Wisconsin Police Body Camera Laws: Wis. Stat. 165.87

Wisconsin does not require police departments to use body cameras, but Wis. Stat. § 165.87 sets rules for any agency that does, including a 120-day retention floor and, since 2024, fees a requester may owe before receiving footage.

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

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses Wisconsin law governing police body cameras: the Wis. Stat. § 165.87 policy and retention framework, the open-records access rules in § 19.35, and the fee and penalty provisions 2023 Wisconsin Act 253 added in 2024. It does not address a civilian's right to record law enforcement, which is covered separately in our guide to recording laws.

Does Wisconsin require police to wear body cameras?

No statute in Wisconsin requires a law enforcement agency to issue body cameras to its officers. Adoption is a local decision made by each police department, sheriff's office, or the Wisconsin State Patrol. Once an agency decides to use cameras, though, it is not operating in a vacuum. Wis. Stat. § 165.87, created by 2019 Wisconsin Act 108 and signed by Governor Tony Evers on February 28, 2020, effective March 1, 2020, and later amended by 2021 Wisconsin Act 240, requires that agency to adopt a written policy covering which officers wear cameras, when recording is required, and how data is stored, and to train every officer and staff member who uses, maintains, or releases the footage. The statute does not tell an agency whether to buy cameras in the first place; it regulates the agency once it does, and agencies must periodically review their own compliance with both the statute and their internal policy.

How long must Wisconsin agencies keep bodycam footage?

Wisconsin sets a tiered retention floor rather than a single fixed number. Under § 165.87(2)(a), all data recorded by a body camera worn by a law enforcement officer must be retained for a minimum of 120 days from the date of recording. That floor rises automatically for higher-stakes footage: recordings documenting a death, a physical injury, a custodial arrest, a search conducted during an authorized temporary questioning, or an officer's use of force must be retained until the investigation, case, or complaint reaches final disposition, including any appeal. A law enforcement officer or agency, a board of police and fire commissioners, a prosecutor, a defendant, or a court can also direct an agency in writing to preserve a recording with evidentiary value in a prosecution beyond the standard period, provided the request is made within 120 days of the recording, and data used in a proceeding cannot be destroyed until that proceeding, including appeals, concludes.

Is Wisconsin bodycam footage a public record?

Generally yes, subject to a privacy-balancing analysis Wisconsin applies to other sensitive open records. Body camera data is subject to Wisconsin's Public Records Law, Wis. Stat. § 19.35, and § 165.87(3) directs the custodial agency, meaning the recording agency itself and not any other authority, to apply that law's presumption of access while weighing specific privacy interests. Footage of a victim of a sensitive or violent crime, of a minor, or of someone in a place where they had a reasonable expectation of privacy carries a presumption favoring redaction: an agency may pixelate or otherwise obscure that person's face and identifying details unless the public interest in unredacted access is great enough to outweigh the privacy interest. A requester who disputes an agency's redaction decision or denial can pursue the remedies available under § 19.37, including a mandamus action in circuit court.

What does Wisconsin's 2024 body camera fee law change?

2023 Wisconsin Act 253, signed March 29, 2024, added new financial conditions to Wisconsin body camera requests by amending § 19.35(3) to create par. (h). Two changes matter most for a requester. First, an agency may now charge for the actual, necessary, and direct cost of redacting, pixelating, or otherwise editing video or audio before release, a fee category Wisconsin's open records law had not previously allowed for any type of record. Second, an individual requester can escape that fee by certifying in writing that the footage will not be used for financial gain, and § 19.35(3)(h)3.a. attaches a flat $10,000 forfeiture to each false certification.

Read that penalty precisely, because it is often described more broadly than the statute is written. The forfeiture reaches only an individual who provides a false certification. A requester who simply declines to certify commits no violation and owes no forfeiture: declining means only that the fee exemption does not apply, so the agency may charge the redaction fee under subd. 2. The statute also provides that an award of damages in a civil action does not count as financial gain.

Four further limits in par. (h) change the practical answer more often than the certification does:

• No fee at all for officer-involved shooting footage. Under subd. 5., an authority may not impose the redaction fee when the event in the requested records is a shooting involving a law enforcement officer.
• No fee for people connected to the incident. Under subd. 4., the fee cannot be charged to an individual directly involved in the recorded event, that individual's attorney or other authorized representative, or that individual's parent or guardian if the individual is under 18. No financial-gain certification is required from them.
• The certification exemption is capped at 10 requests. Under subd. 3.b., the no-fee path is available only if the same requester has not made more than 10 requests to that authority for audio or video records during the calendar year, counting the current request but excluding requests covered by subd. 4. or 5. An honest certifier can still be charged on the eleventh request.
• Rate and estimate limits. Subd. 6. requires any staff-time charge to be based on the pay rate of the authority's lowest paid employee capable of performing the task, and subd. 7. requires the authority to give the requester a written estimate of the fee before filling the request.

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, and the ACLU of Wisconsin opposed the bill, and the ACLU warned it could let agencies release only footage favorable to police while pricing watchdogs out of the footage they need to check that account. In one concrete illustration, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department charged a Tone Madison freelance reporter redaction fees, and threatened a $10,000 forfeiture for false financial-gain certification, after a May 2024 records request for body camera footage of the department's May 1, 2024 shutdown of a student protest encampment, invoking the new law's fee authority.

Why Wisconsin added redaction fees and a financial-gain rule

Supporters of Act 253 pointed to the cost and staff time agencies spend blurring faces, license plates, and other identifying details before releasing video, particularly for requesters who republish raw footage for profit rather than for accountability reporting. Wisconsin law enforcement groups backed the change, arguing departments should not have to absorb redaction costs for commercial users of their footage. Transparency advocates countered that the same fee structure falls on local journalists and civil liberties groups doing accountability reporting, not just for-profit video aggregators, and that a flat $10,000 forfeiture for a false certification creates a chilling effect disproportionate to the conduct it targets. Both sides agree the law changed the economics of requesting Wisconsin bodycam video for the first time since § 165.87 took effect in 2020.

Is it illegal to record police in Wisconsin?

That is a separate question from the one this page addresses. Wisconsin 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 Wisconsin Laws

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• Wisconsin Drone Laws
• Wisconsin Recording Laws