Ohio Governor to Let Cops Charge Public $750 for Bodycam Recording

Buried on page 72 of the new Ohio edition HB 315 is a provision that will make it harder for cops to retrieve body camera footage. As reported by News 5 Clevelandthe new bill would allow cops to charge people who file public records requests for body camera footage. The 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 costs associated with the preparation of a video for inspection or production, not to exceed seventy-five dollars per hour of video produced, nor seven hundred and fifty dollars in total. As used in this section, “actual costs,” with respect to video recordings only, means all costs incurred by the State or local law enforcement agency to view, obfuscate, or otherwise hide, edit, upload, or create video recordings, including but not limited to to the storage medium on which the record was created, staff time and any other relevant overhead costs necessary to fulfill the request.’

The bill would also allow cops to charge applicants before cops have started processing the video. “A state or local law enforcement agency may include in its public records policy a requirement that the requester pay the estimated actual cost before beginning the process of preparing a production inspection video,” it said.

The bill met with a lot of pushback from the local media and voters. The governor and police say cutting videos for public consumption takes them and valuable resources away from police.

“No law enforcement agency should ever have to choose between diverting resources for officers on the street to administrative tasks like lengthy video editing reviews for which agencies are not compensated — and this is especially true when the requester of the video is a private company that wants to make money off these videos,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said in a press statement.

Marion, Ohio Police Chief Jay McDonald said the Ohio Capital Journal that it’s partly an attempt to prevent cops from cutting videos for YouTubers. “They want domestic violence, they want drunk driving, they want bar fights,” McDonald said. “Processing that body camera in requests like this takes hours and hours and hours of work, and it really makes the job of the media, of the lawyers, of the citizens who are requesting the requests, more difficult.”

It’s true that there is a cottage industry of YouTubers and streamers who cut together footage from TV cameras for viewing. It’s also true that a $750 fee could stop them from doing business in Ohio. It could also hurt independent journalists and smaller newsrooms that rely on body camera footage to hold police accountable.

It can also prevent vulnerable citizens who have had an interaction with the police from seeing the footage of that interaction.

Last September, Wisconsin signed Act 253 in law. It’s similar to Ohio’s law, but it’s more narrowly aimed at people who would benefit from the body camera recording. While this affects YouTube users, it also affects journalists. Texas, Floridaand several other states charge fees for processing body camera footage.

The Ohio law is not a general requirement of the state’s police departments, only a limit on what they can charge. Each department will have to decide for itself what, if any, to charge for giving a tape to the public. Cleveland, for its part, said it was holding back for now.

“We are currently reviewing … we need to conduct our own study before adopting any policy,” city spokesman Tyler Sinclair said News 5 Cleveland.

Sinclair added that at least members of the press will get bodycam footage for free. “Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of democracy, and we strongly believe in the critical role traditional media play in holding government accountable,” he said. “As such, we have no plans to charge members of the traditional press as we value our television, radio, print and digital media partners.”