HOUSTON — Body cameras were initially touted to improve transparency and accountability of law enforcement, but KHOU 11 Investigates found dozens of Texas agencies are using a loophole to keep the public from ever seeing those and other videos.
“The body cam is just an illusion of transparency because the things that happen on that body cam will sometimes never see the light of day,” citizen watchdog John Gray said.
Gray records and posts about police activity on his Facebook and YouTube channel, “Brazoria County Scanner.” He’s all too familiar with the struggle to get police video.
His request for police video was among nearly 600 videos the Texas Attorney General allowed agencies to withhold last year after those agencies said they don’t have the technology to edit confidential information.
“And I’m denied every time because they say they don’t have that capability,” Gray said.
Gray asked the Angleton Police Department for dash cam and body cam video after one of his social media followers asked for help, saying she was pulled over for running a stop sign and her car was searched without cause.
“I wanted to see two things... Did she run the stop sign? (That) should be evident on the dash cam. And secondly, what was the probable cause for making the young lady get out of her car… so they could search it?” Gray said. “I was denied access to all those answers.”
His request was denied because the city said it couldn’t redact confidential information, according to city and AG records.
Gray’s request wasn’t the only one. City of Angleton attorneys told the AG’s office 11 times last year that it doesn’t have the “technological capability” to redact confidential information from police videos. In each of those cases the AG ruled that Angleton “must withhold the video recording in its entirety.”
That’s the most of Houston-area agencies, and a KHOU 11 analysis of attorney general letter rulings from 2023 found 120 Texas agencies denied 588 requests for government videos – dash cams, body cams and bus videos among them – because they didn’t have redaction capabilities. In 98% of those cases, “motor vehicle information” – driver’s licenses and license plates -- was listed as confidential information agencies couldn’t redact.
“They can't take and edit or blur sometimes a 5 or 10 second picture of a driver's license,” Gray said. “They’re saying they can’t edit that, so I don’t get any of the video.”
In many of those rulings, the AG cited a 1983 decision that ruled, “editing of excludable material from a video tape poses serious practical difficulties.”
A lot has changed since the days of VHS tapes, said Joseph Larsen, a Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas director. He added that continuing to allow agencies to withhold entire videos today is “astonishing” and “ridiculous.”
“They’re avoiding scrutiny. They’re avoiding the public actually knowing what’s going on. There’s no other way to put it,” Larsen said. “And they’re hiding under some 40-year-old ruling, and the attorney general is letting them get away with it.” More recent federal rulings and guidance about releasing bodycam videos “have shifted the burden to the government to explain why teenagers can ‘insert cat faces over the visages of humans’ in social media posts but government agencies cannot similarly redact its video records.”
“It would be astonishing to me in 2024, that the video software that police departments have don't have that capability,” Larsen said, adding later that, “It’s the easiest thing in the world to manipulate video… I just Googled the type of services available. It’s ubiquitous. It’s everywhere.”
Angleton police continue to claim they can’t, and Chief Lupe Valdez said the software from their bodycam vendor would cost more than $14,000.
“Budget wise, it’s not in our budget to do that,” Valdez said.
KHOU 11 Investigates found Angleton PD posted a body cam video to its Facebook page a few months ago of a crash where officers heroically pulled the driver out of the burning car. Portions of it are blurred.
“We paid someone to do that,” Valdez said.
Valdez denied that they purposely only release videos where his officers look good and withhold others where they’re scrutinized.
“We go by what our attorney tells us to do. We’re not trying to hide nothing from anybody,” Valdez said.
First Amendment Attorney Larsen watched the video and said it showed something else.
“When they're heroes, they'll show you the video. When they're villains, they don't want you to see the video,” he said. “You can’t have it both ways.”
Body camera technology is still relatively new, but other states have also seen agencies claim a technology loophole and closed it early. The Illinois Attorney General ruled in 2016 that “a public body's assertion that it lacks the technological capability to make redactions is not a valid basis for denying a request for these videos.”
“Law enforcement agencies must be able to perform the required redactions to body camera footage or obtain assistance from an outside source,” the 2016 ruling reads.
Larsen said Texas agencies should work the same way and use contractors if necessary.
“They're required to provide a cost estimate and the requester can look at the cost estimate and say, ‘yeah, I'll pay it’ or 'no, I won't pay it,’” Larsen said. “But the governmental body has to offer that.”
Along with Angleton, a handful of other area agencies have also claimed they don’t have the ability to redact video, and records show the AG sided with local agencies this many times last year:
· 4: Cities of La Marque, Humble, Dickinson, Wharton, and Brenham
· 3: Cities of Sealy and Waller, Montgomery County Constable Precinct 4, and Houston ISD
· 2: Cities of Brookshire and Kemah
· 1: Cities of Freeport, Manvel, Galveston, Stafford, Surfside; Galveston County and Fort Bend sheriff’s offices; Harris County Emergency Services District #9; and Montgomery County Constables Precincts 3 and 5.
However, all those agencies combined don’t compare to the top denier in the state – VIA Metropolitan Transit – the public transit authority in San Antonio. The agency denied 64 requests for video because it said it didn’t have the technological capability to redact.
Larger local law enforcement agencies like the Houston Police Department and Harris County Sheriff’s Office routinely release police videos and did not use the technology loophole last year, according to AG records.