Every card links straight to the agency's own upload. Nothing here is second-hand — these are official law-enforcement channels only, which is what keeps you clear of YouTube's reused-content rule.
Legal summaries are a working starting point, not legal advice — statutes change. Each state card links to the RCFP guide for that jurisdiction; confirm there before you spend a request fee.
On NextRequest and GovQA portals, completed requests are usually public. Someone already paid for and waited on footage you can download right now. Always mine the public request log before opening a new request.
SEARCH FULFILLED REQUESTS →Five jurisdictions force release on a fixed timer: CA 45d · NJ 20d · CO 21d · DC 5d · Chicago 60d. You don't need to argue — you need a calendar. Log the incident date, file at the deadline, and the statute does the work.
Name the date, time, location, case number and involved parties. Cite the state statute by section. Ask for the unedited file plus the redaction log. Request a fee estimate before work begins so you're never surprised by a redaction bill.
Federal footage is public domain. State and local bodycam is not — the agency can hold copyright, and a few assert it. "Public record" means you can obtain it, not that you own it. Commentary and analysis is your fair-use footing; a straight re-upload isn't.
COPYRIGHT BREAKDOWN →Ad revenue in this niche dies from graphic content, not copyright. Blur aggressively. Cut before impact. Mute audible death. Lead with 20–30s of context and keep a real voiceover running over the footage. PoliceActivity has millions of subs and still lost ads — treat green icons as the design constraint, not an afterthought.
Tennessee and Virginia are citizen-only — a non-resident request is void on arrival. Partner with an in-state requester. Pennsylvania gives you a hard 60-day window from the recording date; miss it and the footage is gone for good.
If you only work five jurisdictions, work these: Florida (sheriffs self-publish), Washington (penalties for denial), Ohio (statute lists what's restricted, so the rest is mandatory), New Mexico (15-day IPRA + ABQ consent decree), and Nevada (LVMPD critical-incident briefings).
Retention is often 90–190 days and agencies delete on schedule. The moment an incident hits the news, email a one-paragraph litigation-hold / preservation request naming the date and location. It costs nothing and it stops the clock from erasing your story.
| ST | AGENCY | CITY | HANDLE | SOURCE | ITEMS | LATEST |
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Channel IDs are pinned in states.js, so nothing here depends on YouTube handle lookups. LIVE means the edge pulled that channel's RSS this cycle; SNAPSHOT means it's serving the last build-time capture while it waits its turn — the edge tops up a dozen channels per request to avoid getting rate-limited, so rows flip to LIVE over the first couple of minutes. Rebuild the snapshot with node bodycam-watch/build-snapshot.mjs.