Plans to require all South Carolina police officers to wear body cameras moved ahead today, with two votes at the Statehouse. But how they’d be paid for is still a big concern.
Meantime,
camera law is still not fully in place.
Capitol reporter
explains:
Efforts to put body cameras on all police officers in South Carolina moved forward Tuesday as a House subcommittee passed one bill and a full Senate committee passed its own version. The bills would require all state and local law enforcement officers to wear cameras that record their interactions with the public.
The bills have picked up momentum after the shooting death of Walter Scott in North Charleston, an unarmed black man who was shot in the back as he ran from a white officer. That officer, Michael Slager was fired from the force and charged with murder.
The House bill now goes to the House Judiciary Committee. The Senate bill goes to the full state Senate.
One of the main questions is where the money will come from to buy the cameras and the computers to store the video they record. Rep. Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston, who pre-filed the House bill in December, long before the North Charleston shooting, says, “It’s multiple sources. You look what the president has done, putting forth $260-some-odd million toward 50,000 body cameras. You look at the federal forfeiture funds. It’s a lot of resources we could tap into.”
But Jarrod Bruder, executive director of the South Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, says there are limits on what forfeiture funds can be used for, and he doesn’t think the money President Obama talked about is definite. “I haven’t seen anything coming from the federal government saying there’s going to be money available on the local level for body cameras,” he says.
He’s also worried that a body camera law could end up like a state law passed 17 years ago that requires police to video record all DUI arrests. He says about half the sheriffs in the state say they still don’t have dashcams in all of their vehicles, and some, like the Newberry County Sheriff’s Department, have none.
Bruder says without the video evidence, officers have to sign an affidavit swearing that there was either a malfunction with the video camera or that his vehicle doesn’t have one. “A lot of the cases that are DUI cases that are being made, if there is an affidavit attached to it it’s automatically being tossed,” he said.
Senators say they plan to include money in the state budget to pay for the body cameras and computers needed. Language in the amended bill says the requirement to wear body cameras is dependent on the money being there.
Rep. Carl Anderson, D-Georgetown, a co-sponsor of the House bill, says, “The money should not be the problem. A life is more important.”
Read House bill here.
Read Senate bill here.
