Ohio Police Body Camera Laws: Access & Public Records

Ohio has no statewide law requiring police departments to use body cameras, but once an agency records footage, R.C. 149.43(A)(17) treats it as a public record subject to specific, narrow redactions, and, since 2025, a processing fee.

This guide is part of our Police Bodycam Laws by State series.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses Ohio state law governing police body-worn and dashboard camera recordings: the public-records treatment under R.C. 149.43, the restricted-portions redaction scheme, the 2025 fee law, and relevant Ohio Supreme Court precedent. It does not address a civilian's right to record law enforcement, which is covered separately in our guide to recording laws.

Does Ohio require police departments to use body cameras?

No. Ohio has never passed a law requiring every law enforcement agency in the state to purchase or deploy body cameras. A bill known as Andre's Law, named for Andre Hill, a Columbus man shot and killed by an officer in December 2020 who had not activated his body camera before firing, would have required every Ohio agency to equip officers with body and dashboard cameras by July 1, 2023 and would have required agencies to release unedited footage of a misconduct complaint within 21 days. The bill passed the Ohio House but did not clear the legislature as state law. Columbus itself adopted a local version of Andre's Law by city ordinance in February 2021, requiring city officers to activate cameras during stops, pursuits, uses of force, and other enforcement actions, but that ordinance binds only the Columbus Division of Police, not agencies elsewhere in the state. As a result, whether an Ohio department uses body cameras at all, and its activation rules, remain a matter of local budget and policy rather than state command.

Is Ohio police bodycam footage a public record?

Yes, with defined exceptions. Once a recording exists, it is treated as a public record under Ohio's Public Records Act, R.C. 149.43, the same general presumption of openness that applies to other government records. Sub. House Bill 425 added R.C. 149.43(A)(17), effective April 8, 2019, which defines specific "restricted portions" of a body-worn camera or dashboard camera recording that an agency may redact, blur, or mute before release, rather than creating a blanket exemption for the whole recording, according to the ACLU of Ohio's summary of the law. Ohio agencies can also rely on the state's general confidential law enforcement investigatory record exemption under R.C. 149.43(A)(2) to withhold footage entirely while a specific investigation remains active, the same exemption used for other police records, before the restricted-portions redaction rules even come into play.

What can Ohio police redact from bodycam footage?

R.C. 149.43(A)(17) lists specific categories of content an agency may treat as a restricted, redactable portion of a recording: the image or identity of a child, the death of a person or a deceased person's body, grievous bodily harm, an act of severe violence causing serious physical harm, a person's nude body, protected health information, and the interior of a private residence or business not otherwise open to the public. Critically, several of these categories carry a built-in exception: the restriction on death, grievous bodily harm, or severe violence does not apply where that harm was caused by a peace officer, a correctional employee, or a youth services employee using force in the course of duty. That means the single most consequential category of footage, video of a person killed or seriously injured by an officer, cannot be withheld or blurred on the theory that it depicts a death or serious injury; the exemptions built for privacy protection do not shield an officer's own use of force from view.

What does it cost to get Ohio bodycam footage now?

Since early 2025, requesting bodycam footage in Ohio can come with a bill attached. House Bill 315, signed by Governor Mike DeWine on January 2, 2025 and effective April 2, 2025, allows, but does not require, a state or local law enforcement agency to charge the requester for the actual cost of preparing video for release, capped at $75 per hour and $750 total per request. The fee is meant to cover retrieval, download, review, redaction, and the time spent seeking legal advice on a release, and agencies must estimate the cost and notify the requester before beginning the redaction work, with payment generally expected before the agency proceeds. Because the fee is optional rather than mandatory, whether a particular Ohio department charges for a bodycam request, and how much, varies by agency.

A real example: the Ta'Kiya Young shooting

Ohio's officer-use-of-force exception to the redaction rules played out quickly in a high-profile 2023 case. On August 24, 2023, a Blendon Township, Franklin County officer, Connor Grubb, fatally shot 21-year-old Ta'Kiya Young outside a Kroger store during a theft investigation after Young's car began moving toward him. Blendon Township released the bodycam footage of the shooting on September 1, 2023, about a week after the incident, according to PBS NewsHour's coverage of the release. Because the footage depicted a death caused by an officer's use of force, R.C. 149.43(A)(17)'s restricted-portions redactions for death and severe violence did not apply to shield it from disclosure. Grubb was later charged with murder, manslaughter, and assault in August 2024; his trial began in November 2025, and a jury found him not guilty on all charges on November 21, 2025.

Can Ohio redact an officer's identity from bodycam video?

Sometimes, and a 2025 Ohio Supreme Court decision shows how. In State ex rel. GateHouse Media Ohio Holdings II, Inc., doing business as the Columbus Dispatch, v. Columbus Division of Police, 2025-Ohio-5243, decided November 25, 2025, the newspaper sought bodycam and dashcam footage in which the Columbus Division of Police had redacted an officer's identifying information, arguing the officer qualified as a crime victim under Ohio's constitutional victims' rights provision, known as Marsy's Law, and its implementing statute, R.C. 2930.07. The Ohio Supreme Court agreed that an on-duty officer can be a "victim" under Marsy's Law when a crime is committed against the officer personally, upheld the redaction, and denied the newspaper's request for a writ of mandamus. The ruling means that identity redactions for officers depicted as victims sit alongside the R.C. 149.43(A)(17) content-based redactions as a separate, constitutionally grounded basis Ohio agencies can use to withhold identifying details even from otherwise disclosable footage.

Is it illegal to record police in Ohio?

That is a different question from the one this page answers. Ohio generally recognizes a person's right to record an on-duty officer performing public duties in a public place, as covered in our separate guide to recording laws linked above. The rules on this page apply only to footage the police themselves record and to the public's ability to obtain a copy of it afterward.