A Fine Example of Why the Public Needs Access to Dashboard Cam Video…

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

A state FOI law working just as it should:

Police video recorded the night a young man was fatally shot in a northeast Arkansas patrol car while his hands were cuffed behind his back hasn’t resolved questions about whether he shot himself in the head as officers said.

Jonesboro police released footage to The Associated Press and other news organizations under a Freedom of Information Act request this week. They released more footage Friday amid questions about why the first batch of video appeared to end before the officers found Chavis Carter, 21, slumped over and bleeding in the back of a patrol car on July 28 as described in a police report. Police have said officers had frisked Carter twice without finding a gun.

Police said the second batch of video occurred after Carter was discovered, but that footage wasn’t immediately available in its entirety.

“There’s still nothing in there about what actually happened with Chavis,” Benjamin Irwin, a Memphis-based lawyer representing Carter’s family, said Friday before the second batch of video had been released.

Filed under: 1. Records that matter, 2. Doc state of mind, 3. Access law | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

Federal Judge: Release Those Guantanamo Videos!

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

A federal judge has ordered the Defense Department to turn over to the court three video recordings showing Guantanamo prisoners being forced out of their cells.

U.S. District Court Judge John Bates’s unusual order came Wednesday in

Guantanamo jog

Guantanamo jog (Photo credit: The U.S. Army)

a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by families of Kuwaiti prisoners being held at the U.S. military-run prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay. Bates said the Pentagon, which is represented in the case by the Justice Department, had failed to offer detailed enough explanations to sustain the government’s position that the videos are exempt from disclosure under the law.

Bates suggested he’d lost patience with the government in the case, noting that he’d given the Defense Department three chances to explain its position but that officials repeatedly offered “inconsistent and confusing” explanations.

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Filed under: 3. Access law | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

The Intersection of Privacy and Access…

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Charles N. Davis

This fascinating and informative post from the wonderful Citizen Media Law Project brings the latest in the ongoing saga of requests for police dashcam videos in Seattle, raising timely issues of law, technology and policing…

A must read.

Filed under: 3. Access law, 7. Electronic records, 8. Officials' perspectives, Transparency | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »