NY1 is suing the NYPD over access to 190 hours of footage from the body-camera pilot program — because the department wants the news channel to pay $36,000 for just a sampling of what the cameras have recorded.
A reporter for the cable-TV news station sent a Freedom of Information Law request to the NYPD’s legal bureau last April for unedited video files for a total of five weeks in 2014 and 2015.
The NYPD said it could provide only redacted clips from the cameras, at a cost of $36,000.
NY1 balked, saying the charge was “excessive” and “a bar to public access,” according to the Manhattan Supreme Court suit.
Reporter Courtney Gross wrote to the NYPD that “keeping the footage ‘under a cloak of secrecy’” thwarts efforts to foster better relations between civilians and police.
A spokesman for the city’s Law Department said, “We will review the complaint once we are served.”
The body-cam pilot program, promoted by Mayor de Blasio and Public Advocate Letitia James, operates in six police precincts across the city.