Police body cameras spark debate about privacy in Tennessee

As debates ramp up across the nation over the use of police body cameras, law enforcement officials have taken up a common refrain.

Yes, police interact with civilians in public spaces, and those interactions should be recorded with body cameras.

But police work also involves being called to a person’s home on the worst day of his or her life, whether that’s to report domestic violence or a break-in.

In Franklin, walking a fine line between residents’ high expectations of privacy and transparency is paramount, the city's police chief said.

That’s why — although city officials have already funded a body camera program — they’re holding off on rolling out the cameras until state law addresses how best to use them and what footage becomes a public record.

“I believe that body cameras will become a basic piece of law enforcement work,” Franklin Police Chief Deborah Faulkner recently told city leaders. “But the first agencies that implement body cameras will create case law and I want to avoid that.”

Nationwide, calls to outfit law enforcement officers with body cameras have risen in the wake of high-profile deaths of young, unarmed black men at the hands of police, which have touched off protests and riots in cities such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore.

The deaths — and the waves of unrest that have followed — also have sparked fresh scrutiny of the way law enforcement interacts with civilians, particularly in minority communities.

In Tennessee, the Knox County Sheriff's Office and the police departments in Millersville, Gallatin and Memphis are among the law enforcement agencies large and small already using or testing body cameras. Metro Nashville police officials have said they're keeping a close eye on other major departments' policies and say body cameras probably will be used in Nashville.

Franklin officials have emphasized that discussions there are still in their very early stages.

Gallatin police begin wearing body cameras

Millersville Police see success with body cams

But a recent letter Faulkner sent in response to a state Senate bill that would mandate the use of body cameras provides a window into a statewide policy vision that some observers say would be overly restrictive.

In Faulkner’s letter — which was released to the media after a request by The Tennessean — she urges state legislators to add language to SB 868 that would mirror a new Florida law, though city officials have said they also plan to approach their state representatives to develop separate legislation.

At issue in the Florida law is body camera footage that’s taken in a private home; inside a facility that provides health care, mental health care or social services; or is taken in another place “that a reasonable person would expect to be private.”

That’s footage that Faulkner wrote should automatically be categorized as exempt from open records requests and accessible only in a few circumstances, such as in cases where a person in the footage requests it.

“Citizens place a premium value on their privacy, and should not be expected to surrender it in special places, like their homes, just because they have called us to help them,” Faulkner wrote in an email.

Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, said the ACLU advocates for the use of body cameras only when a clear but nuanced policy is in place.

“There should be very limited exceptions for those kinds of sensitive situations where there is footage inside a home," she said.

Weinberg said there are ways of ensuring that private information about crime victims or other people who call on police is protected, without sacrificing the accountability that makes such programs worthwhile.

Rather than make any video taken in homes or other private spaces automatically off-limits for public review, the organization has advocated for designating video as "flagged or unflagged" based on what it captured.

If the encounter included a use of force or led to an arrest, for instance, then the footage should be "flagged," even if it was taken in a home. That footage, Weinberg said, should be available for public review, with faces blurred and voices changed when it's appropriate.

Other video that is deemed to be "unflagged" shouldn't be kept as long and shouldn't be released under public records laws, according to the ACLU.

Another option is to simply ask people if they want to be recorded, Weinberg said.

“What that means is that the officer should ask if the individual wants the camera turned off, and there needs to be footage of the person saying, 'yes, please stop recording,' ” she said. “That’s the best way to deal with the understandable concerns.”

Body worn cameras, experts increasingly say, provide the dual benefit of ensuring that interactions with police are documented for accountability from the public’s standpoint, as well as providing a backstop for officers in the event that they’re the subject of a complaint.

The net effect has been positive, a Knox County Sheriff’s Office official told members of the state Senate Judiciary Committee in late October.

“We've seen a decrease in complaints. Officers have embraced their use," Lt. Aaron Yarnell told committee members. "In situations ... (that are) escalating, the officer reminds them they're being recorded by body camera and it's like they've flipped a switch."

Knox County has been using body cameras for months but only last month officially adopted a policy. Before, the department handled the cameras according to the same rules used for dashboard cameras, sheriff's office spokeswoman Hillary Martin wrote in an email.

Franklin to consider police body cameras

Body cameras were essentially inserted into the existing policy, which allows footage to be released according to the terms of Tennessee’s open records law.

Still, as other agencies, including the Franklin Police Department, navigate various stages of body camera implementation, questions about who can access footage and under what circumstances remain the most vexing.

“Probably the biggest pain point we’re seeing for agencies is the public records issue,” Isaiah Fields, an attorney with TASER International, which manufactures body cameras, as well as software to manage the footage, said at the state hearing.

Later in the legislative hearing, open government advocates said that if agencies create the video, they are police records and should be accessible with limited exceptions.

Meanwhile, Knoxville Police Chief David Rausch, speaking on behalf of the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police, said that redaction of video could be costly and that, in any case, “many videos should not be open records.”

State Sen. Sara Kyle, D-Memphis, who sponsored the bill, said she and House sponsor Rep. Brenda Gilmore, D-Nashville, plan to keep studying the issue.

But she underscored that one of the goals of the bill is to allow for public scrutiny.

"The whole purpose of having body cameras is to be transparent," she said. "The community wants to see and the law enforcement community wants to remove any doubts."

Reach Jill Cowan at 615-664-2150 and on Twitter @jillcowan.

At issue

The high-profile deaths of unarmed black people at the hands of police have raised tensions in cities across the country and have sparked new scrutiny of the way law enforcement agencies interact with the communities they serve — particularly minorities. 

In the many discussions and calls for change that have followed, policing experts, advocates and the U.S. Department of Justice have said that body cameras could play a role in rebuilding fractured relations by boosting police accountability and by giving officers a way to swiftly dispatch unfair claims of misconduct.

But debates are taking place across the nation about how best to handle the recorded footage and who can access it.

Across the nation

• The Los Angeles Police Department is on track to roll out the cameras on a large scale. But the ACLU has criticized its decision not to release footage unless it's required in court.
• In New York, similar debates about footage from a pilot body camera program are roiling.
• Police in Baltimore — which saw massive riots after the in-custody death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man — also recently started testing body cameras.