NC Supreme Court Orders Trial Court to Reconsider Gag Order in Greensboro Body Camera Case

The North Carolina Supreme Court held last December in In re Custodial Law Enforcement Recording, 2022-NCSC-125, 881 S.E.2d 96 (2022), that a trial court abused its discretion in denying the City of Greensboro’s motion to modify restrictions imposed on the release of police body camera recordings. The trial court had previously entered an order that allowed members of the Greensboro City Council to view the recordings, but prohibited them from disclosing or discussing their contents to or with others. When the City sought reconsideration of that order on the basis that the restrictions prevented council members from carrying out their duties, the court summarily denied the motion after noting that council members had not “bothered to watch” the video. The Supreme Court determined that the trial court’s failure to consider the City’s reasons for seeking the modification, relying only on council members’ failure to watch the recordings while the restrictions were in place, demonstrated an abuse of discretion. Facts. In 2018, the City of Greensboro petitioned the superior court for release of police body camera videos from a 2016 incident in which Greensboro police officers arrested four Black men on a busy public sidewalk downtown. A cell phone video of the incident was posted to YouTube two days after it occurred. One of the arrested men reported the officers to the Professional Standards Division of the Greensboro Police Department, which conducted an internal investigation and concluded that the officers behaved appropriately. The man appealed that decision to the Greensboro Police Community [...]