Nebraska Police Reports: How to Get a Crash Report, Incident Report, or Bodycam Video

Nebraska crash reports come from the Nebraska Department of Transportation's Highway Safety Section, not from the investigating police department directly. Nebraska also draws a sharp statutory line most other states do not: a report an officer prepares is public, but a report a driver files is not, even when both describe the same crash.

A general incident report, meaning the record of a call for service or a criminal complaint rather than a crash, comes from the responding department under Nebraska's public records law. Below is how both channels work, plus Nebraska's dedicated bodycam statute.

Information last verified on 2026-08-11. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

This guide is part of a broader look at police reports by state. For the filing side rather than requesting a copy, see how to file a police report.

Getting a Nebraska Crash Report

Nebraska routes crash reports through the Department of Transportation rather than the investigating police department. NDOT's Highway Safety Section handles requests by email (NDOT.CrashReport@Nebraska.gov), phone (402-479-4645), in person (1500 Nebraska Parkway, Room 14B, Lincoln), or mail (PO Box 94759, Lincoln, NE 68509-4759, after calling first to confirm the current tax amount). NDOT's own page does not describe an online purchase storefront for the public, despite some secondary sources suggesting one exists, so this guide treats email, mail, phone, and in-person requests as the confirmed channels.

An officer-prepared, or investigator, crash report costs $13.00 plus tax. That is the report available to the public. A driver-filed report is a different document entirely, and Nebraska law keeps it confidential: NDOT states directly that all driver's reports are confidential by law, so only the person who filed the report can access it through the portal where they originally submitted it, and another driver involved in the same crash cannot obtain a copy of someone else's driver-filed report. That confidentiality rule tracks the text of Nebraska Revised Statutes section 60-699, which makes a peace officer's accident report open to public inspection while keeping a driver-filed report closed.

That distinction matters for a reader after a minor crash where no officer responded and only a driver's report was filed. In that scenario, there is no officer-prepared report to purchase, and the driver's own filing stays private even from the other driver involved.

Getting a Nebraska Incident Report

Nebraska's general public-records statute governs incident and investigative-file access statewide. Section 84-712 gives residents and other interested persons the right to examine and copy public records, subject to fee limits. Section 84-712.05 is the separate catalog of categories a public body may withhold.

Subdivision (5) of that catalog covers records developed or received by law enforcement agencies and other public bodies charged with duties of investigation or examination, when the records constitute a part of the examination, investigation, intelligence information, complaints or inquiries, informant identification, or strategic or tactical information used in law enforcement training. Nothing in that subdivision limits it to open cases, so a Nebraska investigative file can still fall inside the exemption after the case closes.

Two express carve-outs do narrow it. Subdivision (5)(a) pulls out records relating to the presence and the amount or concentration of alcohol or drugs in any person's body fluid, which is directly useful in crash cases. Subdivision (5)(b) pulls out records relating to the cause of or circumstances surrounding an employee's work-related death once the investigation is concluded and a family member requests them, although even then the agency need not release informant identification, the names of members of the public who complained or inquired, information that would compromise an ongoing criminal investigation, or material withheld under another provision of law.

Section 84-712.05 is also the statute the crash-report law, section 60-699, cross-references as the governing authority for withholding a peace officer's accident report, so Nebraska's crash-confidentiality and general law-enforcement-exemption rules are structurally linked rather than separate.

For a city-level example, Omaha Police Department's own records-request page could not be independently reached during this article's research. Figures describing a modest per-report fee and a roughly five business day wait circulate for Omaha, but because they could not be confirmed against the department's own page this pass, contact Omaha PD's records unit directly, or the relevant department in your own Nebraska city, to confirm current fees and timelines before requesting.

Nebraska Bodycam Footage

Nebraska has a dedicated statewide bodycam statute built across a three-section subchapter: section 81-1452 defines terms, section 81-1453 provides for a model policy and sets which agencies must adopt one, and section 81-1454 sets what that policy must contain.

The duty is conditional, and that is the part most summaries get wrong. Nebraska does not require any agency to deploy body worn cameras. Section 81-1453(2) reaches only agencies that use them: an agency already using cameras as of July 21, 2016 had to adopt a written body worn camera policy on or before January 1, 2017, and since January 1, 2017 an agency must adopt one before it begins using cameras. An agency that does not use body worn cameras is under no policy obligation at all.

Where a policy is required, section 81-1454 sets its minimum contents: training for peace officers who use the cameras and for employees who handle the recordings, retention requirements, and a procedure governing destruction of recordings after the retention period. Recordings must be kept at least 90 days from the date of recording, and longer when a court proceeding, a disciplinary proceeding, or an ongoing criminal investigation involves the recording.

This article's research pass did not independently reconfirm a specific public request fee or process beyond that statutory framework. For the underlying law in more detail, see Nebraska bodycam laws; for the general request process across states, see how to request bodycam footage.

Related Resources

Police Reports by State covers the national picture. See also How to File a Police Report, How to Read a Police Report, Are Police Reports Public?, Nebraska Bodycam Laws, Nebraska Car Accident Laws, Nebraska Public Records Laws, and Nebraska Court Records.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about how to request Nebraska crash reports, incident reports, and bodycam footage. It is not legal advice. Fees and agency contact information change; verify current details with the Nebraska Department of Transportation, the relevant local department, or a licensed Nebraska attorney before relying on anything here for a specific situation.

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Last updated: 2026-08-11. Fees and portals reflect their published status as of August 2026.