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Police Department Charging TV News Network $36,000 For Body Cam Footage (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes with news that the NYPD charged a local television station $36k to view police body camera footage. Ars reports: "As body cams continue to flourish in police departments across the nation, an ongoing debate has ensued about how much, if any, of that footage should be made public under state open-access laws. An overlooked twist to that debate, however, has now become front and center: How much should the public have to pay for the footage if the police agree to release it? News network NY1, a Time Warner Cable News operation, was billed $36,000 by the NYPD for roughly 190 hours of footage it requested under the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Now the network is suing (PDF) the police department in New York state court, complaining that the price tag is too steep. The network said the bill runs 'counter to both the public policy of openness underlying FOIL, as well as the purported transparency supposedly fostered by the BWC (body worn camera) program itself.'"
Thus, access to the videos, at rate not restrictive enough to prevent its distribution, is a requirement fair play cannot do without.
If a viewing tax restricts the footage from being released, then cameras are worthless except to protect the innocent law enforcement officers.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
And this here is part of the question around costs. I doubt we are talking about raw dumps of data here. Instead I suspect that someone has to go through every second of video, make sure that there is nothing seen by the camera that shouldn't be seen, ie police data on a computer screen. Then do they go through and blur the faces of uninvolved people, number plates etc? They probably don't need to if the recording was made on a street and there could be no reasonable expectation of privacy, but what about when the footage is in a private premises, particularly a multi-dwelling building such as an apartment.
Ugh, now that I think about it there are huge amounts of issues around releasing any video that shows anything interesting at all. To the point that I wonder if sealing them with out a court order isn't a better place to start.
Isn't that Cam footage from tax payer bought cameras worn by city employees who receive their salary from tax funds? How the hell do they justify charging that kind of money?
Same way my company charges $160 an hour for me. Video has to be redacted. Privacy laws yo.
This is a fishing expedition and the media should pay up.
Wrong.
Years ago, it could cost you as much as $10 per page for a copy of a police report or any other document from a government office. This was, allegedly, to cover the time spent by the employees making copies. Lawsuits were filed and the courts agreed -- public employees are already getting paid by the taxpayers and there is no justification for charging anything above and beyond the actual copying cost (paper, toner, etc). Government agencies were forced to substantially reduce the amount they charged for copies.
Video from police cams is no different. The people doing the editing/redacting are already getting paid by the taxpayers. The only additional cost is the physical media that the video is put on in order to be distributed and that is the only cost that should be paid by someone who wants a copy of the video.
How do you identify people who can be trusted not to reveal confidential information that, if revealed, may cost someone their lives?
Just being 'TV folk' does not mean that someone can be trusted.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
How do you identify people who can be trusted not to reveal confidential information that, if revealed, may cost someone their lives?
I don't have an opinion at the moment, but would like to be more informed of the situation.
Just exactly how can first-person video of what a cop sees cost someone their life if revealed?
Also, can you comment on how *likely* that scenario would be?
Being able to monitor police actions is a very real benefit to society with huge value. We can determine whether the policeman is lying, whether the plaintiff is lying, whether the department's investigation is honest, and whether - as a whole - we should modify existing procedures based on irrefutable evidence.
We need to balance the value to society with the privacy of the individual.
> the people doing the editing/redacting are already getting paid by the taxpayers. The only additional cost is the physical media
The charge does seem a bit high, but there absolutely is some additional cost to NYPD. We can estimate that finding, ccopying, and redacting all the pieces of video might require about 400 hours. At 40 hours per week, that's 10 employee/weeks. 10 weeks of actual work is about what you'll get for three months of salary, with vacations, holidays, and sick time. So one video tech (and a lawyer?) can do this job in three months.
NYPD didn't already hire a video tech to sit there and do nothing for three months. To get this job done, they'll need to hire someone, perhaps the new won't be the person doing the work, but the new hire might do a job that would otherwise be done by the person pulled away to do this.
The salary of the new hire is about 65%-75% of the total cost of having them- there's also extra insurance and benefit costs, the employer's payroll taxes, unemployment taxes, worker's comp, etc. So the total cost to NYPD should be roughly equal to four months of pay for the person doing the work.