Body cameras build trust

Toledo Blade: The public wants and needs to trust the police. Body cameras and dashboard cameras, in a community committed to holding the police accountable, can promote that trust.

Body cameras can help vindicate good officers, and they can help ensure that officers who violate people’s rights are punished.

And yet North Carolina’s Legislature has passed, and its Republican governor, Pat McCrory, has signed a bill that makes the footage from these cameras hard to access. Under House Bill 972, the recordings are declared not to be public records subject to the sunshine laws.

The bill permits law-enforcement agencies to show videos to the people in them and their representatives. But if they decide not to – and the factors they may consider include harm to any person’s reputation, including a policeman whose conduct is in question – that decision can be overturned by a court only for abuse of discretion.

In short, the bill makes it too hard to get access to police video. That undermines the power of body cameras to improve trust between the police and the citizens they serve.