Judge Rules Police Dash Cam Videos Can Be Kept Secret
SEATTLE — KOMO News is taking the fight for the right to access public records to the state’s highest court.
Late Thursday, attorneys representing KOMO News asked the state Supreme Court to overturn a King County judge’s ruling in favor of the Seattle Police Department’s right to deny the media – and the public – access to their dashcam videos and keep them sealed for three years. The three-year mark is also when the department’s system is set to automatically delete those videos.
In past months, the Problem Solvers have investigated numerous stories involving police dashcam video, including the case of two Longshore workers who were handcuffed by police while waiting for their shift to begin, the arrest of a computer security expert for refusing to produce identification and the incident in which police officers showed dashcam video to a man’s boss, nearly costing him his job.
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