The sides in a lawsuit over turning over an arrest video to the North Coast Journal of Eureka differ in their assessment of the impact of the California appellate ruling favoring the newspaper. The Journal’s attorney said the ruling would have widespread effect in making police videos accessible in California and other states. The Eureka police chief said that the police officers retained privacy rights especially in instances of personnel investigations and that release of videos would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. (Eureka Times-Standard, July 22, 2016, by Will Houston)
In a press release the Eureka city manage said, withholding the video was done “not to quash transparency but to ensure that the right of privacy of police officers in their personnel records was not eroded.” The court though found that the video was not part of an internal investigation. Wrote the judge, “Adopting the city’s broad reading [of the law] would improperly sweep virtually all [police videos] into the protected category of personnel records … At oral argument, the city claimed dashboard camera videos come within [the class of protected personnel records] because the police department might eventually use the videos to evaluate whether to initiate disciplinary proceedings against a peace officer. We are not persuaded.” (North Coast Journal, July 22, 2016, by Thadeus Greenson)
The ruling came in response to a 2012 arrest of a 14-year-old in Eureka in which the district attorney refused to file charges and a citizen alleged that police used excessive force in the arrest. An investigation eventually showed that the police did not use excessive force. The North Coast Journal asked for the video of the incident under the California Public Records Act and sued when denied the video. (Metropolitan News-Enterprise, July 21, 2016, by Kenneth Ofgang)