Gov. Mike DeWine signed House Bill 315 into law Jan. 2, allowing police departments to start charging for body camera footage. The signing came after pushback from activist groups who claimed the bill would cause a barrier for those who cannot afford the cost.
Athens Chief of Police Nick Magruder said the department plans to start charging for footage. Magruder said the decision was made due to the time-consuming process of rendering the footage and the excess amount of requests the department has to handle.
Magruder said the Athens Police Department receives about 40-50 requests per month, and each video can take up to 2 hours to edit and redact all the sensitive information. Before the department can fill a request, they edit out all personal information such as social security numbers or footage of injured people. This means each video has to be thoroughly checked by the department.
Lori Weisend, the administrative assistant at the APD, processes all the requests, and she spends about 10 hours a week editing footage. Magruder said he thinks the process has become too tedious and takes away from her other job responsibilities.
“It’s not really the point of the money, but it’s the resources and time that it takes to process these body cameras,” Magruder said.
State Rep. Don Jones, who represents the City of Athens, was a co-sponsor of HB 315 and said he supported the body camera amendment to the bill. Jones said he believes it will ensure officers can focus on their duties rather than video editing.
“The goal of this provision is to empower law enforcement to exert their resources on the ground- stopping crime and making sure our communities are safe- not in a back office performing administrative tasks,” Jones wrote in an email.
Gov. DeWine also issued a statement about the signing of HB 315, where he claimed it would help lessen the burden on police departments. DeWine called body camera processing “time-consuming and labor-intensive work” and said law enforcement agencies should be paid for this work.
The signing of this bill has raised concerns about the rights of media organizations, and some groups are worried about the future of public records laws in Ohio.
Catherine Turner is the executive director of Common Cause, an activist group focused on holding the government accountable and maintaining citizens' rights to participate in decisions. Turner said one of her main concerns about HB 315 is how the body camera footage amendment was added last minute with no public hearings about it before the bill was passed.
Turner said she was suspicious the bill was passed in the evening without outside input for the new amendment.
“It’s never a good idea for legislators just to pass things because they think it’s a good idea,” Turner said. “They need the public to weigh in, identify unintended consequences, ways to make it work better and have an opportunity to work through how this will impact the daily lives of Ohioans.”
Turner said the bill could affect many Ohioans who cannot afford the cost of obtaining this footage. The maximum cost is capped at $750, or $75 an hour, but Turner said she believes that could be a huge obstacle for many and a barrier to accessing records which are supposed to be public information.
“These records are public records,” Turner said. “We have body cameras on the police officers for a reason so that we can understand what they’re doing and so that we can hold them accountable.”
Additionally, Ohio media organizations are concerned about the potential cost to newsrooms and their ability to obtain body camera footage.
Monica Nieporte, president and executive director of the Ohio News Media Association, said ONMA is working toward making media outlets exempt when this new law goes into effect.
“We have some concerns that there is broad discretion for how the charges will be figured and the cost to obtain these records could be prohibitive to both citizens and media,” Nieporte wrote in an email. “We will be working to get some amended language introduced that would exempt traditional media from having to pay for body camera records.”
