Utah cops to refund $3K charged for Petito-Laundrie bodycam videos
The Utah police department that released bodycam footage documenting their stop of Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie will reportedly refund $3,000 in fees it collected from news outlets because the charges violated state law.
The videos showed Moab cops talking to the couple on Aug. 12, after a 911 caller told cops he saw a man slapping a woman outside an organic grocery store, weeks before their cross country van trip came to a tragic end.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the fees for the footage amounted to about three times what the department had expected to collect this fiscal year in records fee revenue, citing a city budget document.
The first video the department released showed Petito, 22, crying and saying that the couple had been having “little arguments” that day. A second released days later showed Petito telling cops Laundrie had assaulted her.
Petito was reported missing a month later, on Sept. 11, by her family on Long Island after they hadn’t heard from her for weeks, sparking a widespread search for the travel vlogger.
Her body was found eight days later in remote section of a Wyoming national forest near Grand Teton National Park. An autopsy found she was strangled.
Laundrie, 23, who drove home alone to North Point, Fla., then vanished, sparking a month-long manhunt, was found dead Oct. 20 in a swampy nature preserve near his family’s home. An autopsy was unable to determine the cause of death.
State law allows agencies to charge only “actual costs of providing a record,” the outlet reported.
“Even if one person were charged a fee,” Moab city spokesperson Lisa Church told the Tribune, “once that document is created, everybody else should not have been charged.”
The department has also hired an outside agency to probe the way the cops responded to the Aug. 12 stop.
