Police departments in Pennsylvania are behind other states in acquiring body cameras for officers, but it’s not because they didn’t want them.

According to a 2016 U.S. Department of Justice study, nearly half of all the general-purpose law enforcement agencies in the country had BWCs. A lot of this had to do with the ongoing national conversation about police misconduct.

When talking with several central Pennsylvania police chiefs for this story, every one of them cited the events following the 2014 police shooting of unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, as the moment that confirmed their need to have cameras. It prompted a national call to outfit police with body cameras because no video recordings of that confrontation existed and eyewitness accounts of it disagreed significantly.

However, officials across the state would not bring the cameras into departments because of how the Pennsylvania’s Wire Tap Act was written.

Before 2018, the law did not protect uniformed law enforcement officers from being sued or prosecuted for recording people they came into contact with on the job.

Pennsylvania is a two-party consent state, meaning that when recording audio everyone involved needs to consent to the recording unless there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. This applied to police the same way it did the general public.

Harrisburg Deputy Chief Deric Moody gave an example of where the problems arose.

“Imagine being engaged in something active: You’re chasing somebody. That’s the last thing you’re thinking about. Especially if you’re struggling with the person, you’re not thinking, ‘Did I warn everybody I was recording?’” Moody said. “Officers would say, ‘I want no part of that. I could go to jail.’”

This problem was solved during the 2017-18 legislative session when Senate Bill 560, also known as Act 22, was signed into law.

The new language prevents prosecution but does create some limits that departments are using to guide how they will bring body cameras to their department.

According to a PennLive story written when the bill passed the Senate in late June 2017 en route to being signed into law by Gov. Tom Wolf: “The new law puts all conversations with police in the realm of the public arena, meaning officers will no longer have to advise people - even in outdoor settings - that they are being recorded. It means, supporters say, that police are free to do their job.”

It also meant the beginning of police departments considering body cameras for their officers.

Read more: