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Council hears that out-of-state YouTube requests are overwhelming Fairbanks' body-cam redaction resources
Summary
City staff and police described a surge of public-records requests—many from out-of-state YouTube channels—that require intensive redaction and are straining evidence and records staff; council discussed state-law limits, possible policy definitions and legislative fixes.
City staff told the council that a large volume of public-records requests for police body-camera footage—many submitted by out-of-state YouTube channels—has overwhelmed the city's evidence and redaction capacity.
"The request... it's killing us," staff member Mike Sanders said, describing repeated requests that take multiple hours to redact and process. He described vendors and channels filing many requests (sometimes dozens) for the same case and said the workload is delaying evidence work: "I have stuff from the officer involved shooting that still has not been processed... because Mike is **** ** doing public records requests." (verbatim remark redaction: transcript indicates expletive in the original.)
Legal staff and the clerk explained that state statute currently requires a 10-day response window (with a possible 10-day extension) and that, in Alaska, municipalities cannot charge beyond documented "actual cost" limits; the city currently provides five free hours of processing per request under state law. That statutory rule and a vetoed 2023 bill were cited repeatedly as reasons the council must press the legislature for change.
Council members proposed a range of interim and longer-term measures to reduce the burden: (1) state legislative outreach to change cost or requester definitions, (2) a city public-records policy that defines a "requester" (potentially bundling duplicate requests by company), (3) reallocating staff hours or adding personnel dedicated to redaction, and (4) internal limits on how much time evidence staff spend on public records to preserve criminal-case processing priorities.
City clerk and legal staff said they will continue to refine a draft public-records policy that includes a requester definition and to coordinate with the legislative committee on next steps. Several council members said they would make legislative outreach a priority.
