By Scott Bennett, Graham County Attorney
As one of 15 county attorneys elected in Arizona, I witness daily how hard law enforcement works across our state.
In rural Graham County, the limited size of our departments sometimes requires sending officers to calls alone, miles from backup. In Maricopa County, numerous departments coordinate together to cover one of the largest urban areas in the U.S.
Thankfully, technologies have been developed to supplement the dedicated work of our police officers. These innovations help officers find missing people, catch unsafe drivers, and document crimes, while bolstering cases my team argues in court to bring offenders to justice.
That’s why I’m urging the Legislature to ensure HB 2917 does not move forward.
The bill’s intentions merit discussion. Arizonans have legitimate questions about how public safety technology is used, and we should have an open dialogue on this issue.
But in this case, the bill is written so broadly that it could threaten basic tools most people would never want to restrict, such as police body cameras and courthouse security systems.
The problem is that the bill uses a sweeping definition of law enforcement technology that could cover almost any device.
Then it treats all of those different technologies as if they were the same as automated license plate readers, for instance, requiring systems to capture only vehicle plates and mandating that data be deleted within three minutes if there’s no match.
A body camera can’t meet those requirements. Neither can a security system in a jail, a school, or a stadium. It would even undermine the ability of cities and counties to conduct everyday traffic-flow studies.
The practical result won’t be a sensible protection of privacy. It will be the elimination of vital, time-tested methods that keep our communities and officers safe.
A stark example of this happened down the highway from my office just last year.
A Mississippi man suspected of murdering his mother and two sisters was on the run. After license-plate readers clocked his vehicle right here in Graham County, Department of Public Safety officers pulled him over. Thankfully, officers were alerted to this high-risk individual thanks to information shared across law enforcement agencies, and when the man exited the vehicle, firing at officers without warning, law enforcement was prepared, and no police officer was hurt.
I am certainly not arguing for zero oversight of criminal investigative tools. Reasonable guardrails make sense. But this bill, as written, goes too far.
Not only could it hamper investigations and force important evidence to be excluded from court, but, most importantly, this legislation will leave communities like ours with fewer tools to protect people.
Don’t handcuff our law enforcement officers for no reason. If so inclined, please reach out to your representatives and share your opinion on HB2917.
Graham County Attorney Scott Bennett was elected in 2020. He currently serves as chair of the Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys’ Advisory Council and is Arizona’s delegate and board member to the National District Attorneys Association.
Editor’s Note: Originally introduced early in the session by Representative Marshall as a measure to create a “firefighter cancer registry”, the bill was subsequently heavily amended via a “strike-everything” amendment (striker) pushed by Senator Jake Hoffman. It completely transformed into sweeping anti-surveillance legislation.
The transformed version of HB 2917 aims to implement the nation’s most comprehensive restrictions on local and state-level surveillance.
The bill has sparked an intense, ongoing clash between privacy advocates and law enforcement:
- Supporters argue the bill protects free citizens from a creeping “police state” and unchecked government tracking. They emphasize that emerging artificial intelligence tools make it far too easy for the government to spy on everyday citizens without cause.
- Opponents, including various Arizona police departments and county attorneys, argue it drastically threatens public safety. They claim that a three-minute data-deletion window makes it impossible to use Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) to solve crimes, track fleeing suspects, or broadcast critical Silver Alerts for missing, vulnerable adults.
