North Carolina Police Body Camera Laws: Access & Court Petitions

North Carolina law enforcement recordings, including body-worn camera and dashboard camera footage, are not public records. Under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 132-1.4A, a requester who wants a copy generally has to file a superior court petition, and a court can order release only after weighing specific statutory factors.

This guide is part of our Police Bodycam Laws by State series.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses North Carolina state law governing police body-worn and dashboard camera recordings: the public-records exclusion, the disclosure and release procedures, and the superior court petition process under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 132-1.4A. It does not address a civilian's right to record law enforcement, which is covered separately in our guide to recording laws.

Is North Carolina police bodycam footage a public record?

No. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 132-1.4A, enacted in 2016 through House Bill 972 and signed by then-Governor Pat McCrory, states that a recording made by a law enforcement agency's body-worn camera or dashboard camera is not a public record under G.S. 132-1, and it is not a personnel record either, according to the North Carolina General Assembly's official statute text. Before 2016, agencies already withheld most recordings under the general law enforcement records exception in G.S. 132-1.4, according to Coates' Canons; the new law replaced that discretionary exemption with an explicit rule and a dedicated request process, which the National Freedom of Information Coalition has flagged as one of the more restrictive frameworks in the country. The statute splits access into two tracks: disclosure, a limited right to view footage, and release, obtaining an actual copy.

Who can request to view a North Carolina bodycam recording?

A limited set of people can ask an agency to let them view, though not necessarily copy, a recording: the person whose image or voice appears in it, a personal representative of an adult who consents, a parent or guardian of a minor depicted, a representative of an incapacitated person, and the personal representative of a deceased person's estate. The requester must submit the request in writing, giving the agency's custodian the date and approximate time of the recorded activity, or otherwise describing it with enough detail to identify the specific recording. The agency then decides, in its own discretion, whether to allow disclosure, and it can permit viewing of only the portions relevant to that person's own involvement while withholding the rest. If the agency denies the request, the person can appeal to superior court, where a judge reviews whether the agency abused its discretion in refusing to let the person view the footage, according to the Robinson Firm's summary of the disclosure process, RF Law Firm.

How do you get a copy of North Carolina bodycam footage?

An actual copy is not available just by asking. Either the custodial agency itself, or any person seeking release, including someone who does not qualify for the disclosure track above, may file a civil action in superior court in a county where any part of the recording was made, stating the date and approximate time of the activity or otherwise identifying it with reasonable particularity. The court can conduct an in-camera review and, in deciding whether to order release, must weigh statutory standards including whether release advances a compelling public interest, whether the footage holds other confidential information, its evidentiary value in a pending proceeding, the risk of harm to a person's reputation or safety, and whether release would jeopardize an active investigation, according to RF Law Firm's breakdown of the release procedure. Even a favorable order can limit release to only the relevant portions, and the statute separately bars a person allowed to view footage from recording or copying what they see.

One channel sits outside that petition process. Subsection (h) of the statute directs a custodial agency to disclose or release a recording to the district attorney for review of potential criminal charges, to comply with discovery requirements in a criminal prosecution, for use in criminal proceedings in district court, or for any other law enforcement purpose, and it separately allows release for training, for use inside the agency, to another agency, for suspect identification or apprehension, and to locate a missing or abducted person. That matters most in felony cases: North Carolina's criminal discovery article applies to cases within the original jurisdiction of the superior court and requires the State, on a defendant's motion, to make available the complete files of the law enforcement agencies involved, according to the General Assembly's text of G.S. 15A-901 and G.S. 15A-903. A defendant in that posture ordinarily receives bodycam footage from the prosecutor as part of discovery rather than by filing a petition. The petition route described in this section is what governs the general public, journalists, and other requesters who have no discovery channel of their own.

What happens when footage shows a death or serious injury?

The statute sets a faster process for the highest-stakes footage. When a recording depicts a death or serious bodily injury, an eligible requester submits a notarized request, the agency must file a petition in superior court within 3 business days, and the court must issue an order, granting disclosure in full, with redactions, deferring it, or denying it, no later than 7 business days after filing. Notice goes to the head of the custodial agency, any officer depicted, the investigating agency if different, the district attorney, and the original requester, so each can be heard before the court rules.

Does North Carolina require police to wear body cameras?

No. North Carolina has no statewide law requiring departments to purchase or issue body cameras, unlike a small group of states such as Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Carolina that mandate use statewide. Adoption, budget, and activation policy are set locally, and each agency that uses body-worn or dashboard cameras must adopt its own written policy. G.S. 132-1.4A does not itself fix a retention period; it requires agencies to retain recordings at least as long as the schedule maintained by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and Records, requires. In that schedule, Standard 20, item 20.41 covers law enforcement audio and video recordings and instructs agencies to destroy them in office after 30 days if not made part of a case file, and to follow the felony or misdemeanor case file instructions if they are, according to the state's 2021 Program Records Schedule: Local Government Agencies.

State v. Chemuti: the NC Supreme Court closes the subpoena shortcut

A 2025 ruling shows how strictly North Carolina courts enforce the petition structure. Mooresville police charged Charlotte Chemuti in October 2023 with resisting a public officer. In December 2023, her attorney served a Rule 45 subpoena in district court seeking the officers' bodycam video of her arrest, and a trial judge ordered Mooresville to comply. The town appealed, and while the Court of Appeals sided with Chemuti in October 2024, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed in a 5-2 decision on October 17, 2025, according to the Carolina Journal's coverage. Writing for the majority, Justice Richard Dietz held that G.S. 132-1.4A's petition procedure supplants a subpoena and is the exclusive means to obtain these recordings, even for a defendant seeking footage of their own arrest; Justice Allison Riggs dissented, arguing the text does not clearly require a court order in every case. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the ruling in March 2026.

Read the holding for what it decides: a requester cannot compel a recording from the agency directly by subpoena, so the superior court petition is the route for the general public and for any defendant without a discovery channel. It does not touch subsection (h), which still requires the agency to hand recordings to the district attorney, including to comply with criminal discovery. Chemuti's own case was a district court misdemeanor prosecution, outside the discovery article that covers cases in the original jurisdiction of the superior court, which is why the subpoena was the avenue her attorney reached for.

Is it illegal to record police in North Carolina?

That is a different question from the one this page answers. North Carolina generally recognizes a person's right to record an on-duty officer performing public duties in a public place, as covered in our separate guide to recording laws linked above. The rules on this page apply only to footage the police themselves record and to the public's ability to later obtain a copy of it.

More North Carolina Laws

• North Carolina Data Privacy Laws
• North Carolina Drone Laws
• North Carolina Recording Laws