Ohioans will likely have to pay hundreds of dollars to see police videos after Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill that includes a provision allowing police departments to charge for dashboard, jailhouse surveillance, and body camera footage. DeWine declined to exercise line-item veto power over the provision, citing the burden on small police departments inundated with time-consuming requests for body camera footage. Media organizations, civil liberties groups, and transparency advocates argue that the amendment to Ohio's Sunshine Law, was tucked into a last-minute omnibus bill with no public debate, will make police oversight prohibitively expensive, reports Reason. Gunita Singh of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press calls the amendment "a step backwards when we need to be moving forward on the issue of greater sunlight over body worn camera footage. ... The public and the press rely on Ohio's access provisions to timely receive important government documents ... nothing—especially costly, unnecessary fees—should stand in the way of fostering the transparency and accountability that our public records laws are designed to facilitate,"
Under Ohio's new law, departments can charge requesters up to $75 per hour of footage in labor costs for reviewing, redacting, and uploading it. Total fees are capped at $750, and agencies can choose to release the footage for free. DeWine said, "Law enforcement-worn body cameras and dashboard cameras have been a major improvement for both law enforcement investigations and for accountability ... However, I am sensitive to the fact that this changing technology has affected law enforcement by oftentimes creating unfunded burdens on these agencies." Singh argues that shifting those fees onto the public will have an inevitable chilling effect. A coalition of government watchdog and press freedom groups convinced the California Supreme Court of that in 2020, when the court ruled that agencies must bear the cost of redacting body camera footage. Such footage has become incredibly important in the public debate over policing and criminal justice. As Cleveland's ABC News 5 noted, its investigative reporters "routinely break stories with footage obtained by police. Many of them have to deal with police shootings, such as the 2022 death of Jayland Walker—who was shot nearly 50 times by eight Akron officers."
Comentários