Public records

Craig Harriman filed a third lawsuit in Aroostook County Superior Court against the town of Houlton, Maine, alleging officials have not released public data from surveillance cameras removed earlier in 2026. The filing follows multiple Freedom of Access Act requests and two previous court appeals. Harriman seeks the immediate production of remaining records, including emails about the town’s facial recognition video surveillance system, and written explanations for any withheld documents. The town previously depleted its legal budget in 2025 handling FOAA lawsuits.

Stanwood City Council unanimously approved a $40,000 payment as its share of an $80,000 settlement to resolve a public records lawsuit over Flock Safety automated license plate reader camera images. The lawsuit arose from requests by Jose Rodrigues for camera images from Stanwood and Sedro-Woolley. A Skagit County Superior Court judge ruled the cities wrongfully withheld the images, which are public records subject to disclosure, and awarded attorney fees, costs, and penalties. The settlement is split evenly between the two cities.

On Aug. 13, 2026, the Washington cities of Stanwood and Sedro-Woolley settled a public records case for $80,000, split $40,000 each, with Jose Rodriguez, an Oregon resident who had requested Flock camera images from Stanwood in April 2025 and Sedro-Woolley in May 2025. The cities had sought a declaratory judgment that the images were not public records; on November 6, 2025, Skagit County Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Neidzwski ruled they were. After a new state law exempting plate reader footage took effect in March 2026, the cities dropped their appeal, and on July 16 the judge ruled they had wrongfully withheld the records. Cascadia Daily News reported that Rodriguez filed 53 requests to Washington governments between September 2024 and October 2025, that at least 15 jurisdictions paid settlements of $5,000 to $40,000 each, totalling more than $300,000, and that at least 13 recipients cancelled Flock contracts or deactivated cameras. Everett separately approved a $25,000 settlement in June 2026 over a Flock records request.

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.

In August 2026, Business Insider reported that Flock Safety cameras generated 1,427 alerts to the Roseville, California, police department in 2023 and 2024 for vehicles flagged as stolen or tied to felonies, and that a department analysis found 71% of those alerts came from the software misreading the plate. Records showed a 9 read as an 8, and the department reported bad reads to the company dozens of times over four years. Flock said its cameras read more than 96% of characters correctly in optimal conditions and blamed Roseville’s older hardware, higher camera mounting and rear-only capture. No alert led to a stop or arrest because officers must verify plates before acting. The city has spent roughly $450,000 on Flock products since 2020 and continues the contract.

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.

Forbes published an investigation based on public records showing Axon’s Draft One and Form One AI police report tools generate errors: incorrect names, wrong officer locations, and hallucinated details. Officers in Lafayette, Indiana reported the tool increased report completion time, with one officer noting a 30-second form took three minutes to edit. The King County, Washington prosecutor’s office declined to accept AI-generated reports in 2024 because of hallucinations. Axon said the tools are in early access and officers retain control.

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.”

A Canadian truck driver, Gurdeep Gill, plans to sue the city of Temple, Texas, after a police drone crashed into his semi truck on June 2, 2026, on Interstate 35 at West Nugent Avenue, sending him to the hospital. The Cochran law firm filed a governmental notice of liability claim against the city on Gill’s behalf. The city has not released crash-related documents despite multiple records requests, and the Texas attorney general will decide whether the records must be released. A DJI Matrice 30T drone was put out of service around the time of the crash.

In June 2026, Everett, Washington approved a $25,000 settlement with Jose Rodriguez to end litigation over Flock Safety automated license plate reader records. Rodriguez had requested approximately 30 minutes of the city’s Flock data. A Snohomish County judge ruled the recordings were public records, and Everett temporarily paused its Flock camera system. The city had argued the footage was not subject to public disclosure.

On December 4, 2025, the Mountlake Terrace City Council voted unanimously to cancel its two-year contract with Flock Safety, citing community division and public records concerns. The city will still pay $27,000 for the first year of the contract, which was never installed. Mayor Pro Tem Bryan Wahl said the technology “has been weaponized against cities and their residents.” The city appears to be the first in Washington state to fully cancel a Flock contract, though other cities have paused or suspended their programs.

In November 2025, Skagit County Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Neidzwski ruled that Flock-generated images count as public records under Washington law even if police never download them. The ruling followed public records requests by Oregon man Jose Rodriguez, who submitted 53 requests between September 2024 and October 2025. The decision helped trigger Washington’s Driver Privacy Act, which took effect March 30, 2026, limiting retention and exempting ALPR data from public records requests.

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.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation published a guide for journalists, advocates, and community members on obtaining records about Axon’s Draft One, an AI system that generates police report narratives from body-worn camera audio. The guide includes sample public records request language for reports, audit logs, settings, procurement documents, training materials, evaluations, and communications with Axon.

In spring 2024, the California Supreme Court refused to hear Chula Vista’s appeal, affirming an appellate ruling that the city’s blanket refusal to disclose police drone video was too broad. The case began in 2021 when La Prensa publisher Art Castañares filed a public records request for drone footage. The ruling sets a statewide precedent affecting over a dozen California cities using or exploring first-responder drones. Castañares said, ‘Our lawsuit created a statewide legal precedent that improves the public’s access to police records that agencies have tried to shield from disclosure.’

In late 2022, Chesterfield County’s automated record deletion system purged police radio recordings related to Charlotte Carter’s arrests, including communications one hour before and after each arrest. Carter had filed a FOIA request in November 2022 seeking those records, along with a lawsuit challenging a $24,000 cost estimate. The deletions occurred after the FOIA petition was filed but before the county disclosed the records no longer existed. In March 2026, Carter’s attorney moved for sanctions against the county and county attorney Julie Seyfarth. Trial arguments are scheduled for June 2026.

The City of Tacoma agreed to pay $311,607 to settle a public records lawsuit over its handling of records about a cell site simulator (Stingray) manufactured by Harris Corporation. The settlement, reached September 29, 2021, includes court-awarded penalties and an additional $75,000. The lawsuit was filed in 2016 by the ACLU on behalf of three residents, alleging violations of Washington’s Public Records Act. The dispute involved 11 withheld records and an operator’s manual. The city stated it believed resolving the matter was in the best interests of all parties.

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.