Local Law Enforcement Having a Hard Time Keeping Up With Open Records Requests

Tuesday, December 19th, 2023 -- 11:00 AM

(Karen Madden, Wausau Daily Herald) Advances in technology like Facebook have allowed law enforcement agencies to reach out to communities directly, and police body cameras and cameras in their squad cars have improved safety, their ability to serve the public and are used in training.

But, according to Karen Madden with the Wausau Daily Herald, along with those benefits have come some problems. The Wausau Police Department uses Facebook to tell stories about the department and its members.

"We feel really good about our department, who we hire and what we stand for," Wausau Police Chief Matthew Barnes said. "We have people all over the country and internationally follow our page. We have fun doing it."

Law enforcement agencies will use body camera and squad camera videos for training purposes, Barnes said. Officers can watch videos of calls and discuss ways they can improve.

The videos also help when a citizen files a complaint against an officer. When a complaint is filed, Barnes said he can pull up the body camera footage from the interaction that led to the complaint and determine quickly whether it's justified.

That technology and an increase in social media platforms have also caused open records requests to skyrocket at police and sheriff's departments in central Wisconsin, and in some cases, they are having a difficult time keeping up with those requests.

The problem is open records no longer include only paper reports, Barnes said. The body cameras officers wear when investigating a crime and the cameras in their squad cars also are considered part of the record.

Barnes used an example of four officers going to a domestic disturbance and staying at the scene about an hour. Each officer would have an hour of video and each officer's squad car also would have an hour of video.

If there is an open records request for everything connected to the call, someone would have to watch eight hours of video to be sure there isn't anything that would need to be redacted.

There might be a juvenile in the video who would have to be blurred out or personal information that came across the radio in the empty squad car that would have to be redacted, Barnes said. In 2022, the Wausau Police Department received 1,700 open records requests. This year, they've received 2,800, Barnes said.

To keep up with the increasing demand for records and increasing amount of time it takes to deal with video records, the Wausau Police Department requested an additional employee for 2024 to handle open records requests, Barnes said. The position has been tentatively approved, but likely won't be filled until the middle of the year.

Marshfield Police Chief Jody Geurink said his department also is getting more open records requests, but the department has been able to keep up with them. There are some TikTok creators who focus on central Wisconsin and have made quite a few requests to Marshfield, Geurink said

The social media outlets seem to want to get videos that have people doing irrational or over-the-top things. They request a lot of chases, Geurink said. "We've been pretty good at keeping up with it," Geurink said. "We release what we can. If we can't redact personal information, we don't release it."

The challenging part of the open records requests is the software, Wood County Sheriff's Office Captain Charlie Hoogestegar said. Some systems have software that makes it easier to redact than other systems, he said.

All minors and victims need to be redacted from videos released under open records requests. "Obviously, when new stuff comes out and technology advances where it's easier to redact, we can do more," Hoogestegar said.

The Wood County Sheriff's Office still burns DVDs to fill open records requests that include videos, Hoogestegar said. Some departments have gone to keeping videos in a web-based system and send an authorization to the requester to access the videos.

Law enforcement agencies can charge requesters for locating information for an open records request, but they can't charge for doing redactions, Marathon County Sheriff's Capt. Ryan Weber said.

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