Colorado’s second-highest court ruled last week that Lakewood is obligated to release body-worn camera footage of police fatally shooting a 17-year-old girl, notwithstanding her surviving family’s objections.
A three-judge Court of Appeals panel interpreted a key transparency requirement in Colorado’s landmark police accountability law from 2020. Judge Timothy J. Schutz wrote that legislators crafted “a delicate balance” in directing the public release of body cam videos that capture a person’s death.
On the one hand, “the recordings depicting deaths in high-profile cases have profoundly impacted the public’s perceptions and spurred legislative action surrounding law enforcement’s use of force. On the other hand, the cost of releasing graphic and disturbing recordings includes the intrusion into the privacy interest of those depicted,” he wrote in the July 10 opinion. “But it is the General Assembly’s purview to draw those lines.”…