Law enforcement officers in many Kansas cities are being equipped with body cameras, but it’s unlikely that the public will ever see the video footage from them unless someone spends thousands of dollars to persuade a judge to release it.

A bill in the Kansas House of Representatives that would allow police to withhold the video from the public indefinitely was passed unanimously out of the judiciary committee earlier this month and has strong legislative support. The bill is now awaiting a full hearing by the House.

That bill, which covers not only video footage from body cameras but also video from police car dash cameras, designates the video as part of a criminal investigation that can be released only at the discretion of law enforcement or through a court order.

In Kansas, unlike in other states, police agencies and prosecutors only rarely if ever choose to release investigative records, even after a case has been adjudicated.

The body camera issue has gained significance nationwide in light of numerous police-abuse cases that have dominated headlines in the past two years.

When police abuse has occurred, officials have often withheld details while videos taken by bystanders have revealed the facts almost instantaneously. Social justice advocacy groups have urged that law enforcement officers wear body cameras to ensure that evidence is readily available when police abuse allegations are raised, without having to rely on bystander footage, which is only available if a concerned citizen with a camera happens to be nearby.

But others contend that releasing the body camera videos would release details that should not be public, such as the faces of innocent bystanders, the inside of people’s homes and conversations that officers have with one another while working or taking a break that might not pertain to criminal cases or traffic stops.

Legislatures across the country have been wrangling with the issue of how to make the video footage public or whether to keep it secret.

In Lawrence, Police Chief Tarik Khatib said last fall that the department was weighing the pros and cons of wearing body cams.

Khatib said police officers have an excellent relationship with the community and court system, so “the need for body cameras is not as urgent as it might be might be in other communities.”

Khatib also noted that the body cams are expensive; it could cost $150,000 to outfit the department’s officers. He estimated it could cost another $150,000 every three to five years for technology replacements. In addition, additional personnel would be needed to work with the cameras, Khatib said at the time.

Sgt. Trent McKinley on Friday said the department has not yet purchased body cameras. He said Khatib was out of the office and could not be reached for comment Friday.

In an odd twist in Kansas, the House bill that would give law enforcement the discretion to release videos has the support of not only law enforcement proponents but also public records advocates — those people who generally fight to keep all government records open for pubic viewing.

Open records advocates say supporting the bill is in a sense supporting the lesser of two evils: Limited access is better than no access.

“It could have been much worse,” said Max Kautsch, a Lawrence attorney who focuses on First Amendment rights and open government. (Kautsch has handled open-records lawsuits for the Journal-World.)

It could have been worse because a bill introduced last year and another one this year would have closed the video footage permanently without the opportunity to ask a judge to release the footage, Kautsch and others said.

The bill requires the footage to be considered a record under the Kansas Open Records Act as part of a police investigation.

The bill would allow someone who is the subject of the video and his or her attorney to view it at the police station. Police, under the bill, are allowed to charge a “reasonable” fee for the service.

Kautsch said that it could cost thousands of dollars for someone from the public to file a lawsuit to ask a judge to release the video. In one case involving a Johnson County drug raid, a couple spent a year and $25,000 to obtain a police investigation file.

“While it is certainly true that going to court is less than ideal, no such option would have been available under the original bill or the initial substitute,” Kautsch wrote on his blog, “Fresh Takes on the First Amendment.”

“The existing bill is leaps and bounds better,” he wrote.

The bill is called House Substitute for Substitute for Senate Bill No. 18.