dashboard camera

A N.J. Superior Court judge has ruled that police dashboard videos are public records under the Open Public Records Act and cannot be withheld as criminal investigatory records. (Tim Hawk | South Jersey Times)

TRENTON — Videos routinely captured by cameras mounted in police cars during traffic stops and other law enforcement activities are public records and cannot be withheld because they pertain to criminal or internal affairs investigations, a state judge has ruled in two separate cases.

The rulings, handed down Friday by state Superior Court Judge Vincent Grasso in Ocean County, came a month after Gov. Chris Christie signed legislation requiring all new police vehicles used primarily for traffic enforcement to be equipped with dashboard cameras.

Supporters of the cameras — which to date had not been mandated, but which have been used by State Police for years — say they are critical to protecting police against unfounded allegations, and the public from excessive force or other misconduct.

But the release of videos under the state Open Public Records Act has been a point of dispute, and the matter has not been addressed by the state Supreme Court.

In the first recent case, John Paff, chairman of the state Libertarian Party's open government project, in May requested a video of a traffic stop involving Tuckerton Borough police from the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office under the state Open Public Records Act.

In the second, Shabsi Ganzweig in March requested video of a traffic stop involving Lakewood Township police from the township, which then deferred to the prosecutor's office.

Authorities in both cases denied the requests, arguing that the videos were exempt from disclosure under the law because they were criminal investigatory records. They also argued they were part of ongoing investigations, as well as internal affairs investigations.

But Grasso ruled against the county prosecutor's office in both cases, finding that if police agencies require the regular recording of law enforcement activities, the videos qualify as government records and cannot be shielded if they later become part of an investigation.

"The court finds that the contemporaneous recording of a traffic stop by a police dash cam that was required to be maintained and activated is not exempt as a criminal investigatory record," the judge wrote in the Ganzweig decision. "Moreover, during a typical motor vehicle stop, the police dash cam captures nothing more than that which would be visible to members of the public or other motorists in the vicinity of the stop."

The judge rejected arguments that releasing the information would harm ongoing investigations, noting that the public records law, "does not permit the subsequent investigation ... to render those government records confidential retroactively."

He also said the state Attorney General's Office's policy and procedures for internal affairs investigations cannot be used to shield the videos because they became part of an inquiry.

"They were nevertheless accessible via an OPRA request because the records were created prior to the internal affairs investigation and were not the work-product of the investigation," Grasso wrote. "Stated differently, the (state rules do) not retroactively render an otherwise open government record confidential because it may later form the basis of an internal affairs investigation."

Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato will appeal the rulings because the automatic release of videos could allow defense attorneys to claim their clients cannot get a fair trial because the jury pool has been tainted, a spokesman for Coronato, Al Della Fave, said.

"He's not against the video being released, it's just a matter of when it's released," Della Fave said. "He feels it's premature to have carte blanche availability to video immediately upon the event breaking."

Christopher Baxter may be reached at cbaxter@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @cbaxter1. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.