New Jersey Assembly Gets it Right!

The New Jersey Assembly recently crafted, and unanimously passed, a bill authorizing police officers to review BWC footage prior to writing a report (see article). The bill contains language that allows for the viewing of video except when it is related to a complaint, any use of force, discharge of a firearm, in-custody death and specified internal affairs complaints. This strikes a fair balance between full access under any circumstances and no access under any circumstances. Proponents of the latter approach want to deprive law enforcement from viewing the video as they would any other piece of investigatory data. This is an over-reaching approach to get to what they really want which is to prohibit officers from viewing video after incidents exempted in the NJ Bill. This "all-or-nothing" approach is counterproductive. The NJ Assembly got it right! Let's hope that Governor Murphy, who issued a conditional veto, reconsiders and gets it right too.