>> the licensed spectrum holders need to understand they have to accept more tolerance on interference. you have been chairman for about 20 months and you mentioned the oil and vinegar tolerance when you were chairman of the tac. can you outline some or mention some of the success stories you have had of convincing licensed users of sharing that spectrum, and do you have new initiatives on the existing spectrum out there now? >> thank you, and good question. it goes back in part to the question that blair asked a moment ago. there is a process of how you think about spectrum that is necessarily evolving, and it

used to always be it's mine, you can't touch it. but because of the increase in demand for spectrum that has to change and sharing has to be an important part of it. i saw a presentation a couple days ago that said something like 60% of licensed mobile traffic is now carried on unlicensed wi-fi, so at one point in time these two were bitter enemies, and i remember at&t, they were with unlicensed and everybody said you're giving away the store. we are going through a evolutionary process in which the outcome has to be the

recognition that spectrum is something that has to be shared, and that there are definitely rights to make sure that, you know, people don't get walked all over in their capabilities destroyed, but the technology is helping us work our way through. i am a big believer in the future of sharing a limited resource. all the things we are doing in 3.5 and the rule makings we have had, and the spectrum auction, the thought of how you share spectrum is in nearly every spectrum discussion we have. >> the person in the corner

there. if we could get the mic over to him, and when chairman wheeler is done everybody stay in your seats and we need to let him get through, and available in amazon, and never hurts to quote it, final question. >> my question is obviously trying to expand access to broadband is extremely important and i am glad that's your goal but using the right matrix is key to seeing how we are doing on that metric and trying to measure it, and so doesn't reclassify broadband conceal the true process made on the front when your own website lists 15 megabytes per second as advanced for consumers. >> i understand what you read but i am not sure what the question is? is 25 mg a bad decision? it's something like 82% of americans have access to 25 mg, and that sounds like a standard

to me. >> the key metric i was looking at what specific between rural and urban. if you look at 10 per second which is the previous standard or around there, it's like 98% or 97% between rural and urban and then it goes up to like 97 and 50. i think it can be kind of confusing to see how much progress we've made on this front in terms of getting access. that's why i'm concerned the 25 megabytes is too high. >> i think i answered the question if it's 82%. that's a per se standard, i believe. the point you raise about rural, and what we have done in the universal service fund is to set it at 10 and say we are not going to give you money unless it's at least 10 megs.

i would like to be pointing to at some point in time something beyond 25 mg, because the reality is as users increase and contention increases, and you know the average home now has something like seven connected devices, and if they are all going they are going to choke even 25 mg, and the increase in applications and usage and the increase in the constancy of the usage happening all the time are going to push us to higher needs and i want to make sure we don't fall behind in that. >> let me close by saying every chairman faces the dilemma of trying to focus attention on where we are and where we should be going, and i think -- and one

of the things i learned when is how do we focus on how to get better where we are going, and you have been doing an enormous amount in your time, and i know you said the key takeaway is pedal to the metal and you will keep going. thank you very much for your service to the country. >> thank you, blair. >> on the "washington journal" we'll talk with jess bravin, supreme court correspondent for the "wall street journal." you can join the conversation at facebook and twitter. "washington journal" live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span.

>> here is some of our featured programs on the c-span networks. on c-span saturday night at 8:00 eastern on issue spotted light we'll look at the government and culture of iran its relationship with the u.s. and nuclear ambitions. sunday night at 6:35, profile interviews with two presidential candidates, first kentucky senator rand paul and vermont independent senator bernie sanders. on book tv on c-span2 saturday night, author nelson dennis on the history of puerto rico and its turbulent rewlags ship with united states. on sunday, h.w. brand recounts the life of ronald reagan. on "american history tv" on c-span3 saturday night after 9:00 commemorating the 800th anniversary of the magna carta deputy president of the supreme court brenda hale on how the document influenced both

countries. sunday night at 6:00 on american artifacts, the french sailing ship brought representative general marquis de lafayette. we were in yorktown, virginia, to cover the replica of the french ship and hear from crew. i'm not one of those who believes in the psychiatric examination of people. i believe most of these people historians should be on the couch themselves rather than to psycho analyze people they've never met. what i try to do. you don't learn anything when you're talking.

you learn a great deal when they're talking. >> richard nixon was not very self-aware self-aware. dlchlt hutch necker said he was careful not to have nixon think he was analyzing him. but nixon went to him because he had psychosomatic illnesses he gave him mild therapy. even though he went to one, he hated psychiatrists and always denouncing them. he was afraid in a way of looking at himself in a realistic way. one of the reasons -- i don't carry grudges. hello? richard nixon was one of the great grudge carriers of all time. he lashes out at enemies. >> evan thomas author of "being

nixon" talks about the inner turmoil of richard nixon, focusing on the personal stories associated with our nation's 37th president sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span's q&a. >> in response to accusations of police misconduct, baltimore has initiated programs to outfit law enforcement officers with body cameras. new york university law school's brennan center hosted this discussion in washington, d.c.

good afternoon and welcome. i'm nicole austin hillary director and council of the wash brennan center for justice. i'm happy to see you this afternoon for an important discussion on candid cameras. we know we're at an extremely important moment at this time in our country with the intersection of law enforcement, race, politics, constitutional rights. and we know it's an important moment for those of us in the advocacy community to be thought leaders on these issues. we're pleased to be hosting this conversation today. this conversation was really the brain child of my colleague rachel levinson waldman who is one of the panelist, part of our liberty and national security program at the brennan center.

for those of you not as familiar with us and what we do, the brennan center is a national advocacy think tank communications organization. i know that's a mouthful. we like to do what we call fix the broken parts of our systems of democracy and justice. we deal with policing, privacy civil liberties and civil rights as well as voting rights fair courts, money and politics and issues of justice with respect to our criminal justice system. we use those tools of advocacy litigation, research and advocacy to try to fix the broken systems in democracy and justice. as part of that work we host conversations like this where we try to engage you, interested individuals and stakeholders we know who can be a part of our efforts to make reforms and basically problem solve. again, thank you for being with us this afternoon. i am going to quickly introduce

our moderator for today's discussion, and then she will take it away and begin the conversation with our panelists. we will be joined today and we are happy to be joined today by tan zena vega digital correspondent for cnn politics where she covers the intersection of technology, politics and civil rights. prior to beginning her work at cnn, she was a staff reporter for "the new york times" where she covered digital media and advertising for the business section, race and ethnicity for the national section and the new york city courts for the metro section. she was also a web producer for the times and joined the paper in 2006 as a news clerk and a stringer. he gan her career at cmp media which is a technology and trade magazine publisher where she was a research ed toward and helped pioneer the company's first podcast. one of the things about her background that i'm particularly impressed with as an npr junkie,

the code switch included khan zena in their journalists of color to watch. "huffington post" listed her as one of the 40 top latinos in american media. we're pleased to have them help us this discussion today. without further ado, i'll turn it over to you. >> thank you nicole and thanks to everyone for being here today. before we introduce the panel i just got back from camden, new jersey, which used to be one of the most dangerous cities in america. in addition to the surveillance cameras and audio recorders and license plate readers that the department is about to deploy more than 300 body cameras in september. crime rates in the city as a result have been drastically reduced through what officials say is a combination of technology and old school policing. camden is not alone. we live in a world of video everywhere, from youtube to cell phones inundated with a constant

stream of media. the power to create media is in the hands of citizens. michael brown, tamir rice, freddy gray are a few of the names of victims of police brutality that might have gone unnoticed had it not been for someone recording or snapping a photo on their cell phone. many police departments around the country are realizing they, too, want to record video to increase transparency, and also to protect themselves. some of the come plesksities involved with implementing this emerging technology. i'd like to introduce our panel. jay stanley, a senior policy analyst at the aclu. then jimier man, president of the police foundation. next to jim we have andrea richie, senior policy council of street wise and safe. and at the end of the row, last but not least, rachel levinson wald men senior council at the

brennan center for justice. thank you all for being here today. to start off i think it helps to talk about the scope of body cameras and penetration of body cameras. does anyone have a sense for how many body cameras are out there, what the percentages are? this is something we hear called for consistently. it's hard to give a scope to some of our listeners and readers today. where are we with that? how long before we actually get to full penetration of body cameras in the united states? anyone. >> the last surveys i saw which may be about a year or more old suggested about 25% of the 17,000 or so police departments in the u.s. about 25% of them had some or were -- had some body cameras at least and 80% of the departments were considering adopting them. we know uptake of the technology has been happening very quickly. i wouldn't be surprised if ten

or 15 or 20 years it becomes a standard piece of equipment on every uniformed police officer. >> we're definitely heading in that direction it seems. what are some of the examples where this is working? there are some cities and states that have implemented body cameras that seem to have more success than others. i'll throw a couple of examples. seattle perhaps is implementing implementing -- upheld as one of the most forward thinking perhaps. los angeles, texas different areas with mixed reactions. where would you say are some areas that should be held as positive examples or good examples where this is working and some that might be a little bit less. >> i think it's important to ask the question what do you mean by it's working. how we perceive this issue is dependent in large part on where we stand on the issue. i'm from south erch california. that's where my policing career

was. and a community near my hometown, the reality police department is often quoted as doing their own randomized control trial with those body cameras which has the most remarkable attributes that a police department on their own would do that. they found dramatic decreases in officer use of force and complaints. if those are the metrics we want to use that is highly suggestive that that's working. there have been other studies that may not have had the same kind of numbers but certainly had decreases in officer use of force and complaints. so as we think about that on some 5,000 foot level, that sounds like a great thing and i would submit that it is what we don't know conclusively is why that's happening. why did those numbers go down? is it because the cameras -- there's nothing magical about these little boxes the cops

wear. they're just a little thing right? they could have done this a long time ago. is there a civil lizing effect that occurs when officers wear those because they they -- and if they tell the person they're interacting with they're wearing the body camera, is it the same venomphenomena that occurs that when we were kids and we knew the parents were watching. and if we're in the classroom and the teacher is looking at us we'll behave better. is it something as simple as that or something that relates to other transparency and accountability. seattle, as we speak now, is finishing a summit on body wham ras and certainly have pushed the envelope in terms of things like transparency. if that's how you -- and privacy issues. if that's how you measure success for them, i would hold them up because they're pushing out the images, not in realtime, but pretty close to it on their youtube channel that are blurred as a massive redaction in

protecting people's privacy. i think people should pay a lot of attention to what they're up to right now because when you begin to -- as you said earlier unpack this issue, you find there are so many issues involving body cameras ever thing from privacy to storage, the practical nature rising expectations. >> i want to piggyback on what jim was saying and how we kicked off the comments. it depends on what we mean by working. issues of use of force going down arresting going down. a study just came out from mesa, arizona, similar to rialto, a set of police officers who volunteered to wear cameras set of police officer told to wear them and a set that wasn't wearing them at all. it was a comparison of what does their day look like? what are their enter actions with the public. similar findings in terms of use of force.

the citations given, the number of citations given went up which could be a good thing or a bad thing. then you have to figure out do you want more citations? the theory is that officers were worry if there were circumstances where before they would exercise discretion now there might be somebody looking over their shoulder a supervisor looking over their shoulder saying you could have given a citation out for whatever it was and you didn't. so those went up. i think there's also, to some extent a kind of ineffable piece, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out about what it means generally for the relationship between the officer and the department president and the community as a whole. does it help the relationship in some ways in many ways if uses of force are going down. how does it affect the relationship if there are more citations, how does it affect the relationship to have this camera mediating those interactions in a variety of ways.

that i think is probably something we don't know the answer to yet although we're getting anecdotes from different communities about what that feels like. >> before we started this i had asked on twitter if people had questions that they wanted the panel to ask. so piggybacking off that, one of the questions came from a twitter user who said how do the cops themselves feel? my brother quit the force and this was a big factor in doing so so. jim, maybe you can weigh in on that. are officers themselves concerned about this? are they giving more citations because they feel pressure from police administrators to implement this? does it make them feel perhaps more secure or more nervous. one thing we don't spend a lot of time studying and policing research is the policing culture.

it's the culture not only overall, but more specifically the department culture that drives a lot of how officers perceive their work, do they feel does the administration the police chief and their supervisors support them and how things are messaged. one of the things around mesa, what's the organizational culture like in the temperament. we talk a lot in policing. i think the most important issue in policing is this issue of police legitimacy and procedural justice. when we talk about that and you talk to police officers and say we want you to do that they'll go, okay, chief you want us to do this externally, when are you going to do it internally? cops have their own per spec iive of how they're treated internally, how things are messaged internally.

if the leadership of the department is good in terms of messaging messaging, what's in it for the officer because they're much more likely to say i need that if for no other reason it's going to support my assertion i did the right thing, prove i did the right thing. if it's not messaged correctly, cops will say this is another way for you to monday morning quarterback that very tough decision i had to make in a split second. you get into the notion of depolicing where the officers saying i'm doing what i have to do, in the furtherance of my job trying to protect you you might prosecute me and take away my livelihood and ability to take care of my family. my experience has been that police officers understand the value of having a recording device in my department, we had audio recording devices for my

whole career. they understood the value of using those because it almost always exonerated the officers. there were instances where it didn't. it actually supported the complain tant's position on that. we didn't have problems around the discipline related to that. i think some officers are going to say this is terrible and i'm getting out of the business because of it. a lot of people say it is just the way it is now. as you said a moment ago, in five years this will be stan considered -- in my opinion this will be as ubiquitous as handcuffs or radio or handgun. it's just going to be part of the job. >> one of the things we often here is this changes behavior on both sides of the camera. it seems to be affecting police behavior. is it changing community behavior. do communities feel -- do people feel more -- are they aware this

is happening? we're constantly surveilled. in camden there are 120 surveillance cameras in the city alone, constantly feeding video into a centralized database? does it change be haif your on the other side of the camera for the police officers and the communities they're trying to protect? >> one level is yes. it's obvious and some of the studies back up there's this civil lizing effect which to any sort of person who is steeped in privacy and civil liberties is a slightly spooky term. the deeper question is what does that look like and what's the shape of that. it's too early to feel the full sociological effects of this. for better or worse, there are more and more cameras government-run surveillance cameras which we opinion pose which watch people whether anybody is present or not.

everybody is carrying a video camera in their pocket on their bicycle helmets, car dashboard and so forth when you're being watched all the time that's not a good thing for the american public and public spaces. there are chilling effects. it might take a while for people to realize how under surveillance they are. it may have chilling effects on american life. when you're in the presence of a uniformed police officer you're already chilled most of the time. you're going to watch yourself in a little bit. in some ways those cameras probably have less chilling effects than most cameras as opposed to a camera sitting up there and you and your lover are the only two people on the street and there's some camera watching you, that's a completely different kettle of fish. one of the reasons we have not been totally against body cameras, we're against them if the policies aren't good, but

the reason we're willing to accept them p the policies are good is that you're in front of a uniform police officer and if you do something illegal and there's no camera, you're going to go into court and the officer is going to say i saw him do that. it's still your word against the officer. the officer's word is always going to win. uniformed officer against an accused criminal. dmou there's a video. if you did something illegal instead of just the officer's word, now they have video to back it up. how much of a difference is that? versus, now if the officer is lying, you have some protection. >> i think there's some question -- at street wise and safe we focus and work with youth of color who are obviously some of the populations who are -- the population most targeted by discriminatory policing practices body cameras are intended to protect. we physically work with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth of color who have

experienced homelessness. they're a population at the intersection of a lot of different kinds of discrimination including discriminatory policing. we've had a lot of conversations about body cameras and this question of will it actually prevent police misconduct prevent the kind of policing practices they experience on a day-to-day basis. for them and for many people who are in the larger coalition that we're part of in new york city there's more questions than answers. and i think particularly you're talking to a community that just watched two police officers choke a man to death on camera knowing they were being filmed that watched police officers put a seven-month pregnant woman on a choke hold on camera knowing they were being watched. can find on youtube countedless videos of police officers engaging in abusive behavior.

i think they have solid questions. they heard from new orleans, a police officer turned up their body camera, walked up to someone, shot them and turn it back on again. they have questions about what the policies are going to be and how the programs will play out before they feel confident that it will actually change police officer behavior towards them and think there's still a lot more questions and answers. a lot of cost-benefit an nat sis that needs to be undertaken as well. >> oftentimes we hear it's communities of color and lower income communities that are the runs more heavily policed and will be more heavily surveiled. is that something you're hearing as well in terms of being a concern for the use of these body cameras? >> very much so. i think people are particularly concerned about the impacts of surveillance given who they are and what it looks like, for

instance, in washington state the video is almost live streamed on youtube. if you're a young queer person of color who appears in a particular way, perhaps in a particular context where you feel safe you don't necessarily want that same footage up on the internet where others might see it who may not be as familiar with you appearing in a particular way. also a concern in washington state was vice raids that went up on the internet. don't get me wrong. vice raids are a concept where tremendous abuse takes place. there is a desire to document that police violence, but it's also a tremendous invasion of privacy. to have that footage up on the internet is a triple concern. there's now people who are accused of engaging in prostitution who were half clothed in the videos whose videos are up on the internet for anyone to see.

i think that's a particular concern folks have. i think the broader surveillance concern, particularly for homeless people who have nowhere else to go and constantly in public space. >> can i add on one other piece just in terms of the contribution of the cameras to accountability, and this is maybe playing off something that jay had said which is that as we know what the camera is capturing is what the officer is seeing. it's capturing the officer's behavior only insofar -- reacts to something the officer is doing. you might be able to reach -- obviously would capture something like the sound of a gunshot, things like that. but it's a fairly narrow view -- videos from body cameras, depending on where it's warn, sometimes you're looking at somebody's chest, you can't make out the whole area. i think probably from a privacy

and civil liberties standpoint we have a broader concern about a camera showing a really panoramic view or something that somehow enabled a top-down. i think it does also speak to the limitations of what you're getting from a camera, a narrow view, and it is really of the person having the intersection of the police officer and not the police officer themselves. >> i feel a lot of the examples you gave where there has been accountability, people felt there was some success in being recorded, was community based recording, creating a culture where if there's interaction going down, that people feel concerned about, that we all start recording. there's also questions about what happens with that footage and we need to come up with some agreements about how that is used. i think that feels like a different experience. >> it's important that policies are put in place that turn this analogy into one that is an accountability tool and that

will shift power to protect communities, especially communities that have bad relationships with their police departments. there's a real danger these cameras would become just another means of police exerting power power, if they have complete control over which videos get released. a lot of police departments that support cameras, they want complete control over what gets released. the inevitable result will be when an officer saves a baby from downing the video will be on the news. but when the officer does something dodgey they'll keep that under wraps. also it's important that other policies be good as well in trms of when the recording is taking place and so forth. i think the suspicions of the clients that you work with may be well-founded. i think if good policies are put in place they can be a good thing and they can be dealt

with. but we are seeing departments where they have good body camera policies, but they're not enforced. so an officer is supposed to be turning it on but doesn't turn it on and shoogts somebody and says i didn't have it on and there's no consequence or discipline, in those cases body cameras are not going to be a good thing. >> is there a consensus of when you turn it on, when you turn it off? is there a broad as can be agreement, it should be on 90% of your shift, or if it should be on 90% of your shift or 100% of my shift and i have a tip for you and i don't want to be filmed or i have a sensitive situation, a domestic abuse situation, are there or should there be times when the officer should be allowed the turn it off? do i as the person with the tip or with the sensitive case, do i have the power to tell the officer can you turn it off? when do you turn on when do you

turn off? >> there's two answers. i think it's fair to say there's a broad consensus the cameras should be turned on whenever an officer is involved in a law enforcement action or call for service or any en count thaer becomes hostile in any way. there have been some proposals and we initially called for this, that basically all interactions with the citizens be taped. it's not really happening. i don't see many departments doing that. we have actually backed off that because the privacy consequences are much worse. there is a danger that, if you give police utter discretion to turn it on and turn it off, they'll engage in abuse, turn it back on. it's important police officers not have discretion but have clear rules about when the video is expected to be on. we have called for officers having -- turning it off if they're interviewing a crime victim if the crime victim wants it up, entering a private home.

if they're doing a s.w.a.t. raid, we want them on because there are so many abuses in s.w.a.t. raids. or if they're getting a crime tip from somebody who wants to whisper to the officer and doesn't want it on video those are reasonable exceptions. if the officer is in line to get doughnuts and wants to chat with people in the community there's no reason for the camera to be on in that situation. >> i think this highlights who smising from that panel right now. i have to tell you, our elected officials. so much of this is driven by what state law says or what the mayor says. if i was a mayor and i had a police chief who turned off the camera, shot somebody and turned it back on, i would be looking for a new police chief. this highlights the role of elected officials in laying down state legislation. but also highlights the difficulty for police officers who tend to be very pragmatic in their orientation. just tell me what the rule is. right now we're talking about

privacy versus transparency. what do you want me to do, do you want me to turn it on all the time or keep it off all the time? i don't think it makes any sense to film victims of crimes. certainly if there's an enforcement activity on the part of the officer you have to have the camera running because those things can go side ways in two seconds. if i'm interviewing you and you're a crime victim, i don't think that camera has any business running. there will be advancements in the technology that automate some of this. in other words, if i pull my gun, my holster would be a smart holster communicating with the camera. if i pull my taser it turns on the ca it has voice recognition capability, if certain key words are used the camera comes on. you can avoid some of this do i turn the camera on or off. there's a practicality reality for police officers when they're involved in enforcement activity that the last thing on their mind is pushing that button to

turn it on. they're looking at a person thinking if there's any chance that person might harm them that's what they're going to focus on first. if we can find a way to automate that, that turns them on. other things have nothing to do with the technology with this accountability stuff, turning them on or off. whether we like it or not all of us have to accept the fact that police officers need a certain level of discretion to do their job. that discretion and what happens or doesn't happen in terms of transparency issues, retention issues and all that are set in the law. the cops follow what the law is. if you don't like the law, then the people you need to be taking to are the state legislators to try to get them to change that that drives the behavior of the police in large part. there are other issues. it's not that simplistic. there are other things i think the police have been -- the

blame for some of these issues have been laid at the front door of the police. change the law if that's the problem. >> no doubt. i think one thing there is consensus about across the board is there needs to be given all the questions a very thoughtful process before jumping into, as you call it, full penetration. in the wake of the incidents you mentioned and many others, people have sort of in grasping for solutions that would prevent things that many people feel were terrible abuses of people's rights we're reaching for a solution, a company that makes tasers offered one up in terms of body cameras. we want to think about where that's coming from. but i think the uniform or at least there's consensus now that we need a broad consultation process. the police executive research forum says once an agency goes down the road of employing cameras, it's difficult to scale

them back. we need public consultation processes about issues of discretion, around issues of consent, around issues of access to footage obviously around issues of purposes of footage, evidentiary concerns. as you say, those are in the domain of lawmakers, freedom of information. there's so much in there what exceptions there might be around domestic violence instances, instances in people's private homes, in vice operations but also some undercover operations around enforcement of lewd conduct statutes is another issue of concern for lgbt. do mess tis tick violence is an issue of concern in terms of filming responses. i understand police officers feel those are the more dangerous things to respond to. how do we balance it with the privacy of people who are, one experiencing some of the most difficult and challenging moments 06 their lives and secondly may have other privacy concerns. there needs to be so much public conversation around this before we jump head long into something

that could have so many unintended consequences for all stakeholders on all sides of this issue including police officers. >> can i add an empirical point to the conversation. one is related to jim's point about police officers wanting to know when am i supposed to turn this on. again, the study from mesa, arizona, one of the interesting things they found is if there's basically a requirement that cameras are turned on, 80% of the cameras are turned on or during 80% of those interactions that policy is complied with. if it's discretionary they're turned on 50% of the time which suggests when police officers are given guidance in these nine circumstances, they go on then by an large they go on. the other thing is we've been looking at comparing the policies out there. most jurisdictions that are using body cameras are in the pilot project phase.

most of them have published policies. we have looked at the guidance that perth police executive research foundation put out and different jurisdictions around the country in terms of when they're supposed to go on. i was expecting that most of the jurisdictions would follow the perth guidance which lists a variety of kinds of interactions. there's a decent amount of variation, not widely but different cities different departments have decided on different times when the cameras will be turned on which may be totally appropriate. there may be different needs in a given drgs. this may be the laboratories of democracy that the states and cities provide to see, okay, how does it play out in terms of effectiveness and community relationships in this scenario this scenario, this scenario. right now there is some variation across the country in terms of when they're triggered. >> one more thing, i also think what's critical as much as a

consultation process on the front end is a consultation process and evaluation on the back end that takes into account all these things including the primary purpose of changing behavior, but also how the unintended consequences are playing out for different communities. i feel like that's one that needs to engage all stakeholders. >> i think this discussion also underscores why it's so important for the police and community to co-produce public safety and co-produce good policy around the use of body worn cameras. there's a reason we have 17,000 police departments. it makes sense when you understand community's desires to customize and taylor the kind of things they want in their communities. in some communities you may have lots of community involvement with the police department around policy formulation and that results in a different

triggering of when you turn them on and off. i think that's appropriate as long as there are guidelines set up and auditing mechanisms to make sure you're really doing that. that's when the transparency comes in. the community co-producing those policies with the police department is where you address these kinds of things that i may be a well meaning police chief or police officer trying to do the right thing in that domestic violence situation but have no sensitivity or understanding about how it's perceived by somebody else and why it's a problem. this is just not a simple issue. it's full of gray areas. i wish it was simple her. >> one area that i think is pretty clear-cut from a lot of police departments is cost. we continue to hear the police departments are having trouble paying for devices paying for storage and the infrastructure that goes along with that. washington is starting to put money towards body cameras quite a significant amount of money and there have been

hearings about this. i'm wondering whether or not that money that police departments need in order to implement these cameras should mean that those departments are required to follow some sort of federal guidelines. short of any law, should there be federal guidelines that require police departments they're required to meet in order to access these funds starting to come down the pike. >> there's a model already throughout that dictates that. the department of justice provides funding for police departments to purchase vests for their officers. in order to offset the money, you must have a policy that mandates the officers wear those vests. you can do the same kind of thing. if you're going to accept our money to buy those cameras, you have to have a policy that has these elements in it. >> the justice department is preparing to distribute the $10 million that president obama announced was going to be provided in grants to

localities. they have made some noises about conditioning receipt of those grants on having a good policy in place. the details haven't been worked out yet. it's not clear what that's going to look look and how prescriptive they're going to be. but that was a good thing. i think it's policies -- there's policies in terms of wearing them, in terms of the privacy piece, in terms of the sort of accessibility to the public which is i think a very complicated issue. and then there's also i think a piece about gathering the data. so assuming that a lot of this is happening in a pilot program context and that money is being given for that what kinds of information are these jurisdictions gathering? are they gathering in a way that's comparable across departments, across cities to really allow the justice department, the d jfrmgtsa groups it's working with two four, ten years down the line to do a retrospective look at how they're being used, do they work what are the consequences.

i think without that it's going to be really hard to make any assessment of kind of are these distributing and how to kind of a variety of values. >> which is why all this legislation should have a component to it saying we're going to evaluate this. there needs to be funding set aside for the science of this stuff. so you know how do we know this works two years out, five years out? >> i would agree with all of what's been said and also that there needs to be resources for community members to participate meaningfully in those evaluations in terms of the research and also being able to assess the effectiveness and interactions. i do feel compelled to say on behalf of the young people i have the privilege of working with that one of their first responses to this was how many million ofs dlarps and why are there still only 200 shelter beds in new york city for lgbt young people can we not put some of the money that would keep us out of the crosshairs of

policing because there are no other options available to us. i feel like that is a question around the millions of dollars going into this particularly from folks who are feeling like it might change their dare day today experience. >> i think some police chiefs are calculating the body cameras, if they perform as advertised, may save them a lot of money that they would otherwise spend on settlements of police abuse lawsuits if they can civilize their police officers, that they'll spend much less money overall just because of the cost of the cameras, they'll be paying less money on lawsuits and that money could be used for many other things. >> i want to talk a little bit about, jay, you mentioned this earlier, about accessibility to the videos, who should be able to see them. lawmakers in at least 15 states have introduced legislation that would limit how much of that video is available to the

public. so who should access public. so who should access the videos? who should be able to prevent access to the videos? should all of these videos be made available to the public? should they be streamed on youtube even if they're blurred out an redacted. are there certain states that have sort of on one side of the spectrum and others that are more lenient in that regard? it's an important questions. it's one thing to record to video it's another thing to make it accessible to the general public or us in the media. >> that's a key question. we've been asked a lot about it by localities that are struggling with this issue. what we've been recommending is that, you know most of the video that's takesenn really go into a black box and be held for a certain relatively limited period of time, 60 90 days and then be deleted unless there's a use of force by an officer, a

felony arrest or a complaint of an officer. if this case the video is flagged and kept for a longer time and available to the public through state foia requests. and that video should not retunely be searched shouldn't be face recognition, no analytics. even, you know, police management really shouldn't be looking at video unless an officer calls attention to it because we don't want officers to feel like they're being nitpicked by management or that management is out to give them or they have to give way too many tickets which is what the mesa study found because they'll be dinged by their superiors if they exercise any kind of discretion. and so you know we think that we're seeing -- what we're seeing out there are some extremes and some of them are set by state open records laws. some states like minnesota,

washington state new mexico have very broad open records laws that basically define all of the video that's captured by all cameras as an open records request. and we think that that is the wrong balance for privacy. all kind of stuff that's not of public importance but is very private to people will be publicly releasable. you'll see tabloid tv seeking the video to run thing for pure yent interests. and on the other side of the -- >> the tmz effect. >> a law was just passed in south carolina and the lapd's policy which allows the public to access none of the footage. it will end up being a police propaganda tool. if there's a shooting of an unarmed person that's publicly important information and that video should be released. the bystanders will slap it up

on youtube. the only video not released is the police video. so you know that's a delicate balance and neither extreme is the right one. it should not be public releasable unless there's a felony arrest, a use of force or there's been a complaint against a police officer and we think that's the right balance. >> i do think it's critical to have the consent of the person who is filmed be an integral if not determine innocent on that calculous. there is plenty of footage, for instance, of people in various states of undress. there is so much there. but also that i think there's just fundamental privacy concerns. and there's issues of public interest. i think there's a balance where you could do it only with the person's consent or at least where there's a court involved in determine wlging whether the public interest outweighs the privacy concerns and that the court would factor in the

consent of the person in the video. and that raises ten more complicated questions about if all five of us, the police rush in now and something happens, i might want it on the internet and you may not. how do we navigate that. and that raises the issue of blurring people's faces and redaction. and that raises the cost. i would throw in that's an ideal consent. but then it raises many more questions. but i fully agree that we can't have sort of footage flying up on the internet of every interaction. i agree with you that is currently a problem with bystander footage that we need to figure out way to collectively address. >> this raises one other interesting issue which speak to the public release. i think sort of the perception is if there's a video out there, that's going to show us what happened. this is played into. often these videos do exonerate

the police officers and sometimes they exonerate the accused. it's a story they tell. one of the things we're seeing from research is not surprisingly different people see videos differently. you take your own biases into watching the video. there's some interesting research showing interviewing motorists of color who are stopped and white motorists who are stopped. the -- something like 10% of the white motorists who are stopped who saw a police officer walking towards them saw the police officer's hand on his or her service weapon. about 60% of the motorists of color did. part of the theory is the motorist of color were key to this. this was a salient fact to them if the officer had his hand on his gun. and with the videos there's been a variety of studies on this that people will see different things in them not just maybe see or not see something the police officer should but really come to different conclusions based on what they bring. so i think we'll see that

playing out to the extent that videos are released publicly or to the extent they're used as part of a case or a complaint, even if it's a literally only the complainant and people in the police department seeing them, there may be still different narratives that come out of a single video. >> i think it's an excellent point. everybody, all of us need to get more sophisticated in how we interpret videos. videos are not an objective of what took place. and of course as you said a lot of the body camera videos are just catching somebody's chest. in fact somebody was saying in england they were having a problem that a lot of tall police officers were interviewing women and it was looking straight at their cleavage. but at the same time, this point can be exaggerated. i was talking to a judge and she says, i can't tell you i have all of these cases, complaints against police officers and what have you. it's one person's word against

another person's word. it's completely muddy. we don't know where to start. there are aare the of times where video does more or less tell you what happens. there will be cases where the video doesn't tell you what happens. there will be cases where the video is probably deceiving. there will be cases where the video is clear as day. overall i think it would be petter off than he-said-she-said officer in crisp uniform versus accused criminal. >> this underscores i think the need to put a lot more resources toward the science and the research around this. because we're all entitled and have our opinions. there's 60 people in here. we all have 60 opinions on when they should come on, when they shouldn't, redemption, et cetera. what we're not entitled to is our own set of facts. we don't know about this field yet. my guess is we're going to have lots of differing opinions about this for quite a while. but the extent to which we -- science can develop good findings about what works and

what doesn't work to achieve mutually agreeable goals is where we will ultimately develop a national coherence around this. and we're not going to do that until then because we're people with different opinions and we all have a different opinion about all of this. >> in a recent senate hearing the issue of hack about of this came up. two weeks ago there was a huge hack of washington's data. hacking is now a standard part of, i think a lot of the way -- a lot of our lives right? everything from our health care system to the government have been hacked. so what's to prevent a small town police department from becoming hacked and having these videos, you know, whether they have policies in place or not, to protect privacy, what's to prevent that from happening? i mean, are these police departments really equipped to protect the integrity of that video and that data? >> i think in some ways it's

slightly different question which is any police department equipped. because by and large i think most of the major platforms, the major companies producing body cameras, they manage the information by and large. so i think for most of these the police department sort of keeps ownership but the actual data basically is being sent up to the cloud. so it's a question of cloud safety. is there a way to hack into it or. as most of the hacks happen. or is there a way to get somebody's credentials, to fool somebody into getting access to the information. and then there's potentially a mother load of information which goes to the question of how long is this kept. the less amount of time the video is kept there's at least video, fewer videos to be accessed. but i do think that's an issue. >> this becomes more problematic when many of the really small police departments who have their hearts in the right place they're trying to get involved in video technology and cannot

afford these big vendors you're talking about. this is expensive technology. so they go online and find a $70 clipable camera, you take the sz card out and upload it to your pc. they know they need to do this but those things are hugely accessible to the hackers. >> there are been police departments around the country that have been hacked where companies previously encrypt their hard drives. and several police departments have had to pay thousands of dollars to russian hackers to get their data back. so it's a very real problem. >> we've talked a little bit about the public and the media being able to access these videos. but what about the officers themselves who are the ones that are wearing the camera? should officers be allowed to view their own video and if so when and if not why? >> i mean i think that officers should be able to view their own video most of the time. they want -- they might want to

review how they handled something that they might want to use it for training purposes to refresh their memory about things. the only time they really could not is if there's a critical incident such as a shooting where there's automatically going to be an investigation over what happened. when there's an investigation, you don't show witnesses the evidence you have before you take their statements. i mean no detective would do that. and you now, we have one set of evidence which is what the police officer remembers about what took place and we have another set of evidence which is the video. and neither one is object ty and the memories in the video are always going to be different. but you take one statement and set of evidence and capture that before you show the video to the officer. so that the evidence doesn't become cross contaminated. if you show the officer the video before you take his or her initial statement, then you are contaminating and literally changing -- studies have shown the officer's memory of what took place. and also if the officer has done

something wrong, you're giving them an opportunity to lie most effectively if the camera swings away for a moment the officer can say that's when he reached in his waistband or what have you. now after giving an initial statement and capturing the officer's initial memory of things if the officer views the video and want to explain something that was in the video that wasn't in his or her statement, of course they can do that. but this is a very divisive issue where libertarians and many police around the country have felt strongly another way. there's a common since thing of why not let the police officer give their best version of what happened by looking at the voop. but because of the contamination of evidence and lying issues, it's a bad idea. >> and i would argue that should be extended to any criminal prosecution for exactly the same reasons. i'm quite sure that's going to be controversial.

it's part of a story and showing it in advance of a criminal prosecution. i have seen, you know an been part of cases on the defense team where video has very much exonerated defendants. but i still feel like the ability to taylor your testimony in a criminal prosecution to something you've seen before, before you give your initial statement is upsetting the balance of due process and fairness in those situations and for all of the reasons that jay just gave >> this is confusing in the policing community. lawyers that the defend police officers would be able to cite scientific evidence to what we've just heard and have a position about their clients' rights and what makes sense. even within the policing community, half you would say they should look at it half of you would say they shouldn't.

one of the things -- i'll go back again. we just don't understand enough about our memory and how things, how something appears to be the case that turns out later on not to be the case. and because we have such an orientation toward blame in this society, we fail to say we're not blaming anybody wae want to understand how this works. and i don't know how we get around that. i think there there way to the that in many instances. we had a bad outcome and how do we get to a better outcome. we're not going to blame anyone for that. we don't have a vehicle right now to look at critical incidents without blaming and therefore we deny ourselves huge opportunities to learn from a bad incident that had bad outcomes because we need to make sure that somebody is blamed for whatever happened pum i'm not saying we shouldn't hold people accountable. i'm saying it's a difficult

model. and if you had some attorneys in here to represent police officers, you'd hear something different from them about what the science says and what they believe is appropriate. >> the police officers are afraid that, you know their memory naturally will probably not exactly match the video because that's now the way the human brain works and they'll be a made to look like liars. it's a legitimate concern. but everybody else in the criminal justice system has to deal with that as well, the defendant and the witnesses. police shouldn't get special treatment in terms of being able to see the video before they give their initial statement. and i do think that you know body cameras have a real potential to be an excellent training tool. and you know doctors have a thing where they all meet once a week and talking about their medical errors in sort of an environment of not blaming but how can i prevent this from happening again, what did i do wrong here. it would be nice to see that evolve as a standard feature in police departments. i had thee three encounter this week and they turned south.

let's look at it together and see how i could have deescalated it. i think it's a real potential that this could be a tool that will get at some of the deeper issues. body cameras are not the solution to the problems of policing in america. they're to some extent a band aid. >> absolutely. >> the real solutions are changing the culture of some departments. somebody said recently they think of themselves as guardians and not as warriors. and that they don't feel like occupying armies in some neighborhoods. and these are deep complex things and body cameras may have a role. but i think that better training and so forth is really the direction that things need to go. >> i would agree with the statement that the footage has huge potential for training officers. so we have footage, we want to use it for traung. except the law or policy or community expectation says you can't keep it for privacy issues. you can't keep it. this is where you have retention

and erasing of that same video runs head on into the reality. great video for training except we can't keep it. this is where we've got to find a way to meet both of those interests, the video that's very hard to watch of the texas officer that completely mishandles the incident involving the kids at the pool party is a great training video for thoughtful departments that want to hold this up and say to their officers see this, don't do this wu but let's talk about how that cop got himself into that place. but that's not body camera video. that's somebody holding up a video. >> i want to emphasize that. in new york city we've been creating of creating a culture of cop watch. there's five of us out there filming and they may be producing the same result. changing everyone's behavior. i've seen a situation where a officer had pepper spray out, i

pulled my iphone out, the pepper spray went back in and everything dissolved. and that was it. i feel like we could achieve many the same results by supporting and coming up with collective agreements of how we do it as community members by and for each other, it could capture the bigger picture. there might be other ways of arriving -- >> we need to be careful as we go down this road. i'm trying not to put my cop hat on for a second. when we want to hold those people accountable, i'm all for that. your example makes sense to me. you have to remember that that these are the same people that you expect to run head long into a dangerous situation that you have called 911 about. so that when we begin to -- and there's a balance here between holding them accountable and demonizing. the people who risk their lives for perfect strangers. and i personally believe this is a very slippery slope for us as society because you -- everybody in the room and everybody watching this, if you are being

attacked by somebody you are going to call 911 and you want them to get there as fast as they can and save you. that means they're going to use their discretion and ail of the tools available to them. if we're not careful about the messages that we send to those people who again are willing to donate hair lives for your safety -- if you doubt that i encourage you to go by the national law enforcement memorial where there's 21000 names of cops who have died in this country protecting their community. we have to be careful of the message we send to those people. there's a balance here, a very clear balance about how we do that we just have to be careful. you're not the people who respond if i call 911. >> there's nothing in what i'm saying -- i think that -- >> we have to be careful when we talk about this. believe it or not, cops are people too. >> i don't think the problem in our society though is that cops are getting too little difference and respect in terms of their use of force.

in many cases the law allows officers to use force when it's completely not necessary but it's completely legal. and there is a problem with unfortunately with excessive use of force and police abuse that i think has remained hidden, has been apparent to especially people of color and low income people but has been invisible to white middle class elites who kind of run things in most cities. and i think the video is playing a role and opening a lot of people's eyes as to what often does happen. and i think that hopefully ultimately we'll move forward to a path of understanding and, you know that police video cameras will play a disciplinary role in cushing back the officers who might be a little out of control or departments who have bad cultures. but at the same time it has the potential to increase understanding among the public about what police officers do face, you know. some of these videos they're going to show heroic actions and

already have. greater understanding on all sides. >> this is why legislation is to important. if we don't like the law or the court decision that sets the sidelines for police use of force, then we need to change that. and the rules need to change and the guidance to police officers need to change, much like the supreme court decision that said you cannot shoot somebody who is running away from you, right? that was useful to everybody. it changed -- and then somebody who does it is going to jail for the rest of their life. those are the kinds of things that are pragmatic realities. you hear cops say this all the time. tell me what the rules are. ly follow those to the best of my ability. but when the sidelines are this wide and i'm operating within them, then i may not be the problem. it's -- bring in -- narrow the slides or something so i understand the rules better. >> so to bring it back to a point that jay made i was interviewing the executive director for the center for media justice recently for a

piece on body cameras and she said, i'm quoting, the footage itself even when caught in the act doesn't necessarily translate to accountability. if anybody is going to stand behind body cameras advocating for them they need to stand for comprehensive police reform. that is what you're touching on right now. what does that police reform look like, going beyond the technology. that's something we're hearing also out of cam den. you go to camden, new jersey, they've got a data center body cameras and two cops on every street corner talking to residents, you know doing ride alongs with folks. so they're saying that the secret to that has also been a tremendous focus on community policing. but is there more that can be done beyond old fashioned policing and technology in terms of ak chaul police reform and if so what is that?

>> broadly i would say better training and training that's oriented towards teaching police officers how to december escalate effectively. community policing and generally having police officers be part of and in touch with the community they're policing, not being occupying armies and civilian oversight, oversight boards that have teeth that have power and that kind of thing. and changing the culture of some of the police departments. as i talked about earlier. and so you know we can look maybe look forward to a day where police body cameras no longer seem necessary, perhaps, maybe. who knows. >> i would have to agree that it comes with accountability. and that was where i was going with the example of cop watch videos or having effective accountability after the fact no matter who is capturing the video of what's on the video. so there may be accountability in walter scott's case. there isn't in eric garner's

case. how do we make sure that the footage leads to account about and also change and behavior so we're not just having continuing aspects of accountability but not stopping the behavior itself. that goes to many reform, not just with training and culture but setting the guidelines. there's a list of specific reforms in the president's task force on 21st century policing final report that have things like everything around narrowing use of force to what is absolutely necessary under the circumstances as opposed to what's now permitted by law, about having very specific guidance for instance around use of force against pregnant women or children or elderly people and use of tasers very specific guidance. very specific guidance around how you engage in stops, whether you can ask for consent to a search and then how do you make sure that there's informed

voluntary consent objectively recorded somewhere. things that will change the way interactions happen between individuals and police officers to balance the power relation a little be and most of all ensure that people's rights' safety are respected. coproducing public safety is also about coming up with specific guide posts about how police officers interact with plr communities who are more likely to experience police abuse. whether that's makes sure that police departments across the count have a sexual harassment policy. very few have sexual harassment and abuse policies around police interactions with police interactions to the public. a guidance was put out in 2011 saying you need to have this. and making sure there's guidance around how to respectfully and safely interact with members of the lgbt community in such a way that we're not perpetrating more

violence intentionally or inadvertently because the guide posts haven't been clearly set to give the officers what they need to mikeake sure that everyone's rights are respects. most important is however not with the policies that are written on paper but the enforcement and the accountability for them. otherwise they're just the paper that they're written on. and i think if we move forward with some real policy change and real reform -- as i was saying earlier, it has to involve and be created in partnership with communities who are directly impacted. for instance in new york city right now we are going through a process that's court ordered where the court has said people who are directly impacted have to be a part of reforming what stop and frisk looks like in new york city, what policing practices look like in new york city. and the solutions lie with people who experience it on a day to day basis. that's where we will mo from feeling like our communities are being occupied and there's no

accountability for violence blens black bodies and communities of color to a different situation. >> i should have said also, demilitarization is a huge part of this. we're seeing a growing number of police officers and departments a who are trained and equipped like soldiers as opposed to civilian police officers, the honorable tradition of policing for a long time. guardian cops, moving away from warrior cops to guardian cops. >> i think andrea alluded to this. we also shouldn't forget -- this is not necessarily to say anything about the efficacy and contributions of body cameras but to remember that body cameras themselves are a business. that there are companies that sell body cameras, at least for one of them, taser it's the same company that makes taser, a very different kind of instrument for police officers. there's been questions by no means in a couple of

departments, about the relationship between the police department maybe the chief of police and decisions being made about body cameras, and that that is an overlay. which again doesn't necessarily speak to whether they will work and what they'll contribute but that there is sort of another issue, kind of in terms of the separate accountability piece of it to pay attention to. >> i want to take the opportunity to ask the audience if they have any questions. and if you're too shy, you can always tweet me. because i ask people to do that and that's fine. we'll take -- and i should say before, jim may need to leave in a few minutes. if he gets up and goes it's not a commentary on any of the questions. >> that's exactly right. and i'll check to see if there's -- if there are any questions that have come in recently on twitter.

but feel free were jeremy. >> my name is jeremy. and i've been involved in this kind of body camera debate. one thing i don't see a lot of. we got a little bit in this panel. but is asking the question whether police body cameras are the best way to do accountability. i mean, you know, we're having this panel because there's a lot of gray here. there's a lot of issues. issues with privacy for the officers, privacy for the public surveillance, costs, liability issues, you know in california where the california highway patrol responded to an accident, this woman got decapitated unfortunately. but photos of that got out, were leaked. you know, chp was sue pd. they had to pay millions of dollars. you have similar potential liability issues here if they become ubiquitous, venn tors are going to push facial recognition. other technology is going to be more of a surveillance tool

other than accountability. the studies, don't know if they can be replicated throughout the country. no studies on long term whether they'll have the positive outcomes as some of the short term studies have shown. yufl there's a real grappling with whether it's the best way to do account about as opposed to doing the things that jay mentioned earlier, teaching officers how to handle situations better. a lot of times it's the officers, you know, kind of instigating the situation and they're legally allowed to use force at some point. could you respond to that? i'd appreciate it. >> i think it's important to remember that a police department is a system and that any technology whether it's cameras or anything else, is never going to be the one thing that solves everything. that's kind of how we think about things in our society. we're looking for that one thing that solving this problem and it's just too complicated. this issue underlying all of this about account about has to do with who do we hire what are

the organizational values, who becomes the police chief, the transparency and the relationship with the community et cetera. there's all kinds of things. the best account about model is where the officers hold themselves accountable. i realize that that is, you know kind of pollyannaish in many ways. if that was the case we wouldn't have to have criminal laws and all of the other things we have. there are many other things that go into an accountability quote unquote system in a police department. what do the supers do. what are the analytics that you can pull out of your own data system that relate to the nature of arrests, where they're made, are there flags that give you the insight into what the officer is doing, do the other officers feel free to tell you somebody did something wrong. in any former agency this happened and i was proud that an officer said to a supervisor that officer that i work with every day did something wrong or in one instance with officer

came to us and said i did something wrong and you need to hold me accountable if this. i screwed up. there's a huge different between the mistake of the head and mistake of the heart and how you talk about all of this inside a police department is about culture and leadership and the intangibles that make the business very difficult sometimes for people. and also create space for misuse and abuse and other kinds of places. i just think this is what we're talking about here is much bigger than cameras. and i think that's what your question alludes to. it's much more than just a camera issue. >> we did just get a question in from twitter from karen doland. she says does the panel know if there are organization niezed trainings for the public to record police interactions and encounters. >> there's a coalition in no, sir called people's justice and a website called cop watch ync that pulls together a lot of the resources out there.

the justice committee in new york city and the malcom x grass roots movements have been conducting cop watch meetings for over two decades. and the resources are up on cop watch nyc. and the new york civil liberties union is very helpful and people have used it. but also we all have our phones. >> and we have a number of affiliates that have this app out which basically you use to record and automatically uploads the video to the aclu if you're worried that your camera la be seized or what have you. and the most important thing that's happened i think in accountability overall may be the right to record. we have had a huge struggle getting police officers to recognize that there is a first amendment constitutional right to take photographs if you're in public in a place where you have the right to be. aclu has done litigation in

numerous states around the country on this and the courts have been unanimous that you have a right to record. and we are fortunate lit seeing fewer and fewer police officers try to interfere with that right but it still happens. police officers harass people or worse for taking out a camera and recording. and we've talked about in many cases it's the bystander video that has been more effective than police videos in providing accountability. and to jeremy's question, i think that the answer is no. camera are not -- i don't know if they's the best tool for accountability but they're not the best way to improve policing in america. but the question is are we better with cameras than without them. that's in some ways a harder question. and that's the question that we're struggling with and ambivalent about. the cameras are happening. it's a wave. the police departments are adopting them. if you're going to adopt them we're going to oppose them unless they're done with good

policy to make sure that they serve as a tool for accountability. >> any additional questions? sir, in the back. and then we'll take the gentleman in the front. >> i work at the naacp. i want to ask a question regarding the feasibility on gun mounted cameras or taser mounted cameras. there's a fear that if the officer shoots that way, that the cameras won't record gun related violence incidents which is what they were intended to record. >> i don't see any downside to gun mounted cameras. i think when an officer's gun is out that's already a situation that needs to be recorded. and in many ways the gun mounted cameras would have many view or f the downsides that body worn cameras have because they're not going to be recording most situations. >> and then this gentleman in

the front with the tie. yeah yeah. >> jake center for deck mock kracy and technology. i'm curious for your feedback on use of body cameras in situations involving protest demonstrations, other first amendment related activities with one that creates a higher level sensitiveity of recording individuals and there's a greater potential for abuse. we've seen a lot of instances in the last years whether it be ferguson or occupied protest, video with attempts to clamp down on demonstrators have helped stopped protests from being shut down. >> this is interesting. in d.c. especially, there's a pilot program right now. there's a policy for the pilot program. and one of the things that the policy speak to is basically body camera recordings of first

amendment activities first amendment events. the idea is protests, things like that. and the language that specifically written in is that video from those recordings will be kept for longer. will be kept for three years which is much longer than the standard retention period. and i think, although it doesn't say specifically i think that's coming out of the mass arrests from i think 2000 from the inauguration from 2002 and this concern that there was major suppression of first amendment rights. it creates that you do in fact have videos depicting people exercising their first amendment rights that are kept for much longer. could be either misused or even are just available, you know, if there's hack organize whatever is it. these things are out. one of the other things we looked at when we were doing the comparison of different policies across the country to what

extent do they speak to these first amendment concerns. and it really varies whether they do is it retention issue, is it sort of a general, you know, poddy camera shouldn't used to suppress first amendment rights. i think it's an important question and i don't think we know yet how it plays out. i think as you're identifying there could be almost competing interests or the same interests that in some ways could be vindicated in competing ways. one is to keep the footage for as little time as possible and one is to keep it much longer to allow for some record and some accountability. >> many people experienced in in both. it's very chilling whether people are new to protests or been around for a long time. as someone who represents the plaintiffs in the case in new york city in 2004, we saw the importance of civilian video and organized civilian video collection because it enabled us to counter the limited

perspective that would come out there the police captured videos. it comes back to me about larger policy questions about how things are policed and then the importance of nonpolice video more so than the police video in some cases. >> any other additional questions? got one more here in the front. >> hi, cameron cox from d.c. safe, a victim's rights organization. i was wondering some of the research i did regarding the body worn camera policies, a lot has been sold to police officers, ability to assist in victimless prosecutions and things like that. i wonder if you had any ideas as to good model policies and practice to respect the victim's wishes regarding prosecutions and investigations. >> i think i really worry -- i overheard some conversation about this before coming in -- about the use of poddy warn

cameras for victimless prosecution. and i think it takes away autonomy from survivors of violence to make decisions about what kind of accountability that i want that are often formed very much on their own knowledge of what danger that will pose to their lives, an economic life of someone going to prison who they actually need to survive or the potential retaliatory violence. i think if a body camera comes into a volatile situation and there's not clarity of how that goes down, the survivor of violence will bear the brunt. and on top of that you have the video. so i feel that this is one of the areas that feels most sensitive around figuring out consent, autonomy and respect for survivors. and so i think it's one area like so many other law enforcement incentives that are being advanced as kind of on the backs of survivors of violence a as this is going to help us and

help survives of violence. it could have a lot of blowback and present as significant amount of concern for me. whether that's someone who has long worked 0 -- on this week's newsmakers, julian castro. we talk to him about promoting home ownership recovery from the home crisis and the recent supreme court decision on housing discrimination, airing sundays 10:00 a.m. and 6 p.m. on c-span. next whoa week while congress is out for the july 4th holiday break american history tv is on prime time on c-span 3. monday, the manhattan project the production of the first nuclear weapon during word war ii tuesday a symposium on the debate between jam baldwin, wednesday, highlights of the

2015 c-span cities tour, and thursday examine the text of the declaration of independence and the efforts behind preserving the original document, friday we're in yorktown virginia. watch our special prime time edition of american history tv monday at 8:00 p.m. eastern. tune in every weekend as we tell america's story on american history tv on c-span 3. as part of the investigation into irs targeting of conservative groups, the treasury department's office of the inspector general examined how the e-mails of irs employee lois lerner were lost. investigators testified at a house oversig committee. congressman jason cha fits

chairs this hearing. committee on oversight will come to order and without objection the chair authorized to declare recess at any time. today's hearing is about the irs and the targeting that has happened there. we've had updates from the

inspector general's office and we're here for another update. we appreciate you for being here with us. and as we start this hearing, i'd like to walk through why we're here at this particular time. it was -- there was targeting of people who were trying to exercise their first amendment rights. dave camp and the ways and means committee did some exceptional work unearthing this and talking to the irs commissioner mr. shoalman about this. that's when the inspect general ears office started to get involved and they started to look at it. later they came back and provided a report and that report happened in i believe, 2013. keep in mind when we had this information going on, there is a preservation order that was put

in place asking and requiring the irs to preserve these documents. chairman isa then, the chairman of the oversight and government reform committee in august 2013, issued a subpoena asking for the information and these documents. but then you move forward and this is where it just sort of starts to get unbelievable. stretches the imagination beyond comparison. we're supposed to believe this wide array of facts just happened to come together in such an odd and peculiar way. remember, the irs commissioner said, quote, there's absolutely no targeting, end quote. when this came to the president, it was very good on this topic. he said he would work with congress and then somehow magically concluded, even though the department of justice had not completed their investigation, the inspector general had not concluded their investigation, the united states

congress had not concluded an investigation neither in the house or the senate, but somehow magically the president came to the conclusion that there was, quote, not even a smidgen of corruption. now, interesting thing about that timing. that happened to be super bowl sunday. so super bowl sunday in 2014 the president makes this comment. we have heard from an irs official where she said that's the exact same day that i remember looking and realizing that there were some e-mails missing. this thing is going on for years, just coincidental that the president is on national television and she says and has told us that, oops, there's some e-mails missing. again, remember, for ten months there was a presentation order

in place. for seven months there was a subpoena in place. we've been assured multiple times by the irs that they were doing everything, bending over backwards, giving us all kinds of stats and metrics about how many e-mails and how many people working hard on. but the one thing we wanted to have, evidence, to let the facts take us wherever they may be that one thing just went missing the exact same time, say just within hours of the president making that comment. but what we're going to hear today makes it even more stunning, because what the inspector general has learned is that that evidence on that day that the president said that, on the day that inspector general -- or the day that the irs person said they're missing e-mails, they weren't missing at that point. they weren't destroyed. what we're going to hear from

the inspector general's office today is that those e-mails were destroyed 30 days later. february 4th super bowl sunday -- or the 2nd super bowl sunday pardon me. they get, they get -- you know they're missing, but they weren't missing. they got destroyed just about 30 days later. 22 days after that, the irs commissioner, on march 26th -- i remember it because it was my birthday -- irs commissioner comes here and testifies and tells us essentially that they have the e-mails, it's going to take years to provide them but they will get us those e-mails. in a direct question that i had asked him. they destroyed them 22 days prior. they knew there was a problem back in february, supposedly. and it wasn't until june that the irs then confirmed or buried

in the back of a letter to the united states senate, senator orrin hatch's committee and senator widen's committee, that oops, we think there is a problem with the e-mails. then the inspector general, that catches their attention. what do they do? they put a team together and say, you know what? let's see if we can find the e-mails. remember, at this point the irs had years to do it and they couldn't find them. they think there's a problem. the inspector general's office puts a team together and within two weeks they go and find him. they show up at this so-called cage and go ask and go look for the e-mails. nope, they've been sitting there the whole time. has anything ever happened to those? no, nobody ever asked us for them. that's the testimony we heard in a previous hearing. and we're supposed to believe all this in the context of an fbi investigation that's led by a maxed out donner to the obama

administration. a contempt from lois learner that the house of representatives -- doesn't happen very often around here -- holds lois learner in contempt. a statute that says they shall refer that to the grand jury. they look there for ten months and two days or so roughly before they step away from that job and says, you know what? we just think it's shouldn't be referred. even though the statute says it shall, and that is a potential hearing and maybe something we'll look at later. but part of what we're going to find today is there are some 24,000 e-mails, potential e-mails that were destroyed. it's a destruction of evidence. we want to pursue the facts. i know there are democrats on the other side of the aisle that say there's nothing here, let's move on it's no big deal.

let the evidence speak. but when there is a destruction of evidence, that goes to a whole other level. one of the things we're going to hear from the inspector general today is that five of the six sources where they could find this e-mail, the irs didn't even look. and yet we've heard multiple, multiple testimonies from the irs commissioner saying, oh, we're working so hard. we've got all of these people. we're spending millions of dollars. they're taking all the resources. they didn't look in the most obvious places like her phone. it defies any sense of logic. it gets to the point where it truly gets to be unbelievable. somebody has to be held accountable. imagine if this was reversed. right? imagine if you were on the receiving end of an inquiry from the irs and they ask you for documents and they issued you a

subpoena and you destroyed the evidence and you had that evidence. what would happen to you? you would be prosecuted to the fullest. you'd end up in jail. you probably should. that's what we're dealing with here. this should have been disposed of a long time ago. but we've been misled. there has been evidence that has been destroyed. and so we appreciate this hearing today. the two men before us today that have done exceptional work. they're supported by a great number of people on their staff who do very important impartial work. we count on their opinions. let me be fair with this conclusion. part of what they're going to say today is they have found no evidence that this was done willfully, that this was some purposeful direction from any one person whether it's the white house or below.

understood. but the bottom line is they had the evidence. there was a preservation order in place. there was a subpoena in place. and that evidence was destroyed. we're going to hear this testimony. next week they're going to issue a lengthy report. we look forward to seeing that report. given that next week is the fourth of july recess, we thought it appropriate to bring them before us to get their verbal comments and opportunity to question them. we look forward to hearing and reading the report in its totality. then we have to figure out a way moving forward. but people need to be held accountable and we are going to get to the truth. with that, i'm going to yield back and recognize our ranking member, mr. cummings. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i'm very glad you're having this hearing. i'm glad that at the very end of your statement you said that

there would be testimony, i take it from mr. george, that these documents were not destroyed willfully. i'm glad you said that. because you said a number of things already. i think there are many irs employees that are working very, very hard, short of staff, giving it everything they got so they can do their jobs so that we can have the resources as a government to exist. i want to take a moment to thank all of those employees who are working so, so very hard. this oversight committee is now holding our 22nd irs hearing. twenty-two. some people tuning in today may

not realize that this investigation is still going on. they also may not realize that they, the american taxpayers, have spent more than $20 million on this investigation so far. $20 million. total does not include the millions of additional dollars spent by the inspector general who was here to testify before us yet again. i want to thank you, mr. george for his hard work and all the work you've done in regard to this investigation. this investigation has squandered tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and a failed scavenger hunt against lois learner, the irs and the white

house. 250 irs employees have spent 160,000 hours producing more than a million pages of documents to congress. 250 employees. who could be doing audits, making sure that people are paying their rightful share of taxes, making sure that the collection process is done properly. answering questions of our constituents as they try to make sure that they're doing the right thing. but 250 folks, 160,000 hours. yet the inspector general will testify today that his conclusions remain the same. the chairman said let the facts, let the evidence speak. i agree with that.

there is still no evidence to support republican allegations that the white house was involved, that ms. learner ordered the targeting of conservative groups for political reasons or that she intentionally crashed her computer to conceal her e-mails. today the inspector general will testify about this investigation into the status of ms. lerner's e-mails. unfortunately, the inspector general's office has repeatedly overstated the number of, and i quote, new e-mails, end quote, they recovered from backup tapes and other sources. in february, the officials from the inspect general's office briefed our committee and others reporting that they had found 80,000, 80,000 e-mails

from ms. lerner, a fact that was leaked to the prez with great fanfare. headlines, 80,000. then on february 26, the deputy inspector general for investigations testified before this committee that many of those e-mails were actually duplicates. so we went from 80,000 and he testified there was only 32,000, february. and last week on june 16th the inspector general's chief counsel sent a letter to this committee stating that the total number of new e-mail went down again, keend in mind from 32,000, this time explaining that only 6,400 e-mails, and i quote, appear to not have been produced to congress, end of quote.

you guessed it. but today we've got from the 6,4000 only nine days ago, and the inspector general will testify that total has plummeted to a little more than 1,000 e-mails that congress did not already have. that's a hell of a drop. from 80,000 to 1,000. inspectors general are not supposed to provide speculative unconfirmed and inaccurate information to congress. i think mr. george would agree with that. they're not supposed to provide information that they know is not credible. yet that is what happened in this case. based on this record, i do not know why anyone would have confidence in any of the numbers issued by the inspector general.

for those who want to cut for those who want to cut to the bottom line, you need to turn to page 6 of the inspector general's written testimony for today's hearing. e but it says, and i quote, a review of these e-mails did not provide additional information for the purposes of our investigation and i hope that mr. george will explain that. so after all this work and after spending millions of dollars, republicans still have no new information to support their allegations. some people may be wondering if new e-mails do not advance the investigation in any way. then what are they? what are they? let me give you a few examples which the inspector general provided to us this week. i didn't do this. the inspector general gave it to us. on december 25th, 2012, christmas day, mr. learner received an e-mail from ebay

with an advertisement for holiday shopping meals. in another newly discovered e-mail sent a few days earlier, on december 22nd, ms. lerner received an offer from the -- shopping come for a nice bouquet. night quite the smoking gun that the republicans alleged. the fact is that ms. lerner's computer crashed. and we need to keep this in mind. the fact is ms. lerner's computer crashed before she was informed that irs employees in cincinnati were using inappropriate criteria to screen tax exempt applicants. this is not my finding. it's not mine. that is defining of mr. george, our inspector general in advertise original report from may 2013.

more than two years ago. today his hearing is our 22nd on this issue. 22. and i can not imagine what possible reasons that there might be to have a 23rd. so i hope we will finally be able to move forward and focus on bipartisan investigations that will help the american families in their daily lives. and, two, the irs employees, i hope that all of the efforts don't have a chilling effect of you doing the job that the american people have paid you to do and expect you to do and who in the job that you want to do. and with that, mr. chairman, i yield back. >> i hold the record open for five legislative days for my member that would like to submit a written statement and recognize our panel of witnesses. pleased to welcome honorable jay russell george inspector general for tax administration,

and mr. tim camus deputy inspector general for investigations at the department of inspector general for tax administration. we welcome you both. appreciate your work. pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses are to be sworn before they testify. if you please rise and raise your right hands, do you solemnly swear or affirm the testimony you brought together will be the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth? >> thank you. please be seated. let the record reflect the witnesses both answered in the affirmative. we would appreciate your verbal comments and any additional comments -- or written statements will be obviously made part of the complete record. do you have one statement or are you going to combine that into -- >> i have a very brief opening statement and then refer to you mr. camus to provide more substance to the facts. >> very good. >> very good. >> thank you, members of the committee.

at your request we're here to update you on the progress of our efforts to recover former irs exempt organizations unit director lois lerner's missing e-mails. with me again is tim camus, deputy inspector general for investigations. tim led this investigation which was initiate the on june 16th, 2014. this was shortly after the irs reported gaps and production of lois lerner's e-mails cite as the reason a crash of her computer's hard drive. one week later, as was noted, the ranking member hatch of the senate finance committee requested that they investigate the matter including us to perform our own analysis of whether any data can be salvaged and produced. this morning's testimony will provide with you information about the extent of our investigative efforts as well as the evidence we have gathered to

date. at the outset, it is important to note that even as we believe we have reached certain conclusions in determination in our findings, this investigation is not yet concluded. should anything of note be discovered, we will review it for the impact on the investigation, produce a supplemental report and provide the new information including e-mails to all appropriate parties. overall, this investigation included interviewing over 118 witnesses, extensive document reviews and the processing and analysis of over 20 terabytes of data. as a result of these efforts, we have determined the following: they were successful in recovering over 1,000 e-mails that the irs did not produce to congress, the department of justice or to the office of investigations. we have also determined that

prior to our investigation and efforts to recover miss lerner's missing e-mails, the irs did not search for, review or examine the backup tapes, server hard drives or sources that ultimately produce new previously undisclosed e-mails. 422 tapes that likely contained miss lerner's e-mails from the miss lerner's e-mails from the ikely will never be recovered. the 422 tapes were erased around march 4, 2014. that this is one month after the irs realized they were missing e-mails from lois lerner and eight months after this committee requested all documents and communications sent by, received by or copied to lois lerner. as was noted, our investigation did not uncover any evidence that the ee rasher of the 22,

422 backup tapes was done to conceal information from congress or law enforcement. in addition, it is important to note that it is remotely possible that our continuing review of data from the initial set of 735 backup tapes could result in discovery of additional e-mails not previously provided to congress by the irs. i will now turn to mr. camus who will provide a detailed investigation on the findings and our investigation and the search for the missing e- mails. >> thank you. i appreciate the opportunity to come here today to provide updated testimony on my agencies investigation of the internal revenue service's production of the e-mails of the former director of exempt organizations as well as our efforts thus far in recovering missing e-mails. throughout our investigation, we have updated the tax writing and oversight committees of congress

including this committee concerning our progress in recovering e-mails. as the inspector general noted, we're now in position to provide information about our investigation. my special agents determined that there were six possible sources of information in order to recover missing e-mails. those sources are ms. lerner's crashed hard drive, the backup or disaster recovery tapes, a decommissioned irs e-mail server, the backup tapes for the decommissioned e-mail server, miss lerner's blackberry and loner computers that may have been assigned to her while her laptop is being repaired. my testimony will provide an overview of some of the sources all of which are covered in the written testimony. with respect to miss lerner's crash computer hard drive, we determined that on saturday june 11th, 2011, between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. miss lerner's irs laptop was more than likely in her office and it stopped communicating with the irs server system.

the following monday, june 13th, 2011, miss learner reported that she found her computer inoperable and the malfunction was reported to the irs information technology staff. they dernld the hard drive had crashed and following standard protocol placed a new hard drive in miss lerner's laptop. the hewlett-packard technician will go worked on the laptop for other repairs. when interviewed, both technicians reported they did not note visible damage to the laptop computer itself. because we were unable to locate and examine the hard drives, we do not definitively know why it crashed. on july 19th, 2011, miss learner requested irsit to attempt to recover data from her crashed hard drive to rechief personal information. after receiving the hard drive from the irs technician, an irs criminal investigation

technician was unsuccessful in recovering data. irs icht t. management determined additional recovery effort were not warranted. recovered data from miss learner's hard drive were not worth the expense. it is important to point out the irs does not track individual hard drives by the serial numbers. our investigation revealed that miss lerner's hard drive was more than likely sent for destruction with a shipment of other media on april 30th of 2012. the shipment was chased to the recycling facility in florida. we determined that this shipment of hard drives was destroyed using a shredder that cut the inserted hard drives into quarter size pieces. according to the facility manager, those pieces are then sold for scrap. understanding the limitation on the investigation without having the hard drive, our investigation did not uncover any evidence of sa