COLUMBUS (WCMH) — Legislation to be introduced at the Ohio Statehouse Tuesday would establish that police body camera videos are public record with several exceptions deemed necessary for privacy.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Niraj Antani, says the bill takes steps to protect the privacy rights of citizens while balancing the need for transparency and accountability.
“It’s the Wild West right now in the sense that we have thousands of municipalities and townships and counties who all have law enforcement agencies and they can all decide whether it’s a public record or not,” Antani said. “That’s not right.”
The bill would establish four areas of exception in which a police body camera video would not be released as a public record:
- A confidential investigatory record
- A video within a private home
- A video within a private business
- A video of a sex crime victim
Gary Daniels at the Ohio ACLU says the bill strikes the right balance and protects the privacy of people within their own homes.
“Body cameras also have the potential, particularly for people who are technologically savvy, to pick up lots of private information,” Daniels said.
Rep. Antani says a citizens home is their castle inside which they should have a right to privacy.
“If it’s a public record all of a sudden any criminal or creep can now see where you keep you’s gun, where your wife keeps her jewelry and where your daughter sleeps and that is a severe invasion of privacy,” Antani said.
Rep. Antani said if there is an adversarial police encounter inside a private residence that includes a use of force, that part of the video would be considered a public record.
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said he supports the legislative proposal. The Columbus Division of Police will have 1,300 officers outfitted with cameras by the end of 2018.
“We must manage the videos for transparency, while also protecting privacy,” Ginther said.
