Less than two months after an Akron police officer shot her 15-year-old son in the back on Thanksgiving night, Ashley Green said a controversial new law that would allow Ohio police departments to charge up to $750 to release body-camera footage is “a slap in our face.”
Green, the mother of Jazmir Tucker, joined her family’s attorneys and others whose loved ones were killed by police to speak out against a provision of a bill quietly signed into law earlier this year by Gov. Mike DeWine.
HB 315 allows law enforcement agencies to charge $75 per hour, up to $750 total, to process and release videos from body-worn cameras, police car dash cameras and jail surveillance videos. Those videos are considered public records and many agencies provide them in response to public records requests at no cost – like the Akron Police Department does currently – or for little cost.
In a statement after the bill was signed into law with no public hearings, DeWine said he wanted to avoid a hypothetical scenario where an overworked law enforcement agency diverted resources for officers on the street and moved them to administrative tasks in order to process and redact videos.
“I have very little sympathy for that perspective,” attorney Robert Gresham said of that argument during a Thursday afternoon press conference held on Zoom. “… If you don’t want people looking into your conduct, stop shooting people.”
Gresham is an attorney for the Cochran Firm, which represents Tucker’s family and others alleging wrongdoing by police officers. He said the law “is absolutely an attempt to prevent transparency” and urged for it to be repealed.
Green, Tucker’s mom, said it is important to have access to police footage because “anybody could make up any lie they wanted to.” Akron Police Officer Davon Fields, who killed Tucker, did not turn on his body camera in time to meaningfully document what happened in the lead up to the shooting. It was only activated when another police cruiser activated its lights.
While the new law allows law enforcement agencies to charge up to $750 to release videos, they are under no obligation to do so.
The City of Akron does not charge to process police videos and only charges for the cost of CDs or jump drives when people request to receive the videos that way. A current Akron ordinance requires the city to release footage within seven days when police officers kill or cause “serious” bodily injury to someone.
Mayor Shammas Malik’s spokesperson, Stephanie Marsh, said in a statement on Tuesday that the city is committed to transparency but that the administration will look into the new law.
“In the coming days and weeks, we will be reviewing the details of the new bill and plan to speak with other communities and stakeholders about the law before making any decision about changes to our process,” she wrote. “Until the City has completed its due diligence, however, it will maintain its current practices with respect to charges associated with body worn camera footage.”
At the Thursday press conference, Tucker’s mother was joined by Shawna Barnett, whose brother, Andre Hill, was murdered by a Columbus police officer in an incident the city paid $10 million to settle; Chenea Ross, whose husband, Colby Ross, was killed by a driver being pursued by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office; and Eric Lindsay, who sued West Chester police for racial discrimination.
Barnett said that the law is “unfair to lower-income communities” who are both more likely to have negative encounters with police officers and who would be less likely to be able to afford the new processing costs law enforcement agencies are allowed to charge.
Access to body-camera footage was integral to her family’s civil litigation and the officer’s criminal prosecution, she said: “It could have been his word against ours, and not what we see.”
