A Morris County family is entitled to see body camera video of a police interview in which a father reported the alleged sexual abuse of a child by a relative, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled this week.
While lower courts found the video was subject to confidentiality protections because no one was charged in the case reported in Chatham Township, the state’s highest court concluded in its ruling issued Tuesday that withholding the video served no significant privacy interest.
The Supreme Court justices said the video was merely a parent’s account of an alleged crime.
“This is a common sense decision by the Court and really demonstrates the types of absurd hurdles agencies put up to keep people from getting public records,” C.J. Griffin, the parents’ attorney, said in a statement. “There is no legal basis to keep a victim from getting a copy of their own complaint to police, yet it took a three-year legal battle for my clients to obtain it.”
Representatives for Chatham Township didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment on the ruling Wednesday.
The high-profile case drew intense interest from government transparency advocates.
Friend of the court briefs were filed in support of the parents’ case by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Partners for Women and Justice Inc., while the state Attorney General’s office filed a brief in support of the township’s stance.
The case began after the father went to Chatham Township Police Department in May 2022 to report that his child had accused an adult relative of sexual misconduct. NJ Advance Media is withholding the names of the parents to avoid identifying their child, an alleged victim of sexual abuse.
The interview was recorded on a police body worn camera. When the parents reviewed the initial police report based on the interview, they found the report was “grossly inaccurate and was missing significant information” the father had shared, according to court documents.
After police told the parents no criminal charges would be filed against the accused relative, the parents sought the video to prove the report was inaccurate and to possibly file an internal affairs complaint against the investigating officers, the state Supreme Court ruling said.
The parents filed Open Public Records Act requests for the video and any written police reports on the matter, which were also sought under the common law, but all requests were denied by the township.
The parents sued the township and its record custodian to obtain the video.
In court filings, the township responded that local officials were “under an obligation” to protect the privacy rights of the plaintiffs’ child, and that releasing the video would violate the accused relative’s “reasonable expectation of privacy.”
The trial court sided with the township, finding that information received by law enforcement regarding a person who has not been arrested or charged with an offense was confidential.
The appellate court upheld the trial court decision, ruling that the video was exempt from release under OPRA’s “well-established confidentiality exemption protecting an uncharged person’s law enforcement records from disclosure.”
The state Supreme Court disagreed. In a unanimous ruling, state Supreme Court Justice Rachel Wainer Apter wrote OPRA doesn’t contain an explicit exemption for “information received by law enforcement regarding an individual who was not arrested or charged” and case law has never found that such information must automatically be withheld under OPRA.
“Recall that here, the party seeking access to the body worn camera video is not a third party but the subject of the video,” the ruling said.
The footage is not a recording of the police investigation, but a “verbatim recording” of the father’s complaint to police, Wainer Apter wrote.
The township has already released details of their investigation to the parents, the ruling added.
The Supreme Court reversed the appellate court decision and ordered the video be released to the parents.
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Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com.
