© FILE/Staff Travious Smith was traveling in a rental car with North Carolina plates when a deputy stopped him for allegedly following too closely. His $6,260 was seized. The case is pending. This is an image taken from provided dashcam footage.

The Greenville News started requesting dashcam videos of traffic stops early in our investigation into civil forfeiture. For research purposes, it was a logical next step: many forfeiture cases stem from traffic stops, and dash camera video is a public record in South Carolina.

Court filings provided little information about the stops beyond the date they occurred and, occasionally, the intersection where the subject was pulled over. Dashcam video, on the other hand, would show us the entire encounter because the cameras automatically start recording once the blue lights on a patrol vehicle are activated.

Over a span of two months, The News submitted Freedom of Information requests to 15 law enforcement agencies, including sheriff’s offices in Greenville, Spartanburg, Greenwood, Sumter, Florence, Berkeley and Charleston counties as well as the South Carolina Highway Patrol. We requested videos from 49 traffic stops — the earliest was from Sept. 18, 2015, and the most recent was from Dec. 24, 2017.

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In the end, The News was able to obtain 12 videos. The cost was about $133.

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Most of the agencies responded that no dashcam video existed for these traffic stops. The Greenwood County Sheriff’s Office elaborated a little: the traffic stop referenced in our FOI request was made by an agent with the Greenwood Drug Enforcement Unit, and DEU agents drive unmarked patrol vehicles with no dash cams.

“They double-checked the computer system to make sure no marked units responded with their cameras activated, but could not locate anything,” Greenwood County attorney Elizabeth Taylor said in an email.

Other agencies, such as the Mauldin Police Department and Greenville County Sheriff’s Office, did have what we wanted but wouldn’t release the in-car footage, saying they involved cases that were awaiting trial.

“Although this footage is available to both parties of the court, releasing this footage could prevent the attorneys from successful defense/prosecution of their respective case,” said Mauldin Police Chief Bryan Turner.

Under the state’s FOI law, such records can be withheld from the public if the act of producing them deprives a person of a right to a fair trial.

Dashcam video was hard to locate even after cases were litigated, though.

A South Carolina Department of Public Safety spokeswoman said the agency’s retention policy for dashcam videos is “usually 5 days after the last court case if the incident goes to court.”

The troop supervisor can then hold the video for an additional 90 days, but that’s entirely optional, the spokeswoman said.

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This article originally appeared on The Greenville News: TAKEN: We asked police for video of traffic stops. We didn't get much.