Police in New Zealand have never proactively released footage of a serious incident involving them. Zac Fleming asks why.
As police departments across the United States grapple with the fact that the majority of Americans don’t trust them, many states are embracing publicly releasing video footage of serious incidents to try and rebuild trust. But in New Zealand, where trust in police amongst minority communities is also dire, police have never proactively released video of a serious incident, and say they have no plans to change.
New Zealanders have little to no ability to view and scrutinise raw, unedited, objective video footage of serious incidents involving police. This unwavering stance of keeping footage from the public is putting NZ Police at odds with some of their peers, notably the United States, and raises the question – why isn’t footage released in New Zealand?
What footage is available?
Body cameras are the main reason Americans are able to regularly see footage of police incidents, but footage is also regularly released from CCTV cameras, police car dash cameras, helicopters, and sometimes tasers.
But in New Zealand almost none of the thousands of hours of video recorded yearly from CCTV cameras, helicopters, and tasers, is ever released publicly, and NZ Police don’t have car dash cameras or body cameras.
And while body camera use grows in the US - the Justice Department recently announced federal agents are now required to wear them when serving search and arrest warrants - NZ Police say there’s “no plan for their immediate introduction”. A 2018 trial was quietly dropped, reportedly due to resourcing issues, despite public support from the New Zealand Police Association. Newsroom isn’t aware of any surveys around public support of them.
Body cameras aren’t the panacea many hoped - the best study to date showed no statistical difference in police use of force when they were worn - but it’s widely accepted that releasing the footage they record increases trust between police and the public.
The shunning of them by NZ Police is an increasingly anomalous position: body cameras are also widely used in the UK, and parts of Australia and western Europe.
What footage do police let New Zealanders see?
In the US, footage of serious incidents must be released within 45 days in California, 30 days in New York City, and just five days in Washington D.C. After the recent shooting of a 16-year-old girl by Ohio police, body-camera footage was released within hours.
NZ Police start from a position that footage shouldn’t be released. There are “strict regulations” around the “storage, use, and dissemination” of footage, said police’s acting director capability, Jason Ross.
“This includes considerations around privacy, decency, maintenance of the law, and court proceedings.
“In general, these considerations outweigh any public interest in releasing such footage proactively."
In general, but not always; there are contradictions.
Ongoing investigations and court proceedings
A frequently cited reason against release is when footage is part of an ongoing investigation or court proceeding, but this restriction is selectively enforced. In January, police proactively released eagle helicopter video of them arresting a man, despite him being before a court. In contrast, three years on, police are yet to release eagle helicopter video of the arrest of Alo Ngata, who the Independent Police Conduct Authority found died in police custody after “multiple failings” by officers.
It’s highly unlikely that footage will be released until at least early next year, after the coronial inquest, despite Ngata’s family asking the coroner to release it earlier.
But their lawyer, Marie Dyhrberg QC, says it’s for the best - she believes footage should only be released once all investigations and court cases are over.
“I’m old school there… I strongly believe that while a matter is before the court that both sides have to have the protection of fair trial rights,” she said, “We just have a different legal system [to the United States].”
What about Police Ten-7?
Public interest does appear to outweigh police’s considerations when it comes to the television programme Police Ten-7. It’s the only widely available way for the public to view policing, and police have complete editorial control over its content. A police spokesperson said it’s “important to provide viewers an insight into the day-to-day realities of front-line policing" and people’s privacy and decency is protected: “This can include blurring of features and other identifiers including names, registration plates and the like.”
The spokesperson did not address why people’s privacy and decency can’t be protected in similar ways to enable the release of other types of footage like helicopter, CCTV, and taser.
Other instances where privacy wasn’t paramount include police’s recent trial of controversial facial recognition software without consulting the privacy commissioner, and when officers took photos of young Māori who hadn’t committed crimes and uploaded them to a national database. The latter is now the subject of an inquiry.
“I think police genuinely are concerned about privacy,” says Trevor Bradley, a senior lecturer of criminology at Victoria University of Wellington, “but at the same time, that notion of privacy is often used as a little bit of a smokescreen ... because very often when people are requesting footage, it doesn't show police in a very good light. So you can understand why they'd be reluctant to release that.”
Taser footage
One source of footage police are incredibly reluctant to release (as are most police forces worldwide) is tasers. They automatically start recording the moment they’re turned on and have been deployed more than 10,000 times since their rollout in 2010, but none of that taser footage has ever been proactively released publicly.
Police have tried to keep taser footage from the public even when the victim is a goat, arguing (unsuccessfully) that the footage is too distressing to release. Usually though, police are successful in arguing against the release of taser footage on privacy grounds. On rare occasions, judges have made taser footage public.
Police confirmed to Newsroom they haven’t created a policy for when to consider proactively releasing taser footage. There also isn’t a policy for releasing CCTV footage proactively, except for when police need help from the public to identify a suspect.
But they have created policies around how to withhold it, even when it comes to lawyers who are entitled to access. The Police Criminal Disclosure Manual states that defence lawyers can only view footage in-person at a station - they’re not allowed a copy of the footage of their client being tased. Victims, their families, and journalists can view footage via Official Information Act or Privacy Act requests, but that’s only happened four times in the past five years.
Releasing footage to build trust
In the US, the reasoning given for the recent forcing of federal agents to wear body-cameras was that it “builds trust” through “transparency and accountability”. Police, in both the US and New Zealand, are sometimes only held accountable when there is footage of an incident.
Local examples of this include heightened public criticism of the recent doomed-from-the-start Armed Response Team trial after the public began sharing bystander video of the team in action. More recently, a Christchurch officer is facing an investigation after 1News broadcast video, again filmed by a member of the public, of the officer shoving a student to the ground in April.
The American Civil Liberties Union recently told the New York Times: “The beneficiary of the body camera video is intended to be the public at large ... to promote transparency the public should have a right to view the footage.”
The largest police department in the US, the NYPD, agrees: “The benefits of cameras are clear… body-worn cameras serve as a vital part of ongoing efforts to increase trust between the police and all New Yorkers.”
This is important for New Zealand, as Māori are much more likely to report distrust in the police – just 65 percent of Māori say they have full or quite a lot of trust and confidence in police, compared with 81 percent in the majority-white Southland. Police have a goal of a 90 percent trust rating.
Māori are disproportionately policed in New Zealand. Using tasers as an example, as footage of all of taser deployments is available, Māori, despite making up just 16 percent of the population, accounted for half (138) of the 252 people tased in 2019, and were the subject of more than half (582) of the 1015 taser deployments.
“Among some of these communities, they just no longer bother making a complaint or a report because they just don't have any confidence that it's going to be treated seriously or that it's going to go anywhere. And that's a problem for us, because we need these people to be making reports, so we get at least some idea of what's going on,” Bradley said.
For tasers in New Zealand, officers must fill out a Tactical Options Report (TOR) every time they use or present one. Police say the TOR is reviewed by the officer’s supervisor, and that review can, but doesn’t always, involve the supervisor viewing the taser footage. Police say the TOR is also then reviewed by a higher-up, such as an inspector.
But Bradley said such internal oversight does little to help to increase public trust among communities where it’s lacking.
Body camera video can also greatly benefit police by helping to easily exonerate officers who are facing unfounded complaints or allegations of misconduct.
But police told Newsroom that even if body-cameras were introduced, the footage would be treated the same as other sources of video (taser, CCTV, eagle helicopter), and therefore it’s unlikely it would be released: “We are unable to comment on the hypothetical, however any footage from body cameras in New Zealand would be subject to the same considerations (privacy, decency, maintenance of the law) if it were publicly released,” police’s Jason Ross.
Do police want to release more footage?
Police didn’t respond to questions from Newsroom asking whether they agree with their American peers that releasing footage promotes transparency, or whether they would like to release more footage but feel hamstrung by the law.
Police Minister Poto Williams’ office did not respond to a request for comment.
