NRS 289.830

Nevada does not leave body cameras to each agency to decide. The statute is a requirement: a law enforcement agency “shall require uniformed peace officers that it employs and who routinely interact with the public to wear a portable event recording device while on duty.”^[1] It was added in 2015 and amended in 2017 and 2019.^[1]

That makes the question on a Nevada county page a different one from the question in most states. It is not whether the sheriff has body cameras. It is whether the sheriff has the written policy the statute also requires, and whether that policy contains the six things the statute lists.

Every agency “shall adopt policies and procedures governing the use of portable event recording devices,” and the statute names what they must include:^[1]

• Activation whenever an officer responds to a call for service, or at the start of “any other law enforcement or investigative encounter between a uniformed peace officer and a member of the public.”
• No deactivation until the encounter concludes.
• A prohibition on recording general activity.
• Privacy protection for people in a private residence, people reporting a crime or giving information anonymously, and people claiming to be victims of a crime.
• Retention of not less than 15 days for any video recorded.
• Disciplinary rules for officers who fail to operate the device per policy, who “intentionally manipulate” a recording, or who “prematurely erase” one.

The retention floor cuts both ways and is worth reading carefully. Fifteen days is a minimum, not a maximum, so an agency may hold footage far longer and many do. What the statute guarantees a resident is a fortnight in which to ask.

Asking for the footage

The access rule is written into the same section. “Any record made by a portable event recording device pursuant to this section is a public record,” and it may be “requested only on a per incident basis.”^[1] A request for a month of an officer’s recordings is not a request this statute contemplates; a request about one incident is.

Where a record contains confidential information that cannot be redacted, it is “available for inspection only at the location where the record is held.”^[1] That means going in person rather than being refused.

Which agencies this covers

The section defines the term rather than leaving it open. A law enforcement agency here is a county sheriff’s office, a metropolitan police department, a city police department, a city or town department, division or municipal court that employs marshals, the Nevada Highway Patrol, or “a board of trustees of any county school district that employs or appoints school police officers.”^[1]

School district police are named in the statute. On a site organised by county, that is easy to miss, and it is one of the places we have not looked yet in Nevada.