Article 6TNCZ New Ohio Law Allows Cops to Charge $75/Hr. to Process Body Cam Footage

New Ohio Law Allows Cops to Charge $75/Hr. to Process Body Cam Footage

by
hubie
from SoylentNews on (#6TNCZ)

upstart writes:

New Ohio Law Allows Cops To Charge $75/Hr. To Process Body Cam Footage:

Ohio residents pay for the cops. They pay for the cameras. Now, they're expected to pay for the footage generated by cops and their cameras. Governor Mike DeWine, serving no one but cops and their desire for opacity, recently signed a bill into law that will make it much more expensive for residents to exercise their public records rights.

And it was done in possibly the shadiest way possible - at the last minute and with zero transparency.

[...] Reporter Morgan Trau had questions following the passage of this measure. Gov. DeWine had answers. But they're completely unsatisfactory.

"These requests certainly should be honored, and we want them to be honored. We want them to be honored in a swift way that's very, very important," DeWine responded. "We also, though - if you have, for example, a small police department - very small police department - and they get a request like that, that could take one person a significant period of time."

Sure, that's part of the equation. Someone has to take time to review information requested via a public records request. But that's part of the government's job. It's not an excuse to charge a premium just to fulfill the government's obligations to the public.

DeWine had more of the same in his official statement on this line item - a statement he was presumably compelled to issue due to many people having these exact same questions about charging people a third time for something they'd already paid for twice.

No law enforcement agency should ever have to choose between diverting resources for officers on the street to move them to administrative tasks like lengthy video redaction reviews for which agencies receive no compensation-and this is especially so for when the requestor of the video is a private company seeking to make money off of these videos. The language in House Bill 315 is a workable compromise to balance the modern realities of preparing these public records and the cost it takes to prepare them.

Well, the biggest problem with this assertion is that no law enforcement agency ever has to choose between reviewing footage for release and keeping an eye on the streets. I realize some smaller agencies may not have a person dedicated to public records responses, but for the most part, I would prefer someone other than Officer Johnny Trafficstop handle public records releases. First, they're not specifically trained to handle this job. Second, doing this makes it a fox-in-the-hen-house situation, where officers might be handling information involving themselves, which is a clear conflict of interest.

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