Louisiana Police Bodycam Laws (2026): Retention & Records

Louisiana does not require police agencies to equip officers with body cameras. Agencies that choose to use them must adopt a written activation and deactivation policy under La. R.S. 40:2551, but no statute fixes how long footage must be kept, and public access runs through Louisiana's general Public Records Law rather than a bodycam-specific access statute.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses Louisiana law governing police body-worn cameras, including La. R.S. 40:2551 (activation and deactivation policy) and La. R.S. 44:3 and 44:35 (public-records access), current as of the Louisiana Revised Statutes as published by the Louisiana State Legislature. It does not address whether civilians may record police officers in Louisiana, a different question governed by Louisiana's one-party consent wiretap law; see Is It Illegal to Record Someone?. For the state-by-state landscape, see the Police Bodycam Laws hub.

Does Louisiana require police departments to use body cameras?

No. Louisiana has not enacted a statewide mandate ordering every law enforcement agency to purchase and deploy body-worn cameras, unlike roughly eight other states, including Maryland and South Carolina, that require it by law. Louisiana's legislature instead spent 2015 through 2017 studying the issue through a series of task forces, including House Concurrent Resolution 180 (2015) and House Concurrent Resolution 59 (2016), before settling on the narrower approach codified at La. R.S. 40:2551: if an agency uses body-worn cameras, it must have a written activation and deactivation policy in place, a requirement that took effect January 1, 2022. Whether to buy the cameras at all remains a local decision.

In practice, adoption is widespread even without a statewide mandate. The Louisiana State Police, the New Orleans Police Department (whose program expanded significantly under a 2013 to 2025 federal consent decree), the Baton Rouge Police Department, and many parish sheriff's offices all use body cameras under locally written policies.

What must a Louisiana agency's body-camera policy cover?

La. R.S. 40:2551, enacted by Acts 2021, No. 430, required any Louisiana law enforcement agency using body-worn cameras to adopt, no later than January 1, 2022, a policy regarding the activation and deactivation of those cameras by the officer. Unlike several other states' bodycam statutes, Louisiana's law does not itself list the specific triggers, such as traffic stops, use of force, or warrant service, that must start a recording, nor does it prescribe when an officer may lawfully turn a camera off. Those operational details are left to each agency's own written policy, which is one reason practice can vary meaningfully between a large agency like Louisiana State Police and a small municipal department.

The statute also does not require an officer to notify a person that they are being recorded. That follows from Louisiana's one-party consent wiretap law, under which an on-duty officer needs no one's permission to record a member of the public in the course of the officer's duties.

How long must Louisiana agencies keep body-camera footage?

No Louisiana statute sets a fixed, statewide minimum or maximum retention period for body-worn camera recordings. La. R.S. 40:2551 addresses only the activation and deactivation policy; it does not reach storage duration. How long a department keeps routine footage, and how much longer it keeps footage tied to an arrest, a use of force, or a citizen complaint, is set by that department's own records-retention schedule rather than by a day-count written into state law. That is a real gap compared with roughly two dozen other states in this cluster where a minimum number of days is written directly into a bodycam statute.

Practices differ accordingly. The Evangeline Parish Sheriff's Office policy, for example, calls for footage to be downloaded from the camera into agency storage within 48 to 72 hours of an officer's shift, with retention beyond that point governed by the department's own schedule. A reader who needs the exact retention period for a specific incident should ask the recording agency for its current written body-worn camera policy, since the Revised Statutes do not supply that number.

Can the public get a copy of Louisiana body-camera footage?

Access to Louisiana body-camera footage runs through the state's general Public Records Law, La. R.S. 44:1 et seq., not a dedicated bodycam-access statute. La. R.S. 44:3(I) requires that a request for body-worn camera video be incident specific, meaning it must include reasonable detail such as the date, time, location, or persons involved; a custodian may reject a vague or open-ended request. Separately, La. R.S. 44:3(A)(8) lets the custodian withhold video or audio found to violate a depicted person's reasonable expectation of privacy. Once a custodian makes that finding, the recording can be released only pursuant to a determination and order from a court of competent jurisdiction under La. R.S. 44:35, the same provision that lets a requester who has been denied file for a writ of mandamus.

Courts hearing a R.S. 44:35 case award attorney's fees to a prevailing requester and can award actual damages if the custodian arbitrarily or capriciously withheld the record. A separate civil penalty of up to $100 a day applies only if the custodian unreasonably or arbitrarily failed to respond to the request as required by R.S. 44:32; the requester otherwise bears its own costs while the case is pending.

What happens when a Louisiana agency denies a bodycam request?

In 2019, The Advocate sued the Louisiana State Police after LSP denied the newspaper's public-records request for dashcam and body-camera video of a traffic stop involving an off-duty New Orleans police sergeant. Nineteenth Judicial District Court Judge William Morvant ordered LSP to release the footage, with the officer's driver's license number and license plate redacted; the newspaper's attorney described it as the first Louisiana body-camera dispute that did not involve an active criminal investigation.

LSP's initial denial, and the litigation it took to overturn it, illustrate how the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy standard in La. R.S. 44:3(A)(8) functions in practice. The custodian's initial call is not the final word, but a requester who disagrees generally has to go to court, at its own expense, to test that call under La. R.S. 44:35.

This article provides general legal information about Louisiana's police body-camera statutes and public-records law. It is not legal advice. Louisiana law was reviewed as of July 2026; consult a Louisiana-licensed attorney or file a public-records request directly with the agency that holds the footage for guidance on a specific case.

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