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Georgia lawmakers debate body cam limits
Georgia lawmakers are discussing video limits on police body camera footage. A new bill is aiming to limit videos for people who post the footage to make a profit off of someone's death.
ATLANTA - A Georgia lawmaker wants to restrict who has access to police body cam video under Georgia's Open Records Act.
What they're saying:
Republican state Rep. Joseph Gullett (R-Dallas) is sponsoring a bill that would restrict the public release of police body cam video and police dashcam video that captures a fatality, to control who can view the video when someone has died.
Gullett says it's aimed at people who try to profit from these images.
"It shouldn't be for driving traffic to your YouTube channel, or to your website, in order to just watch people, in their final moments," Gullett told reporters.
The legislation seeks to exempt the cases from the state's open records law.
The footage could still be accessed by families, used in civil court proceedings, and reviewed as part of official investigations.
"We're not trying to restrict solving a crime," Gullett explained. "We're trying to just make sure someone's final moments, they have some dignity in their life and in their death."
The other side:
Critics worry the bill could do more harm than good.
Democratic state Rep. Eric Bell (D-Jonesboro) believes the legislation could have unintended consequences, making it harder to investigate potential police misconduct.
"If there was never any civil unrest, if there was never a letter written, if there was never a phone call made, or a protest or a demonstration organized, many of these families would never have seen justice," Bell said. "If the tapes were never released, we would never have known that even that they were victims of brutality or victims of state corporal violence."
The Source: This is a FOX 5 original report where Deidra Dukes spoke with Georgia lawmakers.