State Legislatures and BWC Funding

This article from the LA Times entitled "A CHP officer shot him 12 times. But with no body cameras, truth is elusive" The story is about the fatal shooting of 21 year old Sei-Jah Riveria in the early morning hours of February 26th, 2025. The article blames the California Highway Patrol for the fact their personnel do not have body cameras. To quote the article: "While there is CHP dashcam footage from that morning of Feb. 26, the shooting itself isn’t captured on camera. That’s because, experts say, the CHP had, until recently, been stubbornly slow in deploying body cameras within its ranks."

This statement is misleading to the reader. The facts are that CHP has wanted BWCs for years but the California State Legislature wouldn't fully fund their deployment. You can read the back ground on CHP's legislative request to fully fund the agency here. A CalMatters article back in March of 2022 discusses the issue further. The "State clearly dropped the ball on body cams" it reads. The article continues by highlighting how California lagged behind other states.

Since 2014, legislatures around the country have been quick to pass legislation requiring police agencies to adopt body-worn cameras. Many of these were unfunded mandates requiring police and sheriff's departments to self-fund the expensive systems. However, when it came to state police agencies funded by the state, things moved much slower. This is the case in California. There are a lot of complexities to fielding body cameras that are integrated with in-car camera systems, especially to a fleet of several thousand vehicles across a very large state. This is not an "overnight" endeavor. This could have been accomplished years ago if the state wanted it. Now CHP, which does lag behind other states, is being called out for being "stubbornly slow". The LA Times has called out the work agency. They should have focused on the legislature history of the issue. I have no doubt that if the CHP body camera and in-car camera integration program had been properly funded in 2018, the shooting of Mr. Riveria would have been captured on video.