The videos, culled from police body cameras, can draw millions of views on YouTube with salacious titles, like “19-Year-Old Girl Keeps Crying and Lying during DWI Arrest” and “Pregnant Housekeeper Arrested After Stealing Breast Pump and Baby Clothes.”
They feature, almost exclusively, women accused of drunken driving, shoplifting and other offenses. Most of them are young. Some are in various states of undress, featured prominently in the video’s thumbnail image.
Many come from New Jersey, where police leaders say anonymous requestors are using the state’s Open Public Records Act, meant to inform citizens and keep government accountable, to exploit young women accused of minor crimes for profit.
“The issue is the old one of how society balances individual privacy with a valid public interest when public officials or employees are involved,” said Marc Pfeiffer, a senior fellow at Rutgers University’s Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. “Given that people using new technology manage to find new ways to abuse privacy rights, we need to ensure our laws also keep up with the risks new technologies bring. The outliers highlight the issues.”
