Confusion follows proposal to pay fee for copies of police recordings
SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- At Mon. evening’s South Bend Common Council meeting, the board moved bill No. 43–25 forward to the Personal & Finance Committee for a second and third reading at the next meeting.
The bill looks to establish fees up to $150 per video for those wanting to receive a hard copy, like a flash-drive, of law enforcement recordings, such as body or dash-cam footage.
“This is something that the Indiana general assembly decided back in 2016 that the charge for the direct costs of reviewing and redacting law enforcement recordings was warranted to allow municipalities to charge,” said city attorney, Jenna Throw, while giving a presentation to the committee on the bill at Monday’s Personal & Finance meeting.
“My understanding is that we’ve had body cameras in the city since approximately 2018 and in the last few years, one of the attorneys that primarily handles public records requests, especially from the police department, observed that this provision in the law that lets us charge for the review of law enforcement recordings would be something beneficial to implement within the city of South Bend,” said Throw.
Council member Dr. Oliver Davis said he was one of the ones who pushed for body-cam footage back in Dec. of 2014 until it was put in place in 2018.
“We pushed this in December of 2014. That’s before I had all the grey hair, so we’ve been working on this issue for literally 11 years. Through all of the different upheavals in our country… so I’ve been very concerned on any issue that will hamper the issue of body cameras,” said Davis.
During her presentation, Throw explained the change is in the incorporation of the labor costs involved in review, saying it typically takes a significant portion of time for city attorneys to go over the footage.
“The review and redaction of law enforcement recordings… is a significant portion of the time that it takes to respond to public records requests generally… one of the attorneys in our office who works with these requests very frequently indicated that where redactions are required in a video, on average, it can take approximately 3 times the video length,” said Throw.
Councilman Davis tells ABC57 those who review the footage are already on salary pay, while Throw did not make herself available to comment.
“We have a fee that the attorneys receive, and their salaries and so it’s not gonna go to their salaries to make it more or less, and so this is public dollars already,” said Davis.
Davis said he still has questions on the bill and wants to hear from the community ahead of the second and third reading at the next Personal & Finance Committee meeting.
“Directing those comments to our city attorney… they are the ones proposing it, to the city council, to me, to anyone on the council… we are public servants,” said Davis.