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Florida may enact standards for police body cameras

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

Law-enforcement agencies that use body cameras may soon have to follow certain guidelines.

The Florida House on Friday passed a bill that would require police to develop standards for the use of body cameras and how the audio and video files will be stored.

The bill (HB 93) does not mandate that police must use body cameras.

Most Florida law-enforcement agencies don’t use the devices. However, there’s been a push nationally to increase their use in the wake of police shootings.

State Rep. Shevrin Jones, a West Park Democrat, says his bill is needed to improve relations between the public and police. His bill also requires law-enforcement agencies to have training procedures in place for officers who use the cameras.

A similar bill is moving in the Florida Senate.

Before joining Florida Politics, journalist and attorney James Rosica was state government reporter for The Tampa Tribune. He attended journalism school in Washington, D.C., working at dailies and weekly papers in Philadelphia after graduation. Rosica joined the Tallahassee Democrat in 1997, later moving to the courts beat, where he reported on the 2000 presidential recount. In 2005, Rosica left journalism to attend law school in Philadelphia, afterwards working part time for a public-interest law firm. Returning to writing, he covered three legislative sessions in Tallahassee for The Associated Press, before joining the Tribune’s re-opened Tallahassee bureau in 2013. He can be reached at [email protected].

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