Pennsylvania Bodycam Laws: The 60-Day Request Rule Explained

Pennsylvania does not process police bodycam requests under its Right-to-Know Law at all. Act 22 of 2017 removed these recordings from that law entirely and built a separate, tighter process: a written request delivered in person or by certified mail within 60 days of the recording date, or access is effectively gone.

This guide is part of our Police Bodycam Laws by State series. It covers whether Pennsylvania departments must use bodycams, how the Act 22 request process works, and why press-access advocates consider it one of the more restrictive frameworks in the country.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses Pennsylvania law governing police body-worn cameras under Act 22 of 2017, codified at 42 Pa.C.S. Chapter 67A: mandate status, the request process, denial grounds, and appeals. It does not address a civilian's own right to record an on-duty officer, a different question covered in our guide on recording someone without their consent.

Does Pennsylvania Require Police to Use Body Cameras?

No. Act 22 of 2017, signed by Governor Tom Wolf on July 7, 2017, authorizes Pennsylvania law enforcement agencies to use body cameras and regulates how they must do it, but it does not order any department to buy or issue them. Adoption remains a local decision made by each municipal department, county sheriff's office, or the Pennsylvania State Police on its own budget and timeline. An agency whose officers make these recordings must establish and publish a written policy addressing officer training, the time periods when the camera must be in operation, the proper use, maintenance and storage of the equipment, the information collected, electronic records retention, facial recognition software, discipline for policy violations, and supervisory responsibilities, as required by 42 Pa.C.S. Section 67A07(a).

Act 22 also solved a real legal problem for departments that wanted to use bodycams in the first place. Pennsylvania's Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, 18 Pa.C.S. Chapter 57, generally requires the consent of every party to a private conversation before it can be recorded, including conversations inside a home. Before Act 22 took effect on September 5, 2017, an officer's body camera could arguably violate that law simply by recording inside a residence during a lawful response. Act 22 fixed that by narrowing the definition of oral communication in 18 Pa.C.S. Section 5702 rather than by writing a new exception into the Wiretap Act. It deleted the older body-camera exception at 18 Pa.C.S. Section 5704(16), which now reads only that it was deleted by amendment, and placed qualifying bodycam audio outside the Act's coverage altogether.

That carve-out is conditional, and the conditions matter. It reaches a communication only where the officer is on official duty, is in uniform or otherwise clearly identifiable as a law enforcement officer, falls within one of the categories of officer the statute lists, and is using a device approved under 18 Pa.C.S. Section 5706(b)(4). A plainclothes officer who is not identifiable as law enforcement is not covered by it.

When Must a Pennsylvania Officer's Camera Be Recording?

Pennsylvania has no single statewide activation trigger written into Act 22 comparable to the continuous-recording rules some other states use. Section 67A07(a)(2) instead requires each agency's own written policy to set the time periods when the recording device must be in operation, so the specific triggers for turning a camera on, whether a traffic stop, an arrest, or any public contact, vary from one department's policy to the next. A resident who wants the exact rule for their local department should check that department's published bodycam policy directly.

The 60-Day Filing Window: Pennsylvania's Outlier Rule

This is the single most consequential feature of Pennsylvania's bodycam law, and it is a genuine outlier nationally. Under 42 Pa.C.S. Section 67A03, a person who wants a copy of a law enforcement recording must submit a written request, delivered personally or by certified mail, to the recording agency's open records officer within 60 days of the recording date; the request is not considered received until hand-delivered or marked delivered. It must specify the date, time, and location of the incident and the requester's relationship to it; a residence recording additionally requires identifying everyone present, to the extent known.

The clock starts on the date of the recording itself, not on the date a requester first learns the recording exists or first has a reason to want it. That distinction is what makes the rule unusually harsh in practice. A person hospitalized after a police encounter, a relative piecing together what happened, or a journalist following up on a tip weeks later can all lose access before they even know enough to ask for it specifically. Gunita Singh, a staff attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, has put the problem directly: requesters are often seeking records precisely because "they don't have all the information at the outset," yet Act 22 demands that same missing information inside a 60-day window.

What Can Get a Request Denied

Once a request is properly filed, Section 67A05 gives the agency 30 days to respond, an interval the parties can extend by agreement. The grounds for saying no come from a different provision. Under Section 67A04(a), an agency may deny the request if the recording contains potential evidence in a criminal matter, information pertaining to an investigation, confidential information, or victim information, and reasonable redaction would not safeguard those interests. If the agency does not respond within 30 days, the request is deemed denied under Section 67A05(b) by operation of law, so silence functions the same as an explicit refusal.

Appeals: A Steep Path to Court

Unlike the Right-to-Know Law, which routes most denials to a no-cost administrative appeal before the Office of Open Records, Act 22 denials bypass that office entirely. A requester who is denied must petition the Court of Common Pleas within 30 days and pay a filing fee, commonly cited at $125.

Section 67A06(e) then sets a two-part burden the petitioner must carry by a preponderance of the evidence. First, the petitioner must show either that the request was not denied under Section 67A04 or, if it was denied under that section, that the denial was arbitrary and capricious. Second, the petitioner must show that the public interest in disclosure or the petitioner's own interest outweighs the interests of the Commonwealth, the law enforcement agency, or an individual in nondisclosure.

Read carefully, the arbitrary-and-capricious burden attaches only to a denial actually made under Section 67A04. A requester who is met with silence and a deemed denial under Section 67A05(b) therefore carries only the balancing test, not the arbitrary-and-capricious showing. The balancing test alone still leaves courts wide room to defer to the agency. ACLU of Pennsylvania policy counsel Elizabeth Randol has summarized the risk this creates: "What's really dangerous about this is you could have those records denied forever, there's no time limit."

How Restrictive Is This in Practice?

The numbers bear out the criticism. Reporting by Spotlight PA, later corroborated by Axios Philadelphia, found that Philadelphia, Bethlehem, Erie, and Allentown together released bodycam footage in response to only 44 of 178 Act 22 requests filed over a six-year period, roughly 25 percent. A separate 2018 investigation by The Morning Call found the Pennsylvania State Police granted just 2 of 16 requests. The Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association has argued Act 22 "was not written with transparency in mind" and has pushed for amendment, while state representative Dan Miller has introduced legislation moving bodycam recordings back under the Right-to-Know Law's presumption of access. Neither effort had passed as of this writing, so the 60-day, agency-controlled process remains the operative law statewide.

Recording Police Versus Police Recording You

This article addresses the opposite question from most of the recording-law content on this site. Pennsylvania is a two-party, or all-party, consent state for recording private conversations, and Act 22's own wiretap-law fix exists because that consent requirement once created real legal risk for officers using bodycams inside a home. None of this affects a bystander's separate right to record police performing public duties in public. For that question, see our guide on whether it's illegal to record someone without their consent.

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