Tennessee Police Bodycam Laws: Access & Records Rules

Tennessee has no dedicated body camera statute setting mandate, retention, or access rules. Footage is governed by the general Tennessee Public Records Act, Tenn. Code Ann. § 10-7-503, with one narrow, location-based confidentiality carve-out at § 10-7-504(u) that is scheduled to expire on July 1, 2027.

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

Are Tennessee police required to wear body cameras?

No. Tennessee has never enacted a comprehensive statewide body-worn camera act comparable to neighboring states. Whether officers wear cameras, and under what circumstances they must be turned on, is left entirely to each city, county, or state agency's own policy. Coverage is uneven across the state as a result, with some municipal departments running mature programs and others operating with no cameras at all.

Lawmakers have tried more than once to change that. Sen. Raumesh Akbari and Rep. Sam McKenzie sponsored SB 1174 / HB 0741 in the 114th General Assembly, which would have required every agency that uses body cameras to adopt a written policy governing when officers must switch them on, and to train officers on that policy before issuing a camera. The House companion failed in the Public Service Subcommittee of the State and Local Government Committee on March 12, 2025.

Its official fiscal note had projected a mandatory local government cost of roughly $9.35 million a year once fully in effect, which is the scale of spending any statewide mandate has to clear. The same sponsors refiled the measure as SB 1976 / HB 2436 in 2026. The House companion was taken off notice in the State and Local Government Committee on April 8, 2026, and the Senate bill was routed to the Judiciary Committee's general subcommittee, so neither chamber passed it. As of mid-2026, Tennessee still relies on agency-by-agency policy for activation, storage, and release rather than a single statewide framework.

Is police body camera footage a public record in Tennessee?

Generally, yes, subject to important limits. Tennessee has no bodycam-specific access statute the way South Carolina or North Carolina do. Instead, a request for footage is treated like a request for any other government record under the Tennessee Public Records Act, Tenn. Code Ann. § 10-7-503, which starts from a presumption that records held by a state or local government are open for citizen inspection.

That presumption comes with a residency condition that surprises many requesters. Section 10-7-503(a)(2)(A) grants the statutory right to inspect and copy public records only to citizens of Tennessee. Separately, § 10-7-503(a)(7)(A)(vi) lets a governmental entity require any requester who has photo identification to present a government-issued photo ID that includes the person's address, and lets the entity require other forms of identification acceptable to it from a requester who has no photo ID. Note what that subdivision does and does not say: it keys the requirement to an address, not to a Tennessee address, and its fallback is alternative identification rather than proof of residency. The citizenship limit lives in (a)(2)(A), not in the ID rule.

For most other records, an agency is still free to grant access to an out-of-state requester only as a matter of discretion. But as of July 1, 2026, Tenn. Code Ann. § 10-7-503(i), added by 2026 Public Chapter 711 (SB 1970), gives a non-citizen a statutory right, not just agency discretion, to inspect or receive a copy of any law enforcement record or report pertaining solely to that individual, if the requester submits a written request identifying the specific record, a copy of a valid government-issued photo ID, and a signed affidavit that the record pertains solely to them.

The examples the statute itself lists are an arrest report, incident report, crash report, and citation. Body camera footage is not among them, and the official bill summary does not mention video either. Because the list is expressly not exhaustive, footage of the requester's own encounter should qualify as a law enforcement record pertaining solely to that individual, but that is our reading of the language rather than something the text spells out.

Two limits matter more than the page count of the act suggests. Subsection (i)(2) withholds the new right from any record that is otherwise confidential by law, any record privileged under Rule 16 of the Tennessee Rules of Criminal Procedure, and any record covered by the investigative privilege. Rule 16 and the investigative privilege are exactly the grounds an agency reaches for when a prosecution is still live, which is the situation most out-of-state arrestees are in when they go looking for footage. Subsection (i)(3) also preserves the custodian's ability to charge the reasonable costs of producing the material. This statutory fix narrows the gap that caused real problems for people arrested in Tennessee who live elsewhere, discussed below, but it does not guarantee the video.

What actually makes Tennessee bodycam footage confidential?

Tennessee's only provision written specifically for body camera video is Tenn. Code Ann. § 10-7-504(u), added in 2017. It does not create a blanket exemption. Instead, subsection (u)(1) treats video as confidential only when it depicts one of a short list of sensitive settings: minors inside a school serving any grade from kindergarten through 12, a child care agency or program, a preschool, or a nursery school; the interior of a facility licensed under Title 33 (Tennessee's mental health and substance abuse law) or Title 68 (health facilities); or the interior of a private residence that is not being investigated as a crime scene.

Three limits keep the exemption narrow. Subsection (u)(2) preserves the ability of prosecutors and defense counsel to exchange otherwise-confidential footage in a pending criminal case where a defendant's constitutional rights require it. Subsection (u)(3) states the exemption cannot be used to withhold an entire file just because part of it is confidential; agencies must redact the protected portion and release the rest. Subsection (u)(4) leaves access by other law enforcement agencies, courts, and government bodies performing official functions untouched.

The detail most secondary sources miss is the sunset clause. Subsection (u)(5) provides that the whole subsection "is deleted on July 1, 2027, and will no longer be effective on and after that date." Unless the General Assembly reenacts it before then, Tennessee's one dedicated bodycam confidentiality rule will lapse, and footage in those settings would fall back under the Public Records Act's general exemptions, if any apply, rather than this specific carve-out. Anyone relying on this page after mid-2027 should confirm whether the legislature renewed it.

Does the rule change if an officer shoots and kills someone?

Yes, on a separate track. Tenn. Code Ann. § 38-8-311 governs the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's investigative record of an "officer-involved shooting death," defined as a death from a shooting by an officer who is on duty or performing off-duty activities within the scope of law enforcement duties. That investigative record, which typically includes any body camera footage TBI collected, becomes a public record once the TBI's investigation is complete and the district attorney general has finished the prosecutorial function, meaning a charging decision and, where charges are filed, the case's conclusion. The district attorney general also has discretion to release all or part of the record earlier, before that point is reached.

How long must Tennessee agencies keep body camera footage?

There is no statewide statute setting a minimum or maximum retention period for body camera video, unlike states such as Illinois or Georgia that specify a day count in their bodycam laws. Retention instead runs through the same local government records-retention schedules that cover other municipal and county records, developed under guidance from the Secretary of State's Division of Records Management together with the Municipal Technical Advisory Service and County Technical Assistance Service. In practice that produces significant variation: reporting on Tennessee body camera policies has found retention ranging from near-immediate deletion of routine footage up to indefinite retention, with 1-year, 2-year, and 7-year windows common depending on whether the footage is tied to an arrest, a use of force, or a pending case.

A real access dispute, and why residency mattered

Labreesha Batey, an Alabama resident, was arrested by the Tennessee Highway Patrol on a DUI charge that a judge later dismissed after testing showed no substances in her system. Because she lived out of state, Tennessee's residency requirement under § 10-7-503(a)(2)(A) meant she had no statutory right to request the trooper's body camera footage of her own arrest. She waited more than a year and spent thousands of dollars in legal fees, ultimately filing a federal lawsuit, before the Highway Patrol released the video. The legislature has since addressed cases like hers: effective July 1, 2026, Tenn. Code Ann. § 10-7-503(i) gives an out-of-state resident a statutory right to law enforcement records pertaining solely to them, on the written-request, photo-ID, and affidavit terms described above, so a future Batey-style delay over residency alone should be far harder to justify. Whether that right reaches the video in a still-active case is a separate question, because it yields to Rule 16 and the investigative privilege. In a separate case highlighting how retention and disclosure decisions play out locally, Rutherford County paid a $90,000 settlement to 78-year-old David Dutton after a "sober DUI" arrest, another episode defense attorneys point to when arguing that faster, more consistent access to body camera footage would resolve wrongful-arrest disputes sooner.

This article provides general legal information about Tennessee body camera and public-records rules as of mid-2026, including a confidentiality provision scheduled to sunset on July 1, 2027. It is not legal advice. For help with a specific records request, consult a Tennessee attorney or the custodian agency's records office.

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

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