I was certainly shocked when New London Law Director Jeffrey Londregan informed me that a copy of a video from a body camera worn by a New London police officer, which I requested months ago, was going to cost the newspaper $628.99.

The city would be charging for the labor for a police lieutenant, at the rate of $51 an hour, to review the video taken New Year's Eve by a police cam and "redact" or make "necessary edits/revisions" to the footage before it could be publicly released.

There are a lot of troubling aspects to this.

And I find it shameful that New London is making it so difficult to view police body camera footage that the public made so clear it wants made available, after the long summer of Black Lives Matter protests that followed the police murder of George Floyd.

More alarming, even if you could afford the cost of it, is that what you get is a video edited by a police officer.

If you were to put a security camera in a hen house to see who was molesting the birds would you want local foxes to review and edit the camera footage before you see it?

In a long series of emails with Londregan — Mayor Michael Passero was copied but never responded to my entreaties to comment himself on the issue — the law director made it clear that the decision about what to redact or edit from the videos lies entirely with police.

It would be within their discretion to decide what things Freedom of Information laws would permit them to edit from the video.

It seems to me that would be the job of a law director, to interpret the law regarding what may be legally redacted from documents requested under FOI laws.

"All I can tell you at this point in time is that NLPD believes there are images that would be properly exempted (under FOI law)," Londregan wrote.

Of course they do. But not only do they have a self-interest in carrying out the edits, but they are not trained to interpret FOI law.

But my principal objection to the city's response to the FOI request for police cam footage is that they insist on charging for labor to prepare the document, which is not something specifically allowed under FOI law.

The law does allow the government to charge for "formatting" and "programming" documents.

Thomas Hennick, public education officer for the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, told me that the commission has been informing police departments — they've been asking — that the cost of labor to review and redact the body cam footage, essentially a new class of "documents" created by the legislature, cannot be charged to those requesting the videos.

The labor involved in editing the videos should not be considered formatting or programming, Hennick told me in no uncertain terms.

Honestly, I think a grade school English teacher could tell you that, based on the definition of the two words.

Londregan, however, after I asked him to check with the commission before charging The Day the substantial labor fee, said he did and was told there has been no legal case before the commission on the issue of whether body cam video editing is formatting.

He also said New Haven has been charging the labor fee on body cam editing. This strikes me as schoolyard logic: Well, Billy is doing it.

"In sum, with FOIC not having had this issue before it, and with there being an honest and legitimate question of what constitutes 'formatting' video as a medium, the city is standing by its request for payment ..." Londregan wrote to me.

Now I'll have to file a complaint and it will head into a commission docket that is many months long.

The city will have to pay for this fight, just as it is now expensively litigating before the FOI Commission the issue of whether it can keep secret the location of new video surveillance cameras in the city, including some spying in neighborhoods where a majority of residents are minorities.

The city also is waging an expensive fight to not let the public see the substance of accusations that resulted in the police chief being suspended for months. They say it would violate his privacy.

You'd almost think all those Black Lives Matter protests never happened in New London, with the city secretly installing surveillance cameras in downtown neighborhoods and fighting to make it almost impossible for the public to review police body cam footage.

You would think the mayor should have something to say about the decision to expensively fight to essentially keep police body cam videos from the public — against specific advice from the FOI Commission public education officer — by making them prohibitively expensive.

But I heard nothing from him.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com