DC Police Body Camera Laws: Rules & Public Access (2026)

The District of Columbia was one of the first major US cities to deploy body cameras department-wide, and its Metropolitan Police Department now operates under D.C. Code § 5-116.33, one of the country's more detailed public-access statutes for body camera footage.

Information last verified on 2026-07-08. This article presents general legal information, not legal advice.

This article addresses body-worn camera law under D.C. Code § 5-116.33, D.C. Municipal Regulations Title 24, Chapter 39, and DC's Freedom of Information Act, D.C. Code § 2-532, as they apply to the Metropolitan Police Department. It does not address a civilian's right to record an on-duty officer, a separate question covered in Is It Illegal to Record Someone?. For other jurisdictions' body camera rules, see the Police Bodycam Laws by State hub.

Does the District of Columbia Require Police to Wear Body Cameras?

Yes, and DC got there earlier than almost every other US jurisdiction. MPD launched a body-worn camera pilot in October 2014, and the DC Council made the program permanent through the Body-Worn Camera Program Amendment Act of 2015, with implementing rules taking effect under Section 3003 of the Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Support Act of 2015 (D.C. Law 21-36) on October 22, 2015. By December 2016, MPD had completed deployment of roughly 2,800 body-worn cameras across the department, a rollout widely reported at the time as the largest single-department body camera deployment in the country. The program's current core statute is codified at D.C. Code § 5-116.33, part of the Body-Worn Camera Regulation and Reporting Requirements Act of 2015, which the DC Council has amended several times since, most recently in 2026.

When Must an MPD Officer Activate the Camera?

MPD General Order 302.13 sets the activation rules. An officer must activate the camera immediately upon developing reasonable suspicion or probable cause to attempt a traffic, bicycle, or person stop, or upon responding to back up another officer on a stop, and whenever present with a prisoner, arrestee, suspect, or other stopped person, regardless of whether that officer is the primary unit on scene. Any encounter where a use of force or an arrest can reasonably be foreseen, including the contacts leading up to it, is a mandatory recording incident. D.C. Municipal Regulations Title 24, Chapter 39 adds further rules: officers must tell contact subjects they are being recorded when practicable, may record First Amendment assemblies only to document unlawful conduct rather than identify lawful participants, and may not record ordinary, non-critical contacts with students at a school.

If a camera malfunctions or an officer fails to activate it, General Order 302.13 requires notifying a supervising official and documenting the circumstances in the incident report. That duty has real teeth: MPD Officer Brian Trainer did not activate his camera until moments after he fatally shot Terrence Sterling in September 2016, a policy violation that contributed to MPD's finding that the shooting was unjustified and to Trainer's firing in 2018, one of the earliest high-profile accountability cases tied to DC's bodycam program.

How Long Does MPD Keep Body Camera Footage?

Under 24 DCMR § 3901, MPD's standard retention period is 90 calendar days from creation, with metadata kept at least five years regardless of the video's fate. MPD must set longer retention schedules by published policy directive for recordings tied to a criminal investigation, a misconduct complaint, a death investigation, a civil litigation hold or active FOIA request, or any category the Chief of Police designates, though the regulation leaves the exact extended day count to that published schedule rather than fixing one in the text itself.

Can the Public Get a Copy of DC Body Camera Footage?

A member of the public generally accesses MPD body camera footage through DC's Freedom of Information Act. Because standard DC FOIA requests carry a 15-business-day response window with a possible 10-business-day extension under D.C. Code § 2-532(c)-(d), the Council carved out a longer, body-camera-specific timeline: MPD has 25 business days after receiving a request that reasonably describes the recording to either make it accessible or notify the requester of its determination not to and the reasons why. If MPD misses that deadline, the request is deemed denied and the requester may petition the Mayor to review the denial under D.C. Code § 2-537.

24 DCMR § 3902 fills in more of the access picture. A recording's subject may view it at a police station under specified conditions and, if they request a copy through FOIA, may receive it at no cost. Oversight bodies such as the Office of Police Complaints get direct, unredacted access, and Council committee chairs can obtain unredacted recordings within 5 business days, though only for internal oversight rather than public release. A 2020 Office of Open Government advisory opinion resolved several redaction disputes: MPD cannot redact a uniformed officer's face or badge number, since an officer has no reasonable expectation of privacy performing public duties, a residential address may be redacted but a business address may not, and license plates generally need no redaction because federal driver's-privacy law already covers them. MPD must also publish its per-minute and per-person redaction costs in advance.

Outside an ordinary FOIA request, § 5-116.33 imposes an affirmative, mandatory release duty for the most serious incidents: when an MPD officer is involved in a death or a serious use of force, the Mayor must publicly release that officer's name and recording within 5 business days, after consulting trauma-informed experts and giving at least 24 hours' notice. That duty can be blocked if the decedent's next of kin, or the affected individual in a non-fatal case, withholds consent. The Body-Worn Camera Transparency for Use of Force Emergency Amendment Act of 2026, introduced by Councilmember Brooke Pinto after a surge in federal immigration enforcement activity across DC neighborhoods, extended that release duty to any incident an MPD officer merely witnesses involving serious force by a federal agency such as ICE, Homeland Security Investigations, DHS, or the FBI, even without MPD's own use of force, and required retroactive release, within 10 business days of the act's March 23, 2026 effective date, for qualifying incidents back to August 1, 2025.

That amendment already has a track record. MPD released footage in April 2026 from an October 17, 2025 traffic stop on Benning Road NE, in which a Homeland Security Investigations agent fired multiple shots at a car driven by Phillip Brown after MPD and federal partners tried to stop the vehicle over an alleged window-tint violation; Brown was not hit. A second, similar shooting on the same road a month later stayed unreleased, because the driver exercised his right under § 5-116.33(c)(3) to withhold consent, illustrating how the consent condition can override the release duty even under the newer law.

Related articles

• Police Bodycam Laws by State
• Is It Illegal to Record Someone?

Last updated: 2026-07-08.

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