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"While localities across Virginia should be encouraged to expand use of body cameras, the state also needs to provide funds to cover the extra work it takes to make good use of the technology."
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THERE’S LITTLE serious disagreement that it’s good policy to equip police officers with body cameras. But, as with many innovations, things aren’t as simple as they might seem. Buying the cameras and training officers to use them is just the beginning. The cameras are great tools, but they come with complications and expense. While localities across Virginia should be encouraged to expand use of body cameras, the state also needs to provide funds to cover the extra work it takes to make good use of the technology. Despite what we see on TV police procedurals, footage from a police body camera doesn’t answer everyone’s questions instantaneously any more than discovering a trace of DNA solves a crime in minutes. Somebody has to review the tape produced by police body cameras to see if it yields useful evidence. And if a bit of tape might be introduced as evidence, somebody has to redact anything — confidential information, children, nudity — that should not be made public. All that takes time and expertise.
The Virginian-Pilot
One of the biggest contrasts in public access to state and local governments in Iowa came into focus last week, and Iowans should be concerned by what occurred. A bit of context: Iowans have long had the right to sit in on almost every meeting of state government policy-making and governing boards and on meetings of their local school board, city council and county board of supervisors. That law requires a board or council to post the agenda for its meeting at least 24 hours before the meeting. This notice requirement exists to give the public time to offer their opinions on an issue and to arrange to attend the meeting. But Iowans were reminded last week the public meetings law does not apply to the Legislature. When lawmakers wrote the statute, they chose not to have it apply to themselves. Instead, the Legislature is governed by rules written by each chamber’s majority party every two years. That’s how last week’s events came to light. The Republican majority in the Iowa Senate revised that chamber’s rules and removed the requirement that subcommittee meetings be announced at least 24 hours in advance and that the public be allowed to speak then. (The House does not have similar guarantees in its rules.)
Randy Evans, Iowa Freedom of Information Council
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