AB 634

Current law provides what data from body camera footage a law enforcement agency must keep confidential in response to an open records request and provides when reports to the district attorney following an officer-involved death must be released to the public and what material may be deleted from those reports.

This bill creates a requirement for law enforcement agencies to release data to the public if the data relate to certain incidents. The incidents for which data must be released are an officer-involved death, any occurrence that results in great bodily harm or death in the presence or custody of a law enforcement officer regardless of whether it was caused by the law enforcement officer, or an incident involving a death if the incident also involves a discharge of a firearm by a law enforcement officer regardless of the cause of death. The bill defines “data” to include footage from a law enforcement body camera or car camera, audio recordings of emergency phone calls, video captured by a law enforcement agency, and other video or recordings from the public that the law enforcement agency possesses. The bill provides that the law enforcement agency must release the data within 15 days of the incident.

The bill exempts certain data from the requirement to be released. Under the bill, a law enforcement agency may redact, distort, edit, or withhold the exempted data in accordance with the exemption. Data that are exempted include data that are required to be kept confidential under law; data that are requested to be kept confidential by a crime victim; and data that are redacted or edited to protect privacy interests, to obscure nudity or disturbing images, or to protect the identity of confidential informants or other strategies for crime detection or investigation. Under the bill, if a law enforcement agency alters data as permitted by the bill, the agency must retain the unaltered data.

Under the bill, a law enforcement agency that is subject to the bill’s requirement to release data must make reasonable attempts to notify others within 48 hours of the incident that creates the requirement to release the data. The persons who must be notified are an individual who is permitted to request that the data be altered, an employee of the law enforcement agency that can be identified in the data and any union representative of the employee, the office of the district attorney, and an individual who can be identified in the data if the individual is under 18 or a victim.

The bill does not change current law regarding data from body cameras that are not covered by this bill.