Georgia Police Bodycam Laws: Retention & Open Records Rules

Georgia has no statewide law requiring police to wear body cameras, and troopers with the Georgia State Patrol are generally not equipped with one at all. Once footage exists, O.C.G.A. § 50-18-96 sets a 180-day retention floor that extends to 30 months for serious incidents, while access runs through Georgia's general Open Records Act.

This page covers whether Georgia police must use body cameras, how long footage must be kept, and how the public can request a copy. It does not cover whether a civilian may record an on-duty Georgia officer, a separate and well-settled question addressed on Recording Law's guide to recording police.

Are Georgia police required to wear body cameras?

No. Georgia has no statute requiring any law enforcement agency, state or local, to equip its officers with body cameras. Adoption is a local, agency-by-agency decision, and coverage across the state is uneven as a result. The gap is sharpest at the state level: the Georgia State Patrol and Georgia Bureau of Investigation do not generally equip their officers with body cameras, even though many county and municipal police departments in Georgia have adopted their own programs.

That gap drew national attention after Georgia State Patrol troopers, working alongside Atlanta police, DeKalb County police, and other agencies during a January 18, 2023 operation to clear a forest encampment near the planned site of Atlanta's public safety training center, shot and killed 26-year-old environmental activist Manuel "Tortuguita" Paez Teran. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which investigated the shooting, confirmed that "the officers who were near the incident at the time of shooting were not wearing body worn cameras," although other officers at the scene who were equipped with cameras captured footage of the aftermath. A 2023 bill, the Transparency in Policing Act (HB 325), would have required nearly all uniformed Georgia officers, including state troopers, to wear body cameras and would have made tampering with a recording a misdemeanor. The bill never reached a House floor vote and died when the 2024 legislative session ended, so no statewide activation or equipment mandate exists in Georgia as of mid-2026.

How long must Georgia agencies keep body camera video?

Once an agency does record body camera video, Georgia law sets a specific, escalating retention schedule.

Video recordings from law enforcement body-worn devices or devices located on or inside law enforcement vehicles shall be retained for 180 days from the date of such recording, except that recordings that are part of a criminal investigation, show a vehicular accident, show the detainment or arrest of an individual, or show a law enforcement officer's use of force shall be retained for 30 months, as shall recordings containing evidence that is or can reasonably be anticipated to be necessary for pending litigation. (paraphrasing the retention schedule in O.C.G.A. § 50-18-96)

In practice, that means routine footage, a traffic stop that ends in a warning, a welfare check with no incident, can be deleted after 180 days. Footage tied to an arrest, an accident, a use of force, or a criminal case must be kept for 30 months from the date it was recorded, and longer still if litigation is filed during that window. The statute does not require destruction once the minimum period passes; agencies are free to retain footage longer under their own records policies.

Is police body camera footage a public record in Georgia?

Georgia has no bodycam-specific access statute comparable to Florida's or South Carolina's. Instead, a request for footage is treated like a request for any other government record under the Georgia Open Records Act, O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70 et seq., which starts from a presumption that records held by a public agency are open to inspection. Whether a particular recording is disclosed depends on whether one of the Act's general exemptions applies, not on a rule written specifically for body cameras.

Two exemptions come up most often with bodycam footage. First, O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72(a)(4) lets an agency withhold records that are part of a pending investigation or prosecution, which commonly delays release of footage from an active criminal case, sometimes for months. Second, O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72(a)(26.2) separately restricts audio and video recorded by a law enforcement device in a place carrying a reasonable expectation of privacy once there is no pending investigation, meaning that category of footage can remain closed even after a case ends. That provision does allow a narrower set of people to request access through a defined procedure, each by submitting a sworn affidavit: an estate representative for a deceased person shown in the recording, a parent or legal guardian of a minor who appears in it, a criminal defendant who believes the recording is relevant to their case, a party to a civil action who believes the recording is relevant to that action, or an attorney for any of those people. Initial police arrest reports and initial incident reports themselves remain public regardless of how the footage is classified.

Recent legislative activity

Georgia lawmakers have repeatedly revisited both sides of the bodycam question, expanding access on one hand and restricting it on the other, without landing new law on either front as of mid-2026. Beyond the failed 2023 mandate bill, a 2026 measure, SB 482, would have required people requesting mugshots or body camera footage to appear in person, identify everyone shown in the recording by name, and submit a notarized statement, changes supporters framed as targeting "mugshot mill" websites and critics warned would slow legitimate public-accountability requests. The bill passed the Senate 53-0 in March 2026 but did not survive the House before the session's close, according to the Georgia First Amendment Foundation's legislative tracking. Anyone researching a current Georgia records request should check whether a similar bill has since passed, since this is an area lawmakers keep returning to.

What happened after the Tortuguita shooting

The absence of camera footage from the shooting itself did not prevent an outcome in the criminal investigation. The district attorney overseeing the case ultimately declined to bring charges against the troopers involved, concluding the shooting was justified based on other evidence, including footage from nearby officers' cameras, physical evidence, and the fact that a trooper was shot and wounded during the encounter. The case remains one of the clearest illustrations nationally of why activation coverage, not just retention or access rules, matters: Georgia's 180-day and 30-month retention schedule and its Open Records Act exemptions only govern footage that exists in the first place, and neither applies to an encounter no camera recorded.

For how other states handle bodycam mandates and public access, see Recording Law's Police Bodycam Laws hub.

This article provides general legal information about Georgia's body camera and open-records rules as of mid-2026. It is not legal advice. For help with a specific records request, consult a Georgia attorney or the custodian agency's records office.

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