Photo by Bayne Froney | Cronkite News
Public records advocates say an Arizona law that allows police departments to charge hourly rates to review body-worn camera footage before releasing it is leading to massive fees for the public and potentially illegal charges.
But the law’s main proponent said that’s just a sign that it’s working as intended, because the whole point was to charge enough money for the video to deter frivolous requests.
Last year, the Arizona legislature passed a measure that allows any county, city, town or political subdivision of the state to enact a one-time fee of $46 “per video-hour reviewed” for public records requests to law enforcement agencies that seek footage from body-worn cameras.
The measure, by Republican state Sen. John Kavanagh, a former New York police officer, was passed largely along party lines and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in June 2023.
Now, the implementation of the new fee is not universal and agencies across the state have varying levels of fees. The Arizona Mirror gathered the fee schedules of a number of law enforcement agencies across the state to gauge how the law is being applied and found some instances where it may be being abused.