APD "processing the truth"

Lapel camera footage of recent shootings are among a set of "public records" created during and surrounding those events.

Public records belong to the people.

The spirit of open government laws in general is that public records are subject to immediate production to the public record, except if there are justifiable delays or exceptions under the law.

The leadership of the Albuquerque Police Department has decided to delay or not produce at all, some lapel camera footage.  They say they are "processing it".  There is no "processing" of digital data in the usual sense; it doesn't have to be dropped off somewhere and developed.  Digital data can be downloaded in a key stroke and produced to the public record with one more.

The only legitimate processing that could, and should be going on, is redaction.  There are ethical reasons to redact camera footage, and for that matter, 911 calls.  What if a confidential informant is captured in videotape?  What if people's reasonable expectation of privacy is denied by playing 911 calls on radio and TV until everyone knows them by heart?

Redaction means obscuring some data, but only the precise data that enjoys some exception.  If there is one moment in a videotape, or one word in a document that enjoys exception; you don't get to redact adjacent words and you particularly don't get to redact the record in its entirety.

The whole process is ridiculous.  Why are politicians and public servants allowed to redact their own public record?  The unaddressed appearance of a conflict of interests could not be more obvious.

Government in this country, state, county and community is supposed to be by, for, and of the people.  The surest indication of the control that people have over their government is the amount of the truth about it, that they know.  If the people don't know the truth about their government; the whole ethically redacted truth, they cannot be in control.

It is time to tilt the playing field in the other direction.
Rather than the people having to sue to prove records
belong to them and are therefore subject to surrender,
the government should have to prove to a court of
competent jurisdiction, that they don't.