40 years ago, California enacted a law to restrict details of police personnel records. After a 2004 Times investigation based on LAPD records that showed that less than 1% officers account for about 20% of LAPD shootings, a 2006 state Supreme Court decision extended the law to civil service commissions. Since that ruling, the LAPD has denied access to disciplinary hearings and records that had previously been open to the public.

A bill by state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) to unravel some of those protections in misconduct cases died recently amid opposition from police unions. The August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown by a white officer in Ferguson, Mo., prompted national soul searching and demands for greater police oversight, including in California. But police unions continue to carry sway with California’s lawmakers.

Critics said language in Santiago’s bill could inhibit release of details other than video footage from the public. But Santiago insists that is not the intent.

“What I am addressing specifically is the use of body cameras and the release of recordings. That is what the language does,” he said. “I interpret it as all other disclosure rules and laws stay the same.”

Critics also point out that police already can seek a court order to prevent release of such recordings.

Ed Fishman, the legal administrator for the police research association’s legal defense fund, said the bill was not meant to undermine transparency affirmed by a 2014 California Supreme Court ruling “that assures the public will be given the identity of officers involved in high-profile incidents.”

The proposal, he said, only affords an officer who believes there is a specific threat the ability to get a timely court hearing, if necessary, to make a case.

R. Samuel Paz, an attorney who won $4.7 million for the family of Diaz Zeferino and two other men fired on in the Gardena incident, said the bill’s supporters “fail to understand the public should be able to see what occurred during an encounter and not rely on department and union statements.”

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Twitter: @LACrimes

Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this report.

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