Central Wisconsin law enforcement struggle to keep up with surge in requests for police video footage

Karen Madden, Wausau Daily Herald
·6 min read
A Minnesota police officer points to an image on his computer that was made by the body camera, left, that he was wearing during a shoplifting investigation. Law enforcement agencies in central Wisconsin say an increase in open records requests for video from police officer body cameras and squad car cameras has created a backlog in some departments as they must review all footage before it is released and redact or blur out some information.

Advances in technology like Facebook have allowed law enforcement agencies to reach out to communities directly, and police body cameras and cameras in their squad cars have improved safety, their ability to serve the public and are used in training. But along with those benefits have come some problems.

The Wausau Police Department uses Facebook to tell stories about the department and its members.

"We feel really good about our department, who we hire and what we stand for," Wausau Police Chief Matthew Barnes said. "We have people all over the country and internationally follow our page. We have fun doing it."

Law enforcement agencies will use body camera and squad camera videos for training purposes, Barnes said. Officers can watch videos of calls and discuss ways they can improve. The videos also help when a citizen files a complaint against an officer. When a complaint is filed, Barnes said he can pull up the body camera footage from the interaction that led to the complaint and determine quickly whether it's justified.

That technology and an increase in social media platforms have also caused open records requests to skyrocket at police and sheriff's departments in central Wisconsin, and in some cases, they are having a difficult time keeping up with those requests.

'It’s difficult for us to keep up with the amount of records requests'

The problem is open records no longer include only paper reports, Barnes said. The body cameras officers wear when investigating a crime and the cameras in their squad cars also are considered part of the record.

Barnes used an example of four officers going to a domestic disturbance and staying at the scene about an hour. Each officer would have an hour of video and each officer's squad car also would have an hour of video. If there is an open records request for everything connected to the call, someone would have to watch eight hours of video to be sure there isn't anything that would need to be redacted. There might be a juvenile in the video who would have to be blurred out or personal information that came across the radio in the empty squad car that would have to be redacted, Barnes said.

"It's difficult for us to keep up with the amount of records requests we get, so we get some frustrations from community members," Barnes said.

In 2022, the Wausau Police Department received 1,700 open records requests. This year, they've received 2,800, Barnes said. To keep up with the increasing demand for records and increasing amount of time it takes to deal with video records, the Wausau Police Department requested an additional employee for 2024 to handle open records requests, Barnes said. The position has been tentatively approved, but likely won't be filled until the middle of the year.

Stevens Point had about 1,200 requests in 2022 and 1,500 requests this year, Police Lt. Joseph Johnson said.

"Some are quite time consuming, but the records (staff is) able to maintain things and get them out in a timely manner," Johnson said. "Ultimately, it is an open records request. If we collect it and we are able to release it, that is what we'll do."

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Social media creators boost increase in records requests

The people requesting records also have changed, Barnes said. People who make a living running social media channels scan law enforcement records for what they hope will be interesting stories and submit open records requests for those reports and videos.

He said his department will get weekly requests for call logs from social media creators. They go through the call logs and pick what they think will be a good video.

Portage County got quite a few requests after the department posted a video on Facebook of a deputy removing a bobcat that was caught in the grill of a vehicle, Portage County Sheriff Mike Lukas said. They also got requests for a traffic stop that got outlandish, he said. Lukas said he doesn't know how social media creators find out about some of the videos they request.

Marshfield Police Chief Jody Geurink said his department also is getting more open records requests, but the department has been able to keep up with them. There are some TikTok creators who focus on central Wisconsin and have made quite a few requests to Marshfield, Geurink said.

The social media outlets seem to want to get videos that have people doing irrational or over-the-top things. They request a lot of chases, Geurink said.

"We've been pretty good at keeping up with it," Geurink said. "We release what we can. If we can't redact personal information, we don't release it."

Software has made it easier to redact for some departments

The challenging part of the open records requests is the software, Wood County Sheriff's Office Captain Charlie Hoogestegar said. Some systems have software that makes it easier to redact than other systems, he said. All minors and victims need to be redacted from videos released under open records requests.

"Obviously, when new stuff comes out and technology advances where it's easier to redact, we can do more," Hoogestegar said.

The Wood County Sheriff's Office still burns DVDs to fill open records requests that include videos, Hoogestegar said. Some departments have gone to keeping videos in a web-based system and send an authorization to the requester to access the videos.

Law enforcement agencies can charge requesters for locating information for an open records request, but they can't charge for doing redactions, Marathon County Sheriff's Capt. Ryan Weber said.

"The amount of time we're spending redacting video and audio is tremendous," Weber said.

A web-based portal reduces costs and improves efficiency, Weber said.

Portage County started using body cameras in the last year. The software the department has is getting more friendly when it comes to making redactions, Lukas said.

The Marathon County Sheriff's Office wants to provide transparency and not make local residents wait longer for records, but the department fills requests in the order they come in, Weber said. If a YouTuber in Colorado makes a request that takes a lot of time, it will be handled before the requests that come in after it, Weber said.

Marathon County has had about 2,300 open records requests this year, but the staff is keeping up with them, Weber said. It currently takes 3.3 days to fill a request, which is a good average, he said. Some do take longer. A request related to the Kenneth Juedes homicide case took about two months to fill, Weber said.

Contact Karen Madden at 715-345-2245 or kmadden@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KMadden715, Instagram @kmadden715 or Facebook at www.facebook.com/karen.madden.33.

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This article originally appeared on Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune: Central Wisconsin police struggle to meet requests for video footage