Body cameras

In September 2026 a federal jury in Texas ruled for Alek Schott, who sued Bexar County and its sheriff over a 2022 traffic stop that began with automated license plate reader data. The jury awarded $76, one dollar for each minute he was detained. Schott was stopped in March 2022 driving home from Carrizo Springs; a deputy later admitted the stated reason, lane drifting, was bogus, and Schott’s dashcam showed no drifting. The tip came through a law enforcement WhatsApp group from someone called Kiki with access to license plate reader data, citing Schott’s one-day turnaround. A drug dog alerted and the truck was searched; nothing was found. The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office touts its use of Flock Safety cameras.

On August 4, 2026, Lawyers for Civil Rights filed a lawsuit in Suffolk Superior Court against the Boston Police Department and the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. The suit seeks the release of body-camera and dashboard-camera footage from a fatal police shooting in Roxbury on March 11. Both agencies denied public records requests, citing an investigatory exemption. The lawsuit argues this exemption does not outweigh the public interest in the footage. It asks the court to order release and award attorney’s fees.

Seattle Police Department fired a public records employee after an audit found she arbitrarily pushed back deadlines, lied to requestors, and allowed 911 audio recordings to be destroyed. The employee, hired in 1999, was terminated after a manager found 60 requests with serious issues, including at least two dozen bodycam requests never submitted for redaction. She told requestors she was waiting for a video specialist, which was false. In 22 requests, she failed to preserve 911 audio, which is deleted after 90 days. She claimed unawareness of the retention schedule. The city could face a seven-figure settlement under the Public Records Act.

On July 30, 2026, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) still had not responded to a request for body-camera footage made more than 13 months earlier, according to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Nevada. The request concerned footage from a June 11, 2025, protest. The suit alleges LVMPD demanded a $6,811.33 upfront payment, charged about $85 per hour in one invoice, then switched to $5.67 per minute and later $5.80 per minute for the same footage. The ACLU seeks civil penalties under Nevada’s Public Records Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware settled a lawsuit against Dewey Beach after the town voluntarily released police body-worn camera footage that had been initially denied in response to a public records request. The lawsuit, filed in Delaware Superior Court in March 2026, alleged the town improperly denied the request. The incident occurred in summer 2025, involving young people who reported possible racial discrimination; none were charged. The ACLU argued Delaware law allows access when there is no ongoing criminal investigation. On June 4, 2026, the ACLU announced the footage was provided and the case settled. Andrew Bernstein, ACLU-DE Civic Engagement Counsel, said, “Body-worn cameras only provide transparency and accountability to the extent that the public can actually access the footage.”

In May 2026 Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael Herrod ruled that Senate Bill 1543, the Arizona law that removed Scottsdale voters’ ability to hold a referendum on Axon’s planned headquarters and housing project, is constitutional. A residents’ group, Taxpayers Against Awful Apartment Zoning Exemptions, had gathered enough signatures to put the rezoning on the ballot before the governor signed the bill. The law requires cities of 200,000 to 500,000 residents to allow hotel and multifamily housing on land zoned like the Axon parcel without a public hearing. Herrod wrote that the bill was clearly triggered by Axon’s zoning situation but, because it can apply in other cities, is not a special law. The group announced on June 1 that it would appeal. Scottsdale’s council voted 6-1 on September 12, 2025 to file a notice of claim against the state.

On October 10, 2025 California’s governor signed Senate Bill 524, which requires police officers to disclose when generative AI tools such as Axon’s Draft One were used to write a report. The disclosure must appear at the bottom of each page of the report. Departments must preserve audit trails, including the original AI-generated draft and the body-camera footage or audio that informed it, so that judges, defense attorneys and auditors can see which portions were written by the officer and which by the software. The law bars vendors from selling or sharing the information agencies provide to the AI. It took effect January 1, 2026. By design, Draft One does not retain an edit log showing who wrote what.

In September 2025, an $875,000 settlement in the Evans v. City of San Diego case was approved after an unarmed man was shot with rubber bullets and attacked by a K-9. The separate First Amendment Coalition v. City of San Diego lawsuit remains pending, alleging the city withheld body-worn camera footage required for release within 45 days under California’s SB 1421 and AB 748.

On July 10, 2025 the Electronic Frontier Foundation published an investigation concluding that Axon’s Draft One, which drafts police reports from body-camera audio, is designed in a way that frustrates audits. Reviewing police reports, emails, procurement documents, department policies, software settings and Axon’s own manuals and marketing, EFF found it is often impossible to tell which parts of a report were generated by AI and which were written by an officer, because Draft One does not retain the initial AI-generated draft. Administrators cannot produce a list of all Draft One activity across a department; they can only inspect an individual officer’s audit log or a single evidence item. An Axon representative told one agency there is no filter for Draft One reports. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, which requires a disclosure on each report, isolated more than 3,000 Draft One reports generated between December 2024 and March 2025.

In September 2024, the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office in Washington told police chiefs it would not accept police narratives produced with the assistance of generative AI, including Axon’s Draft One and ChatGPT. Chief Deputy Prosecutor Daniel J. Clark wrote that reports written with AI assistance would be rejected because of the possibility of errors, citing one otherwise excellent report that referred to an officer who was not at the scene. The memo said such products were generally not compliant with Criminal Justice Information Services requirements for now. The office said it expected AI would eventually assist prosecutors in time-saving ways but was not ready to accept AI-assisted reports.

An internal Bridgeton Police Department operations report dated May 2, 2024, documented the loss of approximately 62,000 body-worn camera and in-car video files. The report attributes the loss to a hard drive problem on the department’s WatchGuard server after a botched migration to a new system that went online in July 2022. The department contacted Motorola and Equus for recovery, but neither could provide the missing files. New Jersey law requires retention of body camera footage for at least 180 days, and longer in certain cases. The report does not indicate whether prosecutors or defense attorneys were notified of the loss.

On December 5, 2023, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office stated that Dallas police deleted body camera videos from 2016–2021 due to retention policies, potentially affecting thousands of cases. A March notification led to a review of 113 trial cases involving complainant deaths; 572 of nearly 9,000 video files had been deleted. A November 2022 review found about 52,000 digital files improperly categorized. DPD increased retention to a two-year minimum and added staff. The DA’s office said no deleted video had yet proven material.

The municipality of Augusta, Maine, filed a proposed class action against Axon Enterprise Inc. in US District Court for the District of New Jersey on Oct. 5, 2023. The complaint alleges that Axon’s dominance in the market for long-range conducted energy weapons and body-worn camera systems allowed it to charge higher prices. The lawsuit claims the police department paid inflated prices for Tasers and body cameras.

On April 14, 2023 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Axon could bring its constitutional challenge to the Federal Trade Commission’s structure in federal district court rather than first going through the FTC’s own administrative process. The dispute began after Axon acquired rival body-camera maker Vievu in 2018. The FTC began an antitrust investigation into the acquisition. Axon sued, arguing the proceeding violated its due-process rights and that the FTC’s structure improperly insulated it from the president. A district court had dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds. On October 9, 2023 the FTC dismissed its antitrust complaint against Axon.

The Seattle Police Department cancelled its contract with Truleo, a firm that uses artificial intelligence to analyze body-camera video, on Feb. 7, 2023. The department had renewed the two-year, $400,000 contract on Jan. 15 after a trial showed promise. Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey cancelled it after privacy concerns and criticism from the police union. The department had spent $220,500 of public funds on the contract, which had not been recouped as of March. The cancellation is under scrutiny following a recording of a police union official making comments about a woman killed by an officer.

Albany County, Wyoming, reached a $1.2 million settlement with the family of Robbie Ramirez, who was fatally shot by Deputy Derek Colling in November 2018. The settlement, dated May 2, 2022, came amid allegations that body and dash camera footage was tampered with. Original videos were deleted by a sheriff’s lieutenant in December 2019, violating a five-year records-retention policy. As part of the settlement, a judge issued an order stating there was no legal basis for evidence tampering.

On August 23, 2021, the California Department of Justice announced a stipulated judgment with the City of Bakersfield and the Bakersfield Police Department. A DOJ investigation found a pattern of unreasonable force, stops, searches, and arrests, among other violations. The five-year agreement requires BPD to revise use-of-force policies, prohibit electronic control weapons on handcuffed individuals, improve data collection, and be overseen by an independent monitor. BPD had already outfitted officers with body-worn cameras and volunteered to collect data under the Racial and Identity Profiling Act.

In July 2021, Sam Aguiar, an attorney for Breonna Taylor’s family, filed a lawsuit against the Louisville Metro Police Department. The suit alleges that LMPD may have withheld body-camera footage from the night Taylor was killed on March 13, 2020, and that authorities may have presented misinformation about the existence of such footage. The lawsuit states officers were issued Axon body cameras programmed to activate automatically, and requests release of body-camera information under Kentucky’s public records law. The article notes Louisville had agreed to a $12 million settlement with Taylor’s family in 2020.

The New York Police Department recalled nearly 3,000 Vievu LE-5 body cameras after one exploded on a Staten Island officer. Deputy Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the department would stop deploying the model, citing officer safety. The recall came two years into a $6.4 million contract with Axon, the device maker’s parent company. The NYPD hired an independent forensics investigator and explored replacement options, including the LE-4 and Axon Body Camera 2.

Montgomery County, Virginia, suspended its police body camera program in November 2017 after three years of technical failures. Chief Deputy Sheriff Brad St. Clair said the cameras misidentified footage, recorded from accidental button presses, and interfered with in-car cameras. The department spent $33,000 on the cameras and is discussing reimbursement with vendor L3 Mobile Vision.

On June 29, 2016, a Newark police detective emailed MVC’s chair to say the city was suspending its contract with MVC because the firm’s ‘obligations to the Newark Police Division have not been met.’ Newark had paid MVC $25,000 before the contract was severed. Newark police said the city is partnering with Panasonic for a pilot body camera program. The suspension followed failures by MVC to host training sessions and provide working cameras.