How Ohio police justify charging hundreds of dollars for bodycam video

[ecstatic]

11. There has to be a middle ground here

That law needs to be tweaked or struck down entirely. There are several alternatives. The state of Ohio could contract with a nonprofit or private firm that handles those requests on their behalf. Automatically upload and index all footage, and when any footage is requested, the external company would redact any sensitive information and then fulfill the requests.

Or, police departments could charge high volume requesters. For people requesting footage of more than one incident per year, if the additional footage requested is not related to incidents or cases involving the requesters, their loved ones or clients, they could be asked to pay or join a subscription plan in order to retrieve more footage.

Or, the police departments can be proactive and start posting the redacted footage themselves for profit on YouTube or selling the content on their websites. Anyone using that content on their own channels would then have to pay for licensing rights, and it would be a mostly automatic process due to YouTube's copyright technology. The profit made could then be used for hiring additional staff to fulfill requests.

Regardless of which option Ohio goes with, regular citizens deserve access to these records. From my understanding, open records are federally mandated, and any charges for fulfilling request should be reasonable.