Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
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Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#2Phew, for a second there I thought we might have some transparency in our government. Glad to know that in the wake of historic video footage of public abuses, this is being taken away. Our leaders have listened and what they heard horrifies them! So now they don't have to listen, unless you come with a court order, that is.
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#3They realized that they can only claim the camera fell off so many times.
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#4FOIA
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#5Half good, half bad:
House Bill 972 does make such video accessible to people who can be seen or heard in it, along with their personal representatives ― but they must file a request to obtain the footage. If the request is denied, the petitioners must go before the state’s superior court. Requests can be denied to protect a person’s safety or reputation, or if the recording is part of an active investigation.
Current state law establishes that dashcam footage is in the public record, and it doesn’t address body camera footage. But police departments usually consider body camera footage to be part of an officer’s personnel file and thus private. The new law will make body camera footage accessible under the same stringent new conditions that dashcam footage will be.
So, you have to request the footage (Acceptable IMO), but they can choose to deny the request based on safety (okay), reputation (troubling and confusing. I see no reason to protect someone's reputation from themselves. Blur a public version if needed), or if it's part of an investigation (makes sense to me). Making sure departments don't use a loophole to keep officer camera data hidden is a plus.
The only case that comes to mind with regard to safety is if officers enter my residence illegally (e.g. by accident) and catch me in a compromised position. If you couldn't legally be in my house anyway, you sure as hell better not release footage of me to the public while you were there.
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#6FOIA
"... makes police dashboard camera and body camera footage exempt from the public record."
I may be wrong but wouldn't this make the footage exempt from FOIA? (Unless the people involved filed the FOIA request ...)
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#7FOIA
FOIA applies only to federal records; similar state public-records laws have their own restrictions, based on what the state considers publicly-accessible records, and what it considers either protected personal information or sensitive government information; it seems likely that the sharply limited request process identified in the article for access to the police camera footage means that these are not accessible to the general public under the state's general public records law (otherwise, the limited request process would be superfluous.)
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#8Half good, half bad: House Bill 972 does make such video accessible to people who can be seen or heard in it, along with their personal representatives ― but they must file a request to obtain the footage. If the request is denied, the petitioners must go before the state’s superior court. Requests can be denied to protect a person’s safety or reputation, or if the recording is part of an active investigation. Curren…
> if it's part of an investigation (makes sense to me)
This part seems curious to me. Isn't that exactly when a person "who can be seen or heard in it, along with their personal representatives" (e.g. accused person and lawyer) would need access to such footage? Perhaps there is some nuance here about what constitutes an active investigation?
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#9Phew, for a second there I thought we might have some transparency in our government. Glad to know that in the wake of historic video footage of public abuses, this is being taken away. Our leaders have listened and what they heard horrifies them! So now they don't have to listen, unless you come with a court order, that is.
If dash and body cam footage was available easily, you're not gonna like what you see. And people will then be up in arms because they are being harassed for their own bad behavior on camera given to public. I personally want body cam footage to be seen because I know it will cause that backlash and it will show the public how terrible their neighbors are and they'll understand why the police are so necessary (and necessarily rough sometimes) to keep society civil.
Re: Police Camera Footage Will No Longer Be Made Public in North Carolina
#10[deleted]