Recording Ohio police: one-party consent and a right the state trains officers on

The recording right shows up in Ohio law in an unusual place: a peace officer training statute. House Bill 33 of the 135th General Assembly, effective October 3, 2023, rewrote R.C. 109.803 so that the Attorney General's continuing professional training rules must require every officer to complete training on proper interactions with civilians during traffic stops and other in-person encounters. Division (B)(4)(a) lists four things officers must be taught about a person's rights, and the fourth is the right for a citizen to record an encounter with a peace officer. The other three are when an officer may require a person to exit a vehicle, constitutional protections from illegal search and seizure, and the rights of a passenger in a vehicle who has been pulled over for a traffic stop. Ohio has not written a right-to-record cause of action the way California did in Penal Code section 148(g) or New York in Civil Rights Law section 79-p, but it has put the right in the mandatory curriculum for the 24 hours of continuing professional training that R.C. 109.803(A)(1) requires of every appointed peace officer and trooper each calendar year.

Audio is the part people get wrong in other states, and Ohio settles it clearly. R.C. 2933.52(A) makes it an offense to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic communication, and division (C) makes that a fourth-degree felony. But division (B)(4) exempts a person who is not a law enforcement officer and who intercepts a communication if that person is a party to it or has the prior consent of one party, so long as the recording is not made for the purpose of committing a criminal offense, a tortious act, or any other injurious act. Filming your own traffic stop puts you in the conversation, so the exemption applies. Recording an exchange you are not part of is also normally safe, because R.C. 2933.51(B) defines an oral communication as one uttered by a person exhibiting an expectation that it is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying that expectation, and an officer giving commands on a public street is not in that position.

Ohio has enacted no distance rule. A full-text search of the Revised Code for the phrase "within twenty-five feet" returns nothing, so the Florida-style approach of making it an offense to approach an officer after a warning has no Ohio counterpart, and there is no Ohio section creating a general offense of interfering with a peace officer.

What can be charged is R.C. 2921.31. Its text is narrow on its face: a person acts unlawfully only if, without privilege to do so and with purpose to prevent, obstruct, or delay an authorized act, the person does any act that hampers or impedes a public official in the performance of lawful duties. It requires an affirmative act and a purpose to obstruct, so holding a phone and standing back does not satisfy it, while stepping between an officer and an arrestee or refusing to move out of a roadway can. Obstructing official business is a second-degree misdemeanor, carrying up to 90 days under R.C. 2929.24(A)(2) and up to $750 under R.C. 2929.28(A)(2)(a), and it becomes a fifth-degree felony if the violation creates a risk of physical harm to any person.

Getting the officer's own footage is a separate exercise, and Ohio prices it. Body-worn camera and dashboard camera recordings are public records under R.C. 149.43, subject to the restricted portions listed in division (A)(17). Division (B)(1) lets a law enforcement agency or prosecutor charge the actual cost of preparing a video record, capped at $75 per hour of video produced and $750 in total, and the agency must give the requester an estimate within five business days of the request. Division (B)(11) waives the fee entirely for a crime victim, the victim's counsel, or the victim's insurer who files an affidavit stating the video is being sought to investigate the harm. If the agency refuses, R.C. 149.43 gives a requester either a mandamus action or a complaint in the Court of Claims.

There is no Ohio offense of recording a police officer, so nothing is charged for the filming itself. C. C. C. 28(A)(2)(a)), rising to a fifth-degree felony where the conduct creates a risk of physical harm to any person. The prosecution must prove an affirmative act plus the purpose to prevent, obstruct, or delay, so the defense in a filming case is normally that the defendant did nothing beyond record and speak. C. 52 is a fourth-degree felony, but the one-party consent exemption in division (B)(4) removes an ordinary citizen recording a conversation they are part of. C. 43(B)(1) can be challenged by mandamus or by a complaint filed with the clerk of the Court of Claims.