ACLU urges Gov. Murphy not to sign bill allowing officers to review body cam video before writing report

The American Civil Liberties Union is pointing to a recent Kane In Your Corner investigation to urge Gov. Phil Murphy not to sign a bill that would let police officers review body camera footage before writing up use-of-force reports.
Kane In Your Corner reported last week about the shooting of a motorist in Bloomfield last year. The Bloomfield Police Department said that officers fired their guns after Jeffrey Sutton ran into four officers with his car, causing injury.
Video from officers’ body cameras shows the officers seemingly unhurt after the incident.
The ACLU says that the case shows why the bill was a bad idea.
"Who knows what they would have said about what the intentions were? That might have been a way to corroborate or somehow to align what the video said, to make it work on the report, and then we never would have been any wiser,” says ACLU attorney Karen Thompson.
Even if the bill is signed into law, it technically wouldn’t apply to cases like Sutton’s because shots were fired.
Law enforcement groups have lobbied for the change, saying officers may not remember every detail of a situation.