City of Boulder Files Appeal: Police Accountability Law Faces Legal Challenge

The fight over body camera footage continues as Boulder questions Colorado’s Transparency Act in the Colorado Court of Appeals.

In December of 2023, Boulder police officers shot and killed 51-year-old Jeannette Alatorre in a confrontation that started at the rec center. After the incident on Dec 17th, concerned Boulderite and attorney Dan Williams filed a police misconduct complaint as a first step in the process of making a request for the body-worn camera (BWC) footage obtained during the confrontation.

In response to Williams’ request, the Boulder police department demanded to be paid for the labor of finding and editing all BWC footage. At the same time, Yellow Scene Magazine also made requests for all relevant footage from the incident. BPD again demanded that YS pay “$2857.50 for search, retrieval, and redaction.”

In April of 2024, YS, along with Alatorre’s daughter, both represented by Williams, filed a lawsuit against the City of Boulder as their monetary demand directly violates the Law Enforcement Integrity and Transparency Act of 2020, which requires police departments to provide footage related to alleged misconduct to families of victims for free, or to others at lowered costs.

The City of Boulder argued that the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA) permits agencies to charge reasonable fees to those making open records requests. The fees are capped at 33.58 an hour, and the first hour is usually free to limit requesters’ costs.

The court ruled in favor of YS, declaring that CORA “does not authorize a criminal justice agency to charge fees when a requester seeks video recordings.” However, the records requester must reference the Law Enforcement Integrity and Transparency Act when making the request, which Yellow Scene did.

Today, the City of Boulder filed an appeal for this decision on two issues. First, the County questions whether the Police Accountability and Transparency Act overrides CORA when invoked by requesters. Second, the City of Boulder posits that the district court ignored the portion of CORA that states governments don’t have to provide records free of charge if the state does not provide funding for it.

One thing is clear: the current state of records requests in Colorado is incredibly muddy. With any luck, the outcome of this lawsuit will help to streamline this process in a way that keeps law enforcement accountable in an age where police brutality is all too common.

This does not even begin to address the actual events of December 17th, 2023. The legal squabble does not seek to answer whether lethal force was necessary and will not bring justice for Alatorre’s family. YS remains committed to speaking truth to power, and though this is our first time covering this story since the lawsuit, it will not be the last.

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