Buried on page 72 Ohio’s new HB 315 is a provision that will make it harder to get body camera footage from police officers. As reported News 5 Clevelandthe new law would allow police officers to charge people who file public records requests for body camera footage. Charge? Up to $75 per hour and no more than $750 total.
That’s a lot of money for a public records request.
Here is the actual text of the relevant part of the bill:
“A State or local law enforcement agency may charge the applicant the actual cost associated with the preparation of the video for inspection or production, not to exceed seventy-five dollars per hour of video produced, nor seven hundred fifty dollars in total. As used in this subdivision, “actual cost,” with respect to videos only, means any costs incurred by a State or local law enforcement agency in viewing, obfuscating, or otherwise obfuscating, editing, uploading, or producing the videos, including but not limited to the storage medium on which the record is produced, staff time and any other relevant overhead costs necessary to fulfill the request.”
The bill would also allow officers to charge applicants before officers begin processing the video. “A state or local law enforcement agency may include in its public records policy a requirement that the requester pay an estimated actual cost before beginning the process of preparing a production inspection video,” it said.
The law faced a lot of opposition from the local media and voters. The governor and police argued that jointly cutting video for public use takes away from them and valuable resources from the police.
“No law enforcement agency should have to choose between diverting resources from officers on the street in order to shift them to administrative tasks such as lengthy video surveillance reviews for which agencies receive no compensation — especially when the requester has seen a private company that wants to make money off these videos,” Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said in a press statement.
Marion, Ohio Police Chief Jay McDonald he told the Ohio Capital Journal that this was partly an attempt to prevent the police from cutting clips for YouTubers. “They want domestic violence, they want drunk driving, they want bar fights,” MacDonald said. “Processing that body camera in those kinds of requests takes hours and hours and hours of work, and that makes it really difficult for the media, the lawyers, the citizens who are making the requests.”
It’s true that there’s a cottage industry of YouTubers and streamers who cut body cam footage for viewing. It’s also true that a fee of as much as $750 could keep them out of business in Ohio. It could also hurt independent journalists and smaller newsrooms that rely on body camera footage to hold police to account.
It could also prevent vulnerable citizens who have interacted with the police from seeing a recording of that interaction.
Last September, Wisconsin signed Law 253 into law. It’s similar to Ohio’s law, but it’s more narrowly aimed at people who would make money from body camera footage. While this affects YouTubers, it also affects journalists. Texas, Floridaand several other states charge fees for processing bodycam footage.
The Ohio law is not a blanket requirement of state police departments, just a limit on what they can charge. Each department will have to decide for itself what, if any, to charge for releasing the tape to the public. Cleveland, for his part, said he was giving up for now.
“We are currently reviewing … we need to do our own research before making any policy,” city spokesman Tyler Sinclair he told News 5 Cleveland.
Sinclair added that at least journalists will get the bodycam footage for free. “Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of democracy and we strongly believe in the key role of traditional media in holding the government accountable,” he said. “As such, we do not plan to charge members of the traditional press as we highly value our television, radio, print and digital media partners.”