The NYPD is charging a news station $36,000 to view police body cam footage
Citing the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), reporter Courtney Gross with cable news station NY1 requested in April that the department provide her with 190 hours of unedited body camera footage.
Four months later, the police department told NY1 that it would only provide the station redacted footage, and it would cost $36,000.
The station, owned by Time Warner Cable, is "seeking to vindicate NY1 and the people's right to footage" with its lawsuit, filed on Wednesday and reported Thursday by the New York Post.
"Access to such information should not be thwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality," the lawsuit reads.
The NYPD defended the $36,000 bill in a September letter to the network:
As Gawker pointed out, it is unclear how the police department arrived at the $120-per-hour compensation rate, which would suggest a New York police officer earns nearly $250,000 a year.
In her appeal to the police department, Gross called the proposed fee "an unreasonable bar to public access."
"We believe this fee … undercuts the purpose and scope of FOIL: to foster transparency and trust between government and the citizenry," she wrote.
According to New York's Freedom of Information Law, if a records request takes longer than two hours to fulfill, an agency can charge to cover the employee's time.