1. United States
2. Utah
3. Letter

I am writing to demand that you vote against any Department of Homeland Security funding bill that does not include mandatory body camera reform requirements. Body cameras alone are not enough, and I will not support funding law enforcement agencies that refuse to implement meaningful oversight. The evidence is clear: body cameras without proper safeguards enable rather than prevent police violence. In 2019, Louisiana State Police officers beat Ronald Greene to death while wearing body cameras. Officers lied to his family, claiming he died in a car crash. Despite footage existing, the department refused to release it for two years. When leaked footage finally emerged, it showed a trooper wrestling Greene to the ground, choking him, and punching him in the face. Another officer reminded him his camera was on, prompting him to immediately turn it off. Three of the five officers faced no charges due to insufficient evidence. After George Floyd's murder, a review of Minneapolis police footage revealed Derek Chauvin had previously knelt on the necks of other civilians, including a handcuffed Black woman and a 14-year-old Black boy. Supervisors had access to these recordings yet cleared his conduct. A state civil rights commission review of 700 hours of bodycam footage found that a substantive audit could have observed the pattern of abuse and prevented it. Axon, the nation's largest police bodycam provider, stores over 100 petabytes of footage, equivalent to more than 5,000 years of high-definition video. Most of this footage is never watched by anyone. Officers routinely turn off cameras during critical incidents, and departments rubber-stamp use-of-force reports without reviewing footage. Any DHS funding bill must require that officers cannot control cameras during public interactions, mandate routine review of footage by independent bodies, and ensure timely public release of recordings from critical incidents. Without these provisions, body cameras are simply expensive props that protect officers instead of the public. Vote no on any DHS funding that does not include these mandatory reforms.