NY Attorney General will speed release of dash cam footage when cops kill unarmed civilians

Attorney General Letitia James. AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

By David Brand

Attorney General Letitia James’ Office will expedite the release of dashboard camera footage during investigations into police killings of unarmed civilians, a spokesperson said Thursday.

James had previously vowed to “proactively” release officer body camera footage related to police killings of unarmed civilians rather than wait for local authorities to publish the tapes. A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office said that decision also applies to police dashboard camera footage.

“As part of our investigations into police-involved civilian deaths, the Attorney General’s Office will now proactively release video footage from body-worn and dashboard cameras to the public on our own,” an office spokesperson said. 

“Transparency is of utmost importance, and we will no longer wait for local authorities to determine when videos should be made available,” they added.

The decision to release body-worn camera footage, announced Sunday, came two weeks after footage emerged of the suffocation death of Daniel Prude, a Black man, at the hands of Rochester police. Prude died March 30, seven days after officers placed a hood over his head while he was handcuffed on the street. The body-worn camera video was not made public until Sept. 3 and touched off large-scale protests against police violence.

The state attorney general’s office is tasked with investigating police killings of unarmed civilians, including the February shooting of a 19-year-old Cambria Heights man named Matthew Felix.

The Nassau County police officers who shot and killed Felix, a suspect in a Garden City armed robbery and car theft, were not wearing body cameras. The lawyer representing Felix’s family has advocated for the attorney general’s office to release dashboard camera footage and surveillance tapes from the scene.