Law enforcement officers hold tremendous power in our communities. With that power comes a responsibility to be transparent and accountable.

One of the most effective tools for ensuring meaningful transparency and accountability is public access to police body and dashboard camera recordings. These videos provide an unfiltered view of police activity and help reveal the truth in situations too often clouded by uncertainty or conflicting accounts.

The Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas underscored this point Nov. 5 in Nephin and LNP Media Group, Inc. v. City of Lancaster, a case seeking access to police body camera footage under Act 22, a state law passed in 2017 to govern access to law enforcement recordings.

Unfortunately, Act 22 was not written with transparency in mind, and in practice, it has served more as a shield than a window.

In this case, LNP | LancasterOnline journalists including reporter Dan Nephin sought access to body camera footage showing city police arresting teenagers who had been riding bicycles in downtown Lancaster on March 2. After a video of the arrests circulated on social media, police faced allegations of excessive force; those allegations were countered by an internal city police use-of-force review that found officers used the minimum force necessary.

Despite repeated and strong public demand for answers and accountability, the police denied LNP | LancasterOnline’s request for access to police body camera footage under Act 22.

It took a lawsuit to recognize the public’s legitimate interest in seeing what happened, and the court’s ruling affirmed what many Pennsylvanians already know: Transparency builds trust and accountability strengthens law enforcement.

That victory was possible only because LNP | LancasterOnline had the backing of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a pro bono legal services organization for journalists and newsrooms in the United States, and its local legal initiative. Without such support, this case would likely have died quietly, like countless other requests rejected under Act 22 — not because the public interest was weak, but because most Pennsylvanians cannot afford to sue their government.

Act 22 eliminated the state Right-to-Know Law’s presumption of access, shifted the burden of proof away from government agencies and stripped away the no-cost, administrative appeal process that exists for most other public records. The result has been nearly a decade of request denials, with almost no litigation to test the law.

That’s why the Nov. 5 ruling is so significant. It appears to be among the first — perhaps the very first — Pennsylvania court decision granting access to police video under Act 22.

Lancaster County Judge Thomas B. Sponaugle weighed the facts, the allegations and the competing interests, and struck a careful balance between confidentiality and the community’s need for accountability.

He ordered the city to release the recordings within 45 days of his ruling. As LNP | LancasterOnline reported, the judge also directed the city to use video editing software to obscure the identities of the juveniles and charge the newspaper reasonable fees to do so.

Law enforcement agencies across the state should take note and adopt proactive transparency practices that reflect this reasoning and careful balance and reject wholesale denials that promote lawsuits that erode public trust and waste taxpayer resources.

The Lancaster County court’s decision is a turning point. Now lawmakers should follow through. Act 22 should be amended to restore the presumption of access and place the burden back on government to justify secrecy. Redaction, not wholesale denial, should be the rule when confidentiality concerns arise.

Other states manage public access to police video without incident, and as a result, their citizens routinely see how officers interact with the people they serve. Those videos often show police acting professionally and honorably. Others reveal when things go wrong, sometimes tragically so. Both outcomes serve the public interest. They build trust, improve training and promote better policing.

Pennsylvania should have the same. Body and dash camera footage was meant to provide transparency, to protect both officers and the public by showing what really happened. Instead, Act 22 has buried that promise behind layers of red tape and insurmountable barriers to access.

Pennsylvanians deserve a law that recognizes the public’s right to know and provides a practical path to facilitate it. The state Legislature should amend Act 22 to restore transparency and accountability and to promote trust between law enforcement and the communities they protect and serve.

Melissa Melewsky serves as in-house counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, a nonprofit trade organization supporting the news media in the commonwealth.

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