Body cameras and recordings of minors: who can see the footage

Usually not, but the reason depends on your state. The Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Justice Department office that funds body-worn camera programs, explains that states fall into two groups. In one-party consent states, a recording is legal if one person in the conversation agrees to it, and the officer is that person. In two-party consent states, everyone must agree, which is why some of those states, Pennsylvania among them, changed their laws so police could use body cameras without asking.

The same federal page passes along a recommendation from the Police Executive Research Forum that officers tell members of the public they are being recorded unless doing so is unsafe or impractical. That is advice, not a legal requirement. If you want to know, ask: 'Is that camera on?' You are allowed to ask, and the answer is usually yes.

A body camera video of a 14-year-old is not the same as one of a 40-year-old, and the Supreme Court has said so in a related setting. In J.D.B. v. North Carolina (2011), a 13-year-old seventh grader was pulled out of social studies class and questioned for 30 to 45 minutes by a police investigator in a closed room with the assistant principal present. He confessed before anyone told him he could leave. The Court held that a child's age must be part of deciding whether he was 'in custody' (held so that a reasonable person would not feel free to go), which is the moment Miranda warnings are required. A 13-year-old feels the pressure of that room differently than an adult, and officers must account for it.

The Justice Department's body camera guidance points the same direction. It notes that laws on recording interviews with juveniles may differ from the rules for adults, and it quotes an official from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention urging great precautions to protect young people from public release of their footage. Whether your state has turned that into a hard rule is something we could not confirm for every state; your state's juvenile code and public records law are where to look.

Footage is sorted into evidentiary video, which is tied to an arrest or investigation and kept much longer, and non-evidentiary video like a routine stop that goes nowhere. The Justice Department page reports that many departments surveyed by the Police Executive Research Forum keep non-evidentiary video for 60 to 90 days, and it says retention periods should be written into department policy. Many departments post that policy on their websites.

If the officer is a school resource officer recording inside a school, one more law applies. The U.S. Department of Education's student privacy office explains that video created and kept by a school's own law enforcement unit for law enforcement purposes is not an 'education record' under FERPA. That means the FERPA rules that let a parent see and control records do not automatically reach that video, though a copy handed to the principal for discipline can become an education record.