Victory! Police Drone Footage is Not Categorically Exempt From California’s Public Records Law

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Video footage captured by police drones sent in response to 911 calls cannot be kept entirely secret from the public, a California appellate court ruled last week.

The decision by the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District came after a journalist sought access to videos created by Chula Vista Police Department’s “Drones as First Responders” (DFR) program. The police department is the first law enforcement agency in the country to use drones to respond to emergency calls, and several other agencies across the U.S. have since adopted similar models.

After the journalist, Arturo Castañares of La Prensa, sued, the trial court ruled that Chula Vista police could withhold all footage because the videos were exempt from disclosure as law enforcement investigatory records under the California Public Records Act. Castañares appealed.

EFF, along with the First Amendment Coalition and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Castañares, arguing that categorically excluding all drone footage from public disclosure could have troubling consequences on the public’s ability to understand and oversee the police drone program.

Drones, also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or unmanned aerial systems (UAS), are relatively inexpensive devices that police use to remotely surveil areas. Historically, law enforcement have used small systems, such as quadrotors, for situational awareness during emergency situations, for capturing crime scene footage, or for monitoring public gatherings, such as parades and protests. DFR programs represent a fundamental change in strategy, with police responding to a much, much larger number of situations with drones, resulting in pervasive, if not persistent surveillance of communities.

Because drones raise distinct privacy and free expression concerns, foreclosing public access to their footage would make it difficult to assess whether police are following their own rules about when and whether they record sensi

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