D.C. Mayor Backs Releasing Certain Police Body Cam Footage – WNEW

dcogcadmin | August 11, 2015

WASHINGTON — District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser has proposed that footage from police body cameras be made available to the public if the encounter with police happened in a public place.

Bowser’s proposal represents a reversal of her previous position that body-camera footage be exempted from the city’s freedom-of-information law. The proposal is meant to break a stalemate with the D.C. Council over public access to such recordings.

Bowser and Police Chief Cathy Lanier had argued that it was impractical to make the footage available to the public because the technology doesn’t exist to efficiently redact videos to protect the privacy of people captured on camera.

The new proposal would make videos exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests [Read More]