A Boulder County District Court judge ruled Aug. 12 that the City of Boulder cannot charge fees for body camera footage of alleged officer misconduct under a Colorado police accountability law.
The ruling is expected to make it easier for residents to access video evidence of police use of force and potential misconduct. It also effectively compels the city to release a trove of body camera footage related to the fatal shooting of Jeanette Alatorre by two city officers on Dec. 17, 2023.
Yellow Scene Magazine, which covers Boulder County and the Denver metro area, filed the lawsuit after the city requested that the magazine pay $1,425 for footage from a 13-minute segment of the shooting incident. The lawsuit argued that the city was charging “prohibitive sums of money,” effectively shielding “unedited video footage from disclosure.”
“This ruling reaffirms that Boulder can’t avoid basic police accountability by hiding behind a paywall,” Dan Williams, a lawyer with the local civil rights firm Hutchinson Black and Cook who is representing the magazine, told Boulder Reporting Lab in an email. “We look forward to the prompt release of the body-worn video that Yellow Scene requested months ago.”
Civil rights lawyers said such fees violated the 2020 Colorado police accountability law, the Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity Act, which was enacted following national protests over police killings and aimed to make it easier to access video footage of police use of force. The law does not include any provisions related to fees.
“The public release of [body-worn camera] footage promptly after a police misconduct claim enhances accountability and public transparency, two key goals of the Integrity Act,” District Court Judge Robert R. Gunning wrote in the Aug. 12 ruling. “As this case demonstrates, the imposition of significant fees as a predicate for public release thwarts these twin objectives.”
The district court ruling does not set a statewide precedent. However, Jeff Roberts, executive director of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said he hopes other law enforcement agencies take note.
“This is a very important ruling for police accountability and transparency in Colorado,” Roberts told Boulder Reporting Lab in an email. “Letting law enforcement agencies charge the public and news organizations hundreds or thousands of dollars for body-camera footage of alleged officer misconduct would defeat the purpose of the Law Enforcement Integrity Act’s mandatory footage-release provisions.”
The City of Boulder argued in a legal motion that fees are necessary to recover costs associated with blurring and muting sections of footage for privacy and other reasons. The police department cited a separate state law that allows law enforcement agencies to charge “reasonable fees” for records and typically charges about $30 per hour of body camera footage for “research and review.” The total footage related to the Dec. 17, 2023 shooting could require 267 hours of review, costing a total of $8,016, according to the city’s response to records requests.
Judge Gunning rejected this argument, in part because Yellow Scene’s request for body camera footage was made under the Law Enforcement Integrity Act.
“Critically, the Act is silent about fees,” Gunning wrote. “Thus, the plain language of the Integrity Act does not authorize Boulder to impose a fee for producing unedited [body-worn camera] footage pursuant to a request made under the Integrity Act.”
Under the judge’s ruling, the person requesting body cam footage must specify that the request is filed under the Law Enforcement Integrity Act, which requires a prior complaint about the incident. As a result, the police department can still charge for body camera footage in many cases.
The city could appeal the ruling.
“We are concerned that the central finding places an undue burden on municipalities, and we will be considering what, if any, next steps we might take,” Sarah Huntley, a spokeswoman for the city, told Boulder Reporting Lab.
Alatorre was shot and killed by two city officers after residents leaving the North Boulder Rec Center reported that she had pointed what appeared to be a gun at them. She ignored officers’ commands to drop the gun and walked onto residential side streets, according to body camera footage. Officers fired less-lethal bean bags at her, but they didn’t appear to have an effect. She later sustained eight rifle shot wounds and died at the scene. The gun was later determined to be an air pistol designed to resemble a more powerful 9-millimeter handgun.
In March 2024, District Attorney Michael Dougherty decided not to file criminal charges against the two officers who shot Alatorre. The decision followed an independent investigation, which determined that the officers had not committed any crime that could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
