By Tom Ackerman  |  [email protected]

Before you commit a crime, make sure to smile for the camera.

A bill passed in an Iowa Senate committee would require law-enforcement agencies to keep on record footage from body cameras worn by officers for six months, though Iowa City police already exceeds that standard.

The bill, originally proposed as S-3308, comes at a time when states nationwide are addressing policy use concerning police body cameras, how they should be used, and what their legal implications ought to be.

Iowa City police Sgt. Scott Gaarde said the push for body cameras and the storage of its video are not unfamiliar areas for the force; vehicle dashboard cameras have been used in Iowa City for 15 years.

“It’s just a natural progression of things,” he said. “We had started our research in the body cameras and the implementation probably well before there became such a national push for them.”

Body cameras were issued to every Iowa City officer in July 2015. Most cities in the nation that can afford it have done so as well, and major cities such as New York and Chicago are beginning to see widespread use of the cameras.

Late last year in Burlington, a woman was fatally shot by a Burlington police officer. The family filed a complaint with the Iowa Public Information Board on Jan. 6, 2015, after the department refused to release investigation materials, including the full video footage from the officer’s body cam.

Vernonica Fowler, communications director for the American Civil Liberty Union in Iowa, said subjects in a video should have the right to see or even release such documents to the public.

“There’s a lot of good that can come out of law enforcement using body cameras. We’ve seen it around the country making police more accountable,” she said. “Our concerns are that in order for body cameras to be effective, there have to good policies in place to guide their use.”

Gaarde said the Iowa City police hold video and audio recordings for six months on a police server and then burns the information to DVD, where it may remain for years.

Fowler said the ACLU is concerned with police saving footage that has no relevance and thinks videos of importance should be flagged and saved, such as those involving arrests or deaths.

“None of us want the government to be massing huge amounts of information on the public unless it has been flagged as an incident needing investigation,” she said.

In terms of policy, lawmakers must decide on how to regulate these recordings, as the right to privacy becomes questioned from a legal perspective.

The study bill has passed in the State Government Committee and will soon be debated on the Senate floor, said Sen. Robert Dvorsky, D-Coralville, who chairs the committee.

“I think there should be support to it,” he said.

He said a segment of the bill was cut because of a controversy that involved digging into police investigations and many of the open-record laws in question.

Gaarde said open-record laws become complicated because the more evidence available in a courtroom, the fewer rights individuals may have to their privacy. No one may see any footage without a subpoena, but it reveals a vulnerable time for someone who has been convicted, he said.

“It’s very private information that most people would not want out there,” he said.

Officers widely recognize the advantages of video recordings in criminal encounters because it adds a “neutral third party” to confirm or debunk an officer’s claims in a courtroom setting, Gaarde said.

“There are countless incidents of officers essentially being vindicated from accusations,” he said. “It strengthens the case the officers have during the criminal-justice process.”