Counselors: City receives a request for surveillance videos showing the Police Department parking lot on certain dates. Apparently, the PD parking lot is a convenient place to make custody exchanges for divorced parents. My initial thought is that Sec. 24A.8 of the Open Records Act requires a law enforcement agency to make listed records available for inspection, and may deny access to other records. Since the external video camera is not a listed record that must be provided for inspection, the PD can deny access to that record. Anyone dealt with this type of request? Jonathan E. Miller City Attorney City of Mustang 1501 N. Mustang Road Mustang, Oklahoma 73064 Telephone: (405) 376-7746 Facsimile: (405) 376-7721 This email is sent by the City Attorney and may contain information that is privileged or confidential. If you received this email in error, please notify the sender by reply email and delete the email and any attachments. If you are a and officer, employee or agent of the City of Mustang, you should not share this email with others. Sharing this email may result in a loss of the attorney-client privilege.

We got a request from an FOP attorney for all external surveillance video at the PD over a 7 day period between the hours of 0800 and 1700. Here's a segment of my thoughts on that request: The argument would be that the only video surveillance that would exist would be the PD cameras, and that the recordings would qualify as law enforcement agency records under Section 24A.8 of the ORA. Under that statute, LEA records are only "open" if they depict information that fits into 1 or more of 10 subcategories listed under 24A.8(A). If it's dash cam footage, there's a specific statute on that (24A.8(A)(9)) which makes all dash cams per se an open record but with the ability to redact out portions that depict certain things. But that subsection only addresses video from "recording equipment attached to law enforcement vehicles". There is no provision in sub-A that addresses video from recording equipment attached to the building. The only recording that would clearly be "open" from a surveillance video that come to mind would be video that captures us walking an arrestee into the building (since, under 24A.8(A)(1), a LEA record is open if it shows an arrestee physical description, among other things). But unless a crime occurred outside the building and we made an arrest (see 24A.8(A)(2) making records depicting the facts concerning an arrest "open"), I'm not sure that the recording would by default be open. The issue then turns to 24A.8(B), which essentially says that we can, but are not required to, keep all other LEA records confidential. If we do, they can sue and the statute directs a Court to weigh the interest in the person or public in knowing the information against the agency's reason for keeping the recording confidential. Since the request only seeks video depicting what occurred outside the PD - i.e. in public and not in a secured area - I'm not sure we win that fight. One of our issues with the request from the FOP attorney concerned the amount of time and cost related to complying with the request. The person who primarily handled the video system was on ad leave (and, maybe not coincidentally, represented by that FOP attorney) and the only other person who could access the system was a highly paid (hourly) Officer. Because the system is old (and about to be upgraded when we move into a new building - thanks GO Bonds!), pulling all those hours of video in 30 minute increments was going to take a very, very long time with a highly paid officer sitting, staring at a computer as it exported video segments 30 minutes at a time. We got the issue resolved without having to talk about a search fee. My standing advice on LE records that don't fit a category in sub-A is that sub-B says that the Courts weigh our interest in withholding the record against their interest in obtaining it...which means we really need a reason and one that a Court would consider to be legitimate. Withholding something simply because we don't *have *to produce it under sub-A isn't, itself, an interest I would think a Court could find sufficient to deny access to the record(s). Matt On Wed, Oct 20, 2021 at 2:25 PM Jon Miller <JMiller@cityofmustang.org> wrote: > Counselors: > > City receives a request for surveillance videos showing the Police > Department parking lot on certain dates. Apparently, the PD parking lot is > a convenient place to make custody exchanges for divorced parents. My > initial thought is that Sec. 24A.8 of the Open Records Act requires a law > enforcement agency to make listed records available for inspection, and may > deny access to other records. Since the external video camera is not a > listed record that must be provided for inspection, the PD can deny access > to that record. > > Anyone dealt with this type of request? > > Jonathan E. Miller > City Attorney > City of Mustang > 1501 N. Mustang Road > Mustang, Oklahoma 73064 > Telephone: (405) 376-7746 > Facsimile: (405) 376-7721 > > > This email is sent by the City Attorney and may contain information that > is privileged or confidential. If you received this email in error, please > notify the sender by reply email and delete the email and any attachments. > If you are a and officer, employee or agent of the City of Mustang, you > should not share this email with others. Sharing this email may result in > a loss of the attorney-client privilege. > > -- > Oama mailing list -- oama@lists.imla.org > To unsubscribe send an email to oama-leave@lists.imla.org >