Public regularly denied access to police officer videos
IOWA CITY, Iowa — The video is brief but disturbing: An officer is seen striking an unarmed suspect with his handgun as the man falls into the grass. An autopsy would later show he died from a gunshot to the back of the head.
After the death last July of 26-year-old Daniel Fuller in Devils Lake, North Dakota, investigators described the video to his grieving relatives. But for days, weeks and then months, they refused to release it to the family or the public. They did so only after a prosecutor announced in November that the officer did not intend to fire his gun and would not face criminal charges.
"It took forever for them to release the video because they kept saying it was an ongoing investigation," said Fuller's older sister, Allyson Bartlett. "I don't think they wanted pressure from the community."
Her experience is typical. An investigation by The Associated Press has found that police departments routinely withhold video taken by bodyworn and dashboardmounted cameras that show officer-involved shootings and other uses of force. They often do so by citing a broad exemption to state open records laws — claiming that releasing the video would undermine an ongoing investigation.
During the last five years, taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to outfit officers' uniforms and vehicles with cameras and to store the footage they record as evidence. Body cameras, in particular, have been touted as a way to increase police transparency by allowing for a neutral view of whether an officer's actions were justified. In reality, the videos can be withheld for months, years or even indefinitely, the AP review found.
To be sure, some departments voluntarily release videos of high-profile incidents, sometimes within days or weeks. They also are forced to share them during civil rights lawsuits or air them when suspects face trial. Many also routinely release videos that show officers in a positive light, such as when they rescue people from accidents, fires and other dangers. But how requests are handled when they are requested by citizens, reporters and government watchdogs varies widely.
The AP tested the public's ability to access police video for Sunshine Week, an annual celebration of open government, by filing open records requests related to roughly 20 recent use-of-force incidents in a dozen states.
They were met with a series of denials and failed to unearth video of a single incident that had not already been released publicly. Some videos could be released in coming months or years once criminal and disciplinary investigations are concluded. By then, the public interest in knowing what happened may have waned significantly.
In rejecting or delaying the requests, most law enforcement agencies and prosecutors cited exemptions that allow them to keep records of pending investigations secret. One county claimed the exemption would allow it to keep the video of a motorist's fatal shooting secret forever — even though the investigation has concluded and cleared the deputy involved.
Critics say the exemption is often misapplied to keep from public view video that might shine an unfavorable light on the actions of officers. The exemption is intended to protect sensitive details about investigations that might tip off suspects that they are under scrutiny or alert them to what evidence police have obtained. But when officers shoot or otherwise use force on suspects, they know their actions are the focus of the investigation and often have access to the videos of the incidents.
"It is for that reason that the investigative records exemption literally makes no sense and should have no place when it comes to police body camera footage. It is a square peg in a round hole," said Chad Marlow, an expert on laws governing body cameras at the American Civil Liberties Union. "We didn't know that would end up being the get-out-of-foia free card for police departments, but it has certainly turned into that."
Authorities say they have good reason for withholding video during investigations, such as preventing the memories of witnesses from being tainted or sparking protests with an out-of-context snippet of a deadly encounter. But the problem, said former federal prosecutor Val Van Brocklin, is that "there is no national standard of when and how this stuff gets released."
"It's such a mish-mash, and that creates a problem with expectations," she said. ___ In West Virginia, a prosecutor withheld a video that led to the firing of two state troopers for allegedly beating a 16-year-old suspect. In Georgia, a county sheriff's office refused to release video of a 22-yearold man who allegedly shot himself to death while struggling with police, an explanation that has been questioned and sparked protests.
In Atlanta, where officers were recently criticized in an audit for failing to use their body cameras as intended, the department would not release video of an officerinvolved shooting that happened last summer, saying the officer could potentially still face disciplinary action.
"I see it all over the nation that police departments use this catch-all of 'ongoing investigation' to basically throw up a stone wall in front of those that might like to find out the truth," said attorney Jonny Hibbert, who is representing the family of an 18-year-old Atlanta man who was shot and killed by an offduty officer after allegedly stealing his car. His request for any video of that incident was recently denied.
The department in Sugar Land, Texas, which recently released dramatic video of officers rescuing a woman from a lake, refused to divulge footage of a 2016 struggle in which a man alleges he was beaten and severely injured by officers. In Seagoville, Texas, the department would not release video showing an officer using a stun gun to subdue a teenager brandishing a toy gun, even though it had publicized the incident as a textbook example of officers showing restraint. The department denied access because AP didn't know the name of the teen involved in the Oct. 4 incident. It said that piece of information must be provided to request police videos under Texas law.