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6.D. - Page 17 of 179 The Menlo Park Chief of Police appointed a Citizens Advisory Committee to review and comment on proposed policies and procedures for use of body -worn cameras that met the department's needs but did not infringe on citizens' civil rights. This committee included an individual active in both the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, two organizations active in protecting citizens' privacy and civil rights. 28 The committee recommended acceptance of the Menlo Park policy. (See Appendix E for Body -Worn Camera Policy—Menlo Park Police Department and Appendix F for Body Cameras Menlo Park Police Department Citizens Advisory Committee Report) According to the ACLU, "the challenge of on -officer cameras is the tension between their potential to invade privacy and their strong benefit in promoting police accountability. Overall, we think they can be a win-win but only if they are deployed within a framework of strong policies to ensure they protect the public without becoming yet another system for routine surveillance of the public, and maintain public confidence in the integrity of those privacy protections. Without such a framework, their accountability benefits would not exceed their privacy risks." 29 The Grand Jury acknowledges that further developments are likely, such as new statutes and court decisions interpreting existing privacy and other civil rights laws related to the use of body -worn cameras in the coming years. However, this process is not uncommon in the field of law enforcement generally and there was no indication to the Grand Jury that the evolution of policies regarding body -worn cameras cannot be effectively managed by the local law enforcement community. Further, the Grand Jury suggests that policies such as those developed by Atherton, Belmont, Foster City, Hillsborough, and Menlo Park can serve as templates for other law enforcement agencies. Chain of Custody Concerns Local police policies and the inherent design of the body -worn camera hardware and software severely limit officers' access to body -camera footage so as to protect the chain of custody for its potential use in future legal proceedings. For example, officers have no capability to edit the video except to tag a segment with a case number or an arrest report number, or to assign a criticality status to it. Once the video has been stored, access is typically limited to a select few senior command personnel who are assigned special access codes. An electronic trail is created that tracks who, when, and what was done. Exceptions are typically only allowed when pre -determined non-critical data is scheduled to be purged from system storage after reaching the retention period defined in the department's policies. However, video data that involves legal proceedings, citizen complaints, or which is otherwise retained upon request are often stored indefinitely. The district attorney's office, defense attorneys, and other law enforcement and criminal justice agencies often request copies, which are provided on a separate medium such as a CD-ROM. 28 Officials from the Menlo Park Police Department: interview by the Grand Jury. http://www.menlopark.org/DocumentCenterNiew/7240. 29 Jay Stanley, Police Body -Mounted Cameras: With Right Policies in Place, a Win for All v.2, American Civil Liberties Union, March 2015. https://www.aclu.org/police-body-mounted-cameras-right-policies-place-win-all. 2015-2016 San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury 13