TEXAS OBSERVER
By Michael Barajas
The senator who drafted the sweeping-but-little-noticed body camera law that the Texas Legislature passed in 2015 called his bill a blueprint for other states wanting to establish baseline standards and help fund police departments that hadn’t yet adopted the technology. But one vaguely worded line in the law also gave Texas’ body cam-wearing cops this assurance: if they ever shoot someone, they get to review their own footage before answering any questions about the incident.
At least that’s how two of the largest Texas police departments, San Antonio and Houston, interpret it. Thanks to the law’s vague wording, Dallas police take the policy even further, letting cops who shoot people review footage taken from every officer on scene before they give a statement.
The discrepancy highlights an unexpected downside for police reformers championing body cams, which, depending on how departments use them, could actually help cops avoid accountability. Civil rights groups like the ACLU argue that letting officers review any body cam footage before investigators even ask them what happened amounts to “poor investigative practice” that departments would never use on other suspects. Some fear the policy lets cops get their story straight about a police shooting before putting anything on record.