The Phoenix Police Department is proposing to tackle a backlog of public records requests with more staff and higher fees.
City documents say Phoenix police have roughly 40,000 pending public records requests, all of which require review and redactions.
While traffic crash reports are often done in days, it can take an average of 18 months to fulfill video footage requests.
Now, Phoenix police want to charge more for all commercial requests. And they want to raise the price to redact and produce certain video content.
Money from those increases would be used to hire more staff to process records requests.
The City Council is scheduled to consider the increases on Wednesday.
