State Sen. David Haley, D-4th Dist., said on Monday evening that he had drafted a bill that would require police to have body cameras. He had been working on the bill even before the president’s announcement Monday to provide funding for police body cameras, he said.
Previously, Sen. Haley sponsored legislation that would require dash cameras in police vehicles, and that would be kept running especially for a vehicle stop. A bill he introduced about the chain of custody for the dashboard camera recordings never passed the Kansas Legislature, although it once had a hearing, he said.
“Having a camera or recording device that accurately depicts, from the beginning of any incident, throughout it, is only going to help more,” Sen. Haley said. “As a former prosecutor, I would welcome knowing the pros and cons of a pedestrian stop.”
“I very much embrace the initiative that the president proposed today,” he said on Monday. “It is consummate with what I have felt, and introduced in Kansas, for years.”
It would be more expensive not to have body cameras, he believes. When asked about the expense of body cameras, he said, “If you think that paying for a clear recording of what transpires between an officer and an individual, maybe later a suspect, is expensive, try a wrongful conviction suit, or try the response by a community when questions are left unanswered — when people are dead or injured, try the expense of civil unrest.”
He said the use of a body camera at Ferguson might have prevented civil unrest and mistrust. Whatever the one-time expense for body cameras, it would have been very small in comparison to the need to maintain a certain relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve and protect, Sen. Haley said.
He also plans to introduce a bill on hate crimes, he said. After a fatal shooting at the Jewish Community Center parking lot in Overland Park last summer, apparently motivated by hate of an ethnic group, other legislators may be more willing to seriously consider this bill than they have in the past, according to Haley. He said federal charges had to be brought in this case because state law did not address it.
About 10 years ago, Sen. Haley introduced a hate crime bill at the suggestion of activist Alvin Sykes, but it went nowhere through the years, he said.
Sen. Haley also plans to introduce a bill that would make it easier for the Unified Government and other local governments to fill vacancies, by pointing out a method that they could use to do so. This issue was discussed in several previous stories.