WASHINGTON — Parents shouldn’t be alarmed by police officers wearing body cameras in local schools, Montgomery County Councilman Craig Rice says.
There’s already a slew of cameras in the buildings, capturing images of students and staff on school property.
At a meeting of the Montgomery County Council’s Public Safety Committee, Brian Acken, the police department’s director of information management and technology, said the images captured on body cameras are uploaded to a secure site.
The images can only be viewed on county equipment, “so you can’t look at it from home,” Acken said. “You can’t look at it at Starbucks. You can’t look at it on your phone.”
The reviewing process is tracked and logged. If someone tries to delete the video, the system will demand passwords that were previously submitted. Even if a user successfully deletes footage, it remains available for another seven days in case the command was a mistake or unauthorized.
Much like the school cameras, the footage from body cameras is subject to federal privacy laws, said Robert Hellmuth, the county school system’s head of security.
In cases where body camera footage might be part of a police investigation, Acken told council members that redactions could take a variety of forms. Identifying features could be blurred and voices could be “masked” so only investigation targets are audible on any given tape.
Montgomery County Police have used the body cams this summer. With a sample size of 76 cameras, three school resource officers will have their cameras up and running on Monday.
That shouldn’t change the game too much.
“Every young person that has a phone has a camera with them,” said councilman Sidney Katz. “There was a time nobody would take your picture. Now, it’s every 15 seconds.”
WTOP’s Kate Ryan contributed to this report.
