Commonwealth Court today issued an opinion (Pennsylvania State Police v. Michelle Grove) holding that “video recordings of interaction between law enforcement officers and members of the public in a public place” are not exempt from disclosure and, thus, are public records under the Right-to-Know Law. Such recordings are commonly referred to as dash cam videos or MVRs (“mobile vehicle recordings”).
Senior Judge James Gardner Colins authored the opinion, which held that “as documentation of law enforcement officers’ conduct in carrying out their duties, MVRs are at the core [of] the RTKL’s purpose of enabling the public to ‘scrutinize the actions of public officials, and make public officials accountable for their actions'” (quoting Pennsylvania State Police v. McGill, 83 A.3d at 479).
The case was remanded to the Office of Open Records for further review related to the audio component of one of the videos and Pennsylvania’s Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, aka the Wiretap Act.
More coverage:
Open Records in Pennsylvania 