ELI5, How does a police video become public? Are they required to make them public, or are they leaked?
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For the most part, at least in the US, they’re made public. Overall you have the Freedom of Information act which allows citizens to request documents, though this isn’t all encompassing if the government claims said documents need to be kept secret (current investigation, identities, whatever they want)
Some areas in the US are notorious for releasing lots of information as a rule. Florida became widely known in the US for it’s dumb criminals because they release information on every arrest. They didn’t have dumber criminals than everywhere else but theirs were reported on constantly because the information was always out there.
Similarly some police departments release body camera footage within a set time frame for any arrest. I think you can find a lot of these on youtube because people have found that they make for great schadenfreude.
Other times police release body camera footage in public announcements about investigations into use of force. So unlike the previous example you wouldn’t see their footage of random drunk people being idiots and instead only high profile cases.
While leaks always happen everywhere, so much footage is released as a rule that likely whatever you’re seeing is publicly available.
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