Education Week - March 4, 2015 - 15

Body Cameras on School Police Spark Privacy Concerns
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officers are performing well," Robert Mock, the
chief of the Houston district's police department,
said in a statement.
Officers will switch on the cameras when
they investigate complaints or interact with
students, Mr. Mock said in a video posted on
the district's website.
No national statistics are available on the
use of police body cameras in schools, but
news media accounts show school police
around the country, including those in Memphis,
Tenn.; Topeka, Kan.; and Des Moines,
Iowa, have adopted them recently. But the
eagerness to adopt the technology comes with
concerns from some.
The same civil rights groups that have
championed the devices as a method of building
police accountability-particularly in
confrontational situations like the Ferguson
shooting-argue that school-based officers
should not be wearing them.
Privacy vs. Accountability
In the educational context, where extreme
instances of inappropriate use of physical
force by police are far less common than they
are on the street, concerns about student privacy
outweigh any potential benefits from the
use of cameras, said Chad Marlow, the advocacy
and policy counsel for the American Civil
Liberties Union.
Body cameras in a general setting allow the
public to monitor police and hold law enforcement
officers accountable by obtaining and
sharing footage through open-records laws,
Mr. Marlow said. But in schools, where students
are the stakeholders, the aclu believes
that's less likely to happen.
Instead, advocates fear footage of students
getting in fights or making mistakes
could become an unshakeable part of their
reputations and digital footprints. In some
cases, police footage has gone viral after it
was posted online, though there haven't yet
been high-profile cases of that happening in
schools.
Records kept by school police are not subject
to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy
Act, a federal student privacy law that shields
most student data from public disclosure, the
U.S. Department of Education has said. State
open records laws provide varying levels of exemption
for materials related to crimes committed
by minors.
In a 2013 position paper, the aclu said body
cameras worn by general police officers can
be a "win for all" with the right policies in
place. But the organization has also spoken
out against many forms of recording in public
schools, including security cameras.
"Really, what it would become is just a tool
for filming and capturing students in their
schools," Mr. Marlow said of body cameras.
"It's too much of an infringement on privacy
given the other factors at play."
To be sure, many civil rights and student
groups have expressed concerns about school
police, saying officers are often too forceful
with students and that, in many districts,
police are involved in routine discipline matters
that should be handled by educators. In
some schools, students have used cellphones
to record interactions with school police. One
such video, which showed school police in
Houston wrestling a small female student to
the ground for a cellphone violation, gained
widespread news coverage last year.
But advocacy groups say those concerns
should be addressed through clear agreements
between schools and police agencies
that set limits on how officers should interact
with students, not through monitoring
Sgt. Jason Halifax, of
the Des Moines Police
Department, in Des Moines,
Iowa, shows a body camera
used by one of the agency's
school resource officers.
The rush by cities to outfit
police officers with
body cameras after last
summer's police shooting
of an unarmed teenager
in Ferguson, Mo., is raising
concerns about the use
of the devices by law
enforcement officers
who work in schools.
with body cameras.
Roman Roberson, the assistant chief of the
Kilgore, Texas, police department, said such
privacy concerns are unfounded. Kilgore's
three school resource officers have worn body
cameras for about six years, along with many
of the department's other officers, and in that
time, the district hasn't heard many complaints,
he said.
Officers only switch on their cameras when
they are responding to a complaint or interacting
with students, Mr. Roberson said. And,
because storage is costly, footage not needed
for criminal proceedings is only maintained
on a server for 90 days.
"Officers aren't just walking around randomly
filming people," Mr. Roberson said. "The
cameras aren't just on. They have to activate
the camera."
Perhaps complicating discussions about
body cameras in schools, the National Association
of School Resource Officers takes no position
on their use in schools, and the most frequently
referenced best-practice guide for the
devices doesn't mention school police at all.
That guide, written by the Police Executive
Research Forum for the U.S. Department of
Justice's office of community-oriented-policing
services, outlines recommendations on
storing footage, when officers should activate
cameras, and training.
"A police department that deploys body-worn
cameras is making a statement that it believes
the actions of its officers are a matter of public
record," the guide says.
Some districts have had disagreements with
police about the devices.
In Isle of Wight County, Va., the 5,500-student
school system wants in-school sheriff's
deputies, who've been wearing the cameras
since October, to announce when they are recording,
to blur the faces of students who are
not directly involved in recorded incidents,
and to provide the school with copies of the recordings,
local television news station WAVY
reported. But the county's sheriff did not want
to have two sets of recording policies for his
officers, the station said.
Police chiefs in several cities said it is important
for agencies to communicate with schools
they protect about how and when cameras
will be used to avoid miscommunication or
disagreements.
Coverage of school climate and student behavior and
engagement is supported in part by grants from the
Atlantic Philanthropies, the NoVo Foundation, the
Raikes Foundation, and the California Endowment.
Education Week retains sole editorial control over
the content of this coverage.
EDUCATION WEEK | March 4, 2015 | www.edweek.org | 15
"
People tend to be on
their best behavior
when they know
they're being
recorded."
BILL VAUGHN
Chief of Police, Johnston, Iowa
Photos by Charlie Neibergall/AP
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