The Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department is proposing a $150 fee for the release of body camera footage. During Monday’s county commissioners meeting, Sheriff Jeff Richwine explained that County Attorney Kevin Tankersley and his staff have written up an ordinance for the county council’s consideration next week.
“It answers all the legal questions, as far as who gets and who has access to all the police videos that we’re getting,” Richwine told the commissioners. “And I just think it’s going to be a good program.”
Richwine said the reason the proposed fee is so high is that it takes a lot of work to prepare the videos for release. “There’s things that we can’t put out,” he explained. “It has to be redacted. Somebody in my office has to really watch these videos as least three times to make sure. You know, you go through once, ‘This has got to be redacted.’ Then you look at it again to make sure that you haven’t missed something. So we want to be real careful with that, and we plan on doing that, so there’s a lot of time involved.”
The sheriff added that his department has the software to process videos that are created going forward, but the two requests the department has received so far are for older body camera footage. Richwine said he’s still looking into options for handling the existing videos.
He felt the new system that’s being proposed shows transparency on the part of the county.
