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Oklahoma Senate Rejects Proposal to Delete Most Police Body Camera Video After 90 Days

npr

The Oklahoma Senate defeated a measure this week to let law enforcement agencies in the state store most body camera footage for just 90 days.

Agencies would submit to their district attorneys for approval guidelines on how they would determine if videos must be kept longer. Sen. Wayne Shaw said the measure was requested by the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office.

"It costs approximately $80 a month per police officer to store that information, which, just for Tulsa County alone, is talking about almost $300,000 a year, which becomes very expensive," Shaw said.

Sen. Roger Thompson said he’s all for saving money, but House Bill 3224 went too far.

"No judge has to sign off on it. It’s the agency itself who is wanting to save room for their evidence to be able to say, ‘This is not germane,’ or ‘This is not evidence in this case,’ and they’re allowed sole discretion," Thompson said.

Sen. Michael Brooks asked how that proposal might play out in a case like Daniel Holtzclaw’s, the former Oklahoma City cop convicted of sexually assaulting women during stops.

"Even for a traffic offense, if these are automatically destroyed after 90 days, it could affect a victim of a crime, or it could affect a police officer or a sheriff’s deputy in being able to prove his innocence if he receives one of these accusations," Brooks said.

Agencies are currently required to keep records for at least seven years. The Senate voted 12–29 against the bill.

Matt Trotter joined KWGS as a reporter in 2013. Before coming to Public Radio Tulsa, he was the investigative producer at KJRH. His freelance work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and on MSNBC and CNN.