South Dakota Police Body Camera Laws: No Mandate, No Access Rule

South Dakota has no law that specifically addresses police body cameras, neither a mandate to use them nor a rule for releasing the footage. Whether an agency records at all, and whether the public ever sees it, is left almost entirely to that agency's own discretion under the state's general public records law.

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

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses South Dakota law governing police body cameras: the absence of a statewide equipment mandate and the general public-records framework that governs access to footage where an agency chooses to use cameras. It does not address a civilian's right to record law enforcement, which is covered separately in our guide to recording laws.

Does South Dakota require police to wear body cameras?

No. South Dakota has never enacted a statute requiring any state, county, or municipal law enforcement agency to equip officers with body cameras. Most agencies, including the South Dakota Highway Patrol and many municipal and county departments, use car and body cameras as a matter of internal policy, but that choice, along with when a camera must be turned on and what happens to the footage afterward, is set locally rather than by state law.

A 2020 bill, Senate Bill 100, would have changed that by creating statewide standards for how agencies handle, retain, and release police video. Law enforcement organizations argued existing department-level "best practices" were sufficient, the bill's original language was removed in committee, and even a scaled-back proposal for a summer legislative study of the issue was voted down. No comparable bill has passed since.

Is South Dakota bodycam footage a public record?

South Dakota's Public Records Act, codified starting at SDCL § 1-27-1, establishes a general presumption that records kept by public bodies are open to inspection. But SDCL § 1-27-1.5(5) allows an agency to close records "developed or received by law enforcement agencies" and other investigative public bodies where the record forms part of "the examination, investigation, intelligence information, citizen complaint or inquiry, informant identification, or strategic or tactical information used in law enforcement training." Note the trailing qualifier on that last item: the strategic and tactical prong reaches law enforcement training material, not operational tactics at large. Body camera and dashcam footage generated during a stop, pursuit, or use-of-force incident falls within the examination-and-investigation category rather than that training prong.

A second statute reinforces the same result and is often the stronger ground. SDCL § 23-5-11 provides that "confidential criminal justice information and criminal history information are specifically exempt from disclosure pursuant to §§ 1-27-1 to 1-27-1.15, inclusive, and may be withheld by the lawful custodian of the records." SDCL § 23-5-10 defines that term to include "criminal investigative information," which the same section defines as information compiled by a law enforcement agency in the course of investigating a crime, expressly including information "derived from reports of officers, deputies, agents, informants, or investigators or from any type of surveillance." Video an officer records on a body camera during an investigation is squarely within that language. Section 23-5-11 also carves out basic call-for-service data, which is not confidential criminal justice information and must be released unless it would expose criminal intelligence or jeopardize an ongoing investigation, and it does not override more specific access or confidentiality rules elsewhere in state or federal law.

The key distinction from a state like South Carolina is that South Dakota's exemptions are discretionary rather than an absolute statutory bar; both § 1-27-1.5(5) and § 23-5-11 permit an agency to withhold investigative footage, and neither requires it. In practice, reporting on South Dakota's open-records landscape has found that agencies almost uniformly choose to invoke the exemption for body camera and dashcam video, particularly in cases involving officer use of force, leaving requesters with little practical difference from a state that closes the records outright.

How does a South Dakota agency actually decide whether to release video?

Because there is no bodycam-specific statute, a South Dakota records custodian evaluates a video request the same way it would evaluate a request for any other investigative file: case by case, under SDCL § 1-27-1.5(5) and SDCL § 23-5-11, with no bodycam-specific presumption pushing the decision toward release. Reporters and advocates for open government have described the result as agencies having "complete discretion" over whether footage becomes public, since neither statute sets a timeline, a list of eligible requesters, or a standard the agency must apply beyond the general exemptions themselves.

The written-request procedure in SDCL § 1-27-37 does not change that calculus much. It is a follow-up remedy rather than the ordinary first channel: the section opens "If an informal request is denied in whole or in part by the custodian of a document or record, a written request may be made by the requestor pursuant to this section." Only then does the ten-business-day clock start, and the public record officer can meet it by acknowledging the request and estimating the time needed to respond further, so a written request buys a documented paper trail and a written statement of reasons for any denial, not a guaranteed decision on the merits within ten days.

A real example: the Corson County shooting of Samir Albaidhani

On June 30, 2023, a Corson County sheriff's deputy and tribal officers pursued 25-year-old Samir Albaidhani, who brandished a gun during the chase before officers shot and wounded him. When South Dakota News Watch later requested video of the incident as part of a broader survey of police-involved shooting records, the local state's attorney denied the request.

That denial was not an outlier. In a November 2025 records push, News Watch asked agencies across the state for video from eight separate police-involved shootings spanning 2016 through 2025, every one of which state investigators had ruled legally justified. Every agency declined to provide footage. Other documented examples include a May 30, 2023 Rapid City shooting in which an officer killed Kyle Whiting after Whiting brandished what turned out to be a fake gun, and a 2022 Rapid City shooting of Barney Leroy Peoples Jr., footage of which local reporters were allowed to view privately but which was never released publicly. Taken together, these cases show how South Dakota's discretionary framework functions in the cases that matter most to accountability, even where the underlying shooting was ultimately found justified.

Is it illegal to record police in South Dakota?

That is a separate question from the one this page addresses. South Dakota generally recognizes a person's right to record an on-duty officer performing public duties in a public place. For a full explanation of that right and how it differs from the rules on police-generated bodycam footage discussed here, see Is It Illegal to Record Someone?

More South Dakota Laws

• South Dakota Data Privacy Laws
• South Dakota Drone Laws
• South Dakota Recording Laws