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.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a controversial bill into law that could charge the public hundreds of dollars for footage from law enforcement agencies, including body cameras.

[...]

Around 2 a.m. during the 17-hour marathon lame duck session, lawmakers passed H.B. 315, a massive, roughly 450-page omnibus bill.

In it was a provision that could cost people money to get access to video from police and jails. Law enforcement could charge people for the estimated cost" of processing the video - and you would have to pay before the footage is released. Governments could charge up to $75 an hour for work, with a fee cap of $750 per request.

[...]

The policy was not public, nor had a hearing, prior to being snuck into the legislation.

That's pretty ugly. It's also a clear indication those pushing this measure knew the public wouldn't like it, hence the last-minute subterfuge tied to an apparently must-pass bill shoved through the legislation before its Christmas recess.

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.

Now, that's just the opinion of a non-cop governor. But cops are saying exactly the same stupid thing about the new fee for body cam video processing.

Mike Weinman with the Fraternal Order of Police said this new law would help smaller municipalities that already struggle with staffing.

Whoever is in charge of their public records, that person might be pulled off the road to do these things," Weinman said. So that means there's a person who's not responding to calls, who's not out there being proactive in the community."

To be fair, this stupidity comes from a cop union rep, but these reps are almost always current or former cops. This says the same thing: without charging $75/hour, smaller agencies might have to pull officers off patrol to process video for records requests. Equally as stupid as Gov. DeWine's assertions and equally (and willfully) ignorant of the reality.

Again, no cop should be handling records requests because of the conflict of interest, much less the lack of specific skills. Beyond that, there's the fact that the state could easily have increased funding for public records handling, just as easily as it decided everyone should have to pay more to exercise their First Amendment right to access information. But legislators (and the cops who back them) don't want more accountability or transparency. They want to erect barriers that limit their exposure. So, the end result is a law that allows law enforcement agencies to recoup" the costs of processing, even if the cost of processing is actually much lower or already covered by their existing budgets.

This argument isn't much better:

Marion Police Chief Jay McDonald, also the president of the Ohio FOP, showed me that he receives requests from people asking for drunk and disorderly conduct videos. Oftentimes, these people monetize the records on YouTube, he added.

Moving past the conflict of interest that is a police chief also being the head of a police union, the specific problem with this argument is that it suggests it's ok to financially punish everyone just because a small minority of requesters are abusing the system for personal financial gain. Again, while it sounds like a plausible argument for charging processing fees, the real benefit isn't in deterring YouTube opportunists, but in placing a tax on transparency most legitimate requesters simply won't be able to pay. And that's the obvious goal here. If it wasn't, this proposal would have gone up for discussion, rather than tacked onto the end of 315-page omnibus bill at the last minute. This is nothing but what it looks like: people in the legislature doing a favor for cops... and screwing over their own constituents.