Spokane County says a YouTube cottage industry is forcing them to consider charging a fee for body cam footage from the sheriff's office.
Police recordings get quick clicks on YouTube and other social media platforms. But Spokane County Public Records Coordinator Tony Dinaro says it takes a long time to do the proper redaction for body cam recordings.
"We do have a lot of requesters who run monetized YouTube channels and they make very voluminous requests for body camera footage," he said at a commissioner meeting this week. "Because that has really slowed down our public disclosure process in the sheriff's office, we looked at this possibility of charging in order to recoup some of that time."
Dinaro said according to his team’s calculations, any third party requesters should pay 78 cents per minute of recording.
"Hopefully that can help bolster that department if the requests keep coming in at the rate that they are," he said.
Employees spend at least five minutes per one minute of recording, Dinaro said, redacting victim’s faces or other sensitive information not included in the public records act.
"So, blacking out people's faces and or muting sound potentially depending on who is in there," he said. "The types of redactions they're doing are largely victims, specifically juveniles, DV offenses frequently—we can redact victim identity, things like that."
Anyone involved in a body cam recording would still be able to get the footage for free. People can also watch that redacted footage for free if they come to the sheriff’s office in person.
Washington state statute does allow agencies to charge reasonable fees for public records.
"Looking at the fees from other agencies across the state, we are kind of right on par with the amounts that we have proposed to charge in the cost study," Dinaro said.
Dinaro says Spokane County is one of the only agencies in the state that doesn’t charge a fee, which attracts a lot of YouTubers. He expects a fee would discourage those kinds of requesters.
Spokane County will hold a public hearing on the proposal on Tuesday, March 24 at 2 pm.
