Illinois Police Body Camera Laws: Mandate & Retention (2026)

Illinois requires nearly every police agency in the state to equip officers with body cameras under the Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act, 50 ILCS 706, with the last agencies brought under the mandate by January 1, 2025. Footage is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act by default, and is released only in the situations the Act itself authorizes.

Information last verified on 2026-07-08. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Scope note: This article covers Illinois police body cameras: the mandate, activation, retention, and public access to footage. It does not address whether a civilian may record an on-duty Illinois police officer; that question is covered separately in Is It Illegal to Record Someone?

For how other states handle mandate status, retention, and access, see the police body camera laws by state hub.

Does Illinois require police to wear body cameras?

Yes. The Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act, 50 ILCS 706/10-1 et seq., phased in a statewide mandate covering almost every Illinois law enforcement agency, state and local. Agencies serving 500,000 or more residents had to comply by January 1, 2022; agencies serving 100,000 to 500,000 by January 1, 2023, or July 1, 2023 if they had ordered cameras by October 1, 2022; agencies serving 50,000 to 100,000 by January 1, 2024; and every remaining agency, including departments serving fewer than 50,000 people and state agencies with law enforcement officers, by January 1, 2025.

The mandate is not literally universal. 50 ILCS 706/10-15(d) carves three categories out of the applicability section entirely: court security officers, State's Attorney investigators, and Attorney General investigators. Those officers are outside the schedule below no matter what population their jurisdiction serves.

With roughly 846 law enforcement agencies statewide, Illinois has one of the broadest statutory bodycam mandates in the country, though reporting on compliance has noted that the Act itself does not spell out a direct financial or operational penalty against a noncompliant agency.

The schedule above does not reach court security officers, State's Attorney investigators, or Attorney General investigators, who are excluded from the applicability section by 50 ILCS 706/10-15(d).

When must an Illinois officer turn the camera on?

Under 50 ILCS 706/10-20, an officer must activate the body camera any time the officer is in uniform and responding to a call for service or engaged in a law enforcement-related encounter or activity while on duty, which is broader than a rule limited to arrests, traffic stops, or force. If exigent circumstances prevent the camera from being turned on, it must be turned on as soon as practicable.

The statute then splits its exceptions into two kinds, and the difference matters. Some are permissive. Under 50 ILCS 706/10-20(a)(3)(B) and (a)(3)(C), a camera may be turned off inside a patrol car equipped with a functioning in-car camera, though the officer must turn it on when stepping out of the vehicle for a law enforcement-related encounter, and inside a correctional facility or courthouse with its own functioning camera system. Under 50 ILCS 706/10-20(a)(4.5), a camera may be turned off during community caretaking functions, but it must be turned on if the officer has reason to believe the person has committed or is committing a crime.

Others are mandatory. 50 ILCS 706/10-20(a)(4) states that cameras must be turned off when the victim of a crime requests it, when a witness of a crime or a community member who wishes to report a crime requests it, when the officer is interacting with a confidential informant used by the agency, or when a Department of Revenue officer enters a Department of Revenue facility or conducts an interview where return information will be discussed or visible. For a victim or witness request, the request itself has to be made on the recording unless that is impractical or impossible.

One override runs through those mandatory shut-offs. An officer may continue recording or resume recording a victim or witness if exigent circumstances exist, or if the officer has reasonable articulable suspicion that the victim, witness, or confidential informant has committed or is in the process of committing a crime. In that situation the officer must state the reason for continuing to record on the recording itself, again unless that is impractical or impossible.

The Act also defines when an encounter becomes flagged for extended retention: a formal or informal complaint, a firearm discharge or use of force, a death or serious injury, a detention or arrest beyond a minor traffic offense, an internal misconduct investigation, or a determination by a supervisor, prosecutor, defendant, or court that the recording has evidentiary value.

How long must Illinois agencies keep bodycam footage?

Illinois sets a 90-day statutory floor for ordinary footage; no recording, other than one documenting a purely non-law-enforcement activity, may be altered, erased, or destroyed before that 90-day period runs. Footage from a flagged encounter cannot be destroyed until at least 2 years after the flag date, and if the recording is used in a criminal, civil, or administrative proceeding, it must be kept until the court issues a final disposition and order. If an agency does delete footage before the 90-day floor expires, in the narrow case of a non-law-enforcement recording, it must keep a written record for one year documenting who deleted it and why. That paper-trail requirement gives requesters and courts a way to check whether an early deletion was proper.

Can the public get a copy of Illinois bodycam footage?

Sometimes, but the starting point is the opposite of the way ordinary Illinois public records work. Section 10-20(b) of the Body Camera Act provides that recordings made with the use of an officer-worn body camera "are not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, except that" the Act's own release categories apply. The Illinois FOIA carries the same rule as a statutory exemption at 5 ILCS 140/7.5(cc), covering "Recordings made under the Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act, except to the extent authorized under that Act." So a requester does not begin from FOIA's usual presumption of openness. The request has to fit one of the categories the Body Camera Act opens.

There are three of them.

• Flagged encounters. Under 50 ILCS 706/10-20(b)(2), a recording flagged because of the filing of a complaint, a discharge of a firearm, a use of force, an arrest or detention, or a resulting death or bodily harm must be disclosed in accordance with FOIA.
• Flagged encounters involving a victim or witness with a privacy expectation. Under 50 ILCS 706/10-20(b)(1), if the subject of that flagged encounter is a victim or witness who had a reasonable expectation of privacy at the time of the recording, the agency must first obtain the written permission of that subject or the subject's legal representative. A subject who was arrested as a result of the encounter is deemed to have no reasonable expectation of privacy, and for this purpose "witness" does not include a victim or a person who was arrested in the encounter.
• The people in the video. Under 50 ILCS 706/10-20(b)(3), on request the agency must disclose the recording to the subject of the encounter, the subject's attorney, or the officer or the officer's legal representative.

Even when a recording falls into one of those categories, the release is narrowed twice. Only the recordings or portions of recordings responsive to the request are available for inspection or reproduction. And any recording disclosed under FOIA must be redacted to remove identification of any person who appears on it and is not the officer, a subject of the encounter, or directly involved in the encounter.

The general FOIA exemptions in 5 ILCS 140/7 can still apply on top of that, including Section 7(1)(d)(vii) for records whose release would obstruct an ongoing criminal investigation by the agency receiving the request. A public body must respond to a FOIA request within 5 business days, extendable by 5 more business days if collecting, reviewing, and redacting the footage requires additional time. Illinois State Police and other law enforcement agencies maintain dedicated FOIA intake channels for video requests.

The Sonya Massey case: Illinois's bodycam law in practice

The clearest real-world example of Illinois's bodycam framework in operation is the Sonya Massey shooting. On July 6, 2024, Sangamon County Sheriff's Deputy Sean Grayson responded to Massey's home near Springfield after she called 911 to report a possible prowler. Bodycam footage from Grayson and a second responding deputy shows Grayson threatening to shoot Massey over a pot of water on her stove, then firing three times as she ducked behind the pot. Illinois State Police released roughly 36 minutes of combined footage from both deputies' cameras on July 22, 2024, 16 days after the shooting, consistent with the flagged-encounter framework under 50 ILCS 706 that governs footage tied to a death or use of deadly force. That footage became the central evidence at trial. Grayson had been indicted on first-degree murder and other charges; a Sangamon County jury convicted him of the lesser offense of second-degree murder on October 29, 2025, after a seven-day trial, and a judge sentenced him to 20 years in prison on January 29, 2026. Separately, the Sangamon County Board approved a $10 million settlement of Massey's family's wrongful-death claim against the county in February 2025. The case illustrates both halves of Illinois's framework at once: a mandatory-activation requirement that ensured the encounter was recorded at all, and a flagged-encounter release, run through Illinois State Police rather than the county, that got the footage into public view within weeks rather than months.

Disclaimer

This article provides general legal information about Illinois's Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act, 50 ILCS 706, and the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, 5 ILCS 140, as verified on 2026-07-08. It does not constitute legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Readers seeking a specific recording, or evaluating a denied public-records request, should consult a lawyer licensed in Illinois.

Related articles

• Police body camera laws by state: the complete hub
• Idaho police body camera laws: retention and public records access
• Indiana police body camera laws: retention and public access
• Is it illegal to record someone?

Last updated: 2026-07-08. Statutes cited reflect their in-force version as of 2026-07-08.

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