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Illinois FOIA & OMA Reference

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How to request your own police report, body-cam footage and 911 audio

Quotations come from the FOIA text on this site’s statutes page (5 ILCS 140, fetched September 6, 2026). General information, not legal advice.

This guide is for someone who was involved in an incident and wants the police records about it. It covers the report, body-worn camera video and 911 audio. For the wider picture (other record types, more agencies, body-camera retention), read the police records and body-camera guide first. Nothing here replaces it.

1. Know what you are asking for

These are different records, often kept by different bodies, and they are treated differently:

All three fit the Act’s definition of public records, which includes “tapes, recordings, electronic data processing records, electronic communications, recorded information and all other documentary materials pertaining to the transaction of public business” held by or for a public body (section 2(c)). Whether you can get one is a separate question, answered below.

Gather the date and time, the location, any report or case number the officer gave you, the officers’ names if you have them, and which agency responded. Send a separate paragraph for each record so that a problem with one does not hold up the others.

2. Arrest information is on a short clock

If the incident led to an arrest, section 2.15(a) requires that this information be furnished “as soon as practical, but in no event later than 72 hours after the arrest, notwithstanding the time limits otherwise provided for in Section 3”:

Section 2.15(c) lets an agency withhold the time and location of the arrest, the agency’s name, and the custody dates if disclosure would “interfere with pending or actually and reasonably contemplated law enforcement proceedings,” “endanger the life or physical safety of law enforcement or correctional personnel or any other person,” or “compromise the security of any correctional facility.” This section covers that list of arrest information. It does not by itself cover the officer’s full narrative report.

Section 2.15(b) separately makes certain criminal history records public, including “records in which the requesting party is the individual identified, except as provided under Section 7(1)(d)(vi).” See the section 2.15 provision page for PAC decisions.

3. Write the request

Make the request in writing, with the whole request in the body of any email (section 3(c)). You do not need a form or a stated reason: a body “may not require that a request be submitted on a standard form or require the requester to specify the purpose for a request, except to determine whether the records are requested for a commercial purpose or whether to grant a request for a fee waiver” (section 3(c)).

You can adapt this wording. The request builder can help assemble the full letter.

Under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, I request electronic copies of the following records held by [agency] about the incident on [date] at about [time] at [location], involving [me / my vehicle / case number]:

  1. The incident or arrest report and any supplemental reports and attachments.
  2. Body-worn camera recordings of the encounter, from [start time] to [end time], from every officer who was present.
  3. The recording of the 911 call made at about [time] from [number or location], if that agency holds it. If it does not, please tell me which public body does.

I was the [driver / person stopped / caller / victim] in this incident and consent to the release of information about me. If any part of a record is exempt, please redact that part and release the rest, and identify the exemption for each redaction.

I ask for the records in electronic form. If you cannot provide them in that form, please tell me what you can provide. Please tell me of any fee before you incur it.

Requests for inspection are also allowed. Section 3(a) requires a body to make public records “available to any person for inspection or copying.”

4. What the agency may redact, and why your role matters

Personal privacy and consent. The privacy exemption covers “personal information contained within public records, the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, unless the disclosure is consented to in writing by the individual subjects of the information” (section 7(1)(c)). Because the consent comes from “the individual subjects of the information,” your written consent speaks to information about you. Information about other people in the same report may still be redacted. Saying in the request that you consent is a way to head off a privacy denial for your own information. See the section 7(1)(c) hub.

Private information. Section 7(1)(b) exempts “private information, unless disclosure is required by another provision of this Act, a State or federal law, or a court order.” The definition in section 2(c-5) includes driver’s license numbers, personal financial information, “home or personal telephone numbers, and personal email addresses,” and “home address and personal license plates, except as otherwise provided by law or when compiled without possibility of attribution to any person.” A report or a 911 recording may have some of these items redacted. See the section 7(1)(b) hub.

Open investigations. Law-enforcement records are exempt under section 7(1)(d) “but only to the extent that disclosure would” cause one of the listed harms. They include interfering with “pending or actually and reasonably contemplated law enforcement proceedings” and obstructing “an ongoing criminal investigation by the agency that is the recipient of the request.” The words “only to the extent” matter: an agency that cites an open investigation still has to look at what in the record would cause the harm. For traffic crashes, section 7(1)(d)(iv) adds that “the identities of witnesses to traffic crashes, traffic crash reports, and rescue reports shall be provided by agencies of local government, except when disclosure would interfere with an active criminal investigation conducted by the agency that is the recipient of the request.” See the section 7(1)(d) hub.

Redaction instead of withholding. When a record has both exempt and non-exempt information, the body “may elect to redact the information that is exempt” and “shall make the remaining information available for inspection and copying” (section 7(1)).

5. Body-camera footage

Section 7.5 lists a separate exemption for “recordings made under the Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act, except to the extent authorized under that Act” (section 7.5(cc)). So the answer for video turns on what the Body Camera Act authorizes. That Act is not part of the FOIA text on this site, so what follows comes from the Public Access Counselor’s own letters, which quote it.

Ask quickly: unflagged recordings are not kept long. In a January 2025 PAC letter about the Markham Police Department (Request for Review 2024 PAC 84547), the Bureau quoted the Body Camera Act (50 ILCS 706/10-20(7)) this way: recordings “must be retained by the law enforcement agency or by the camera vendor used by the agency, on a recording medium for a period of 90 days.” It also quoted the Act as saying that after the 90-day storage period, recordings “must be destroyed, unless any encounter captured on the recording has been flagged.” In that case the department reported that the footage “was not flagged” and was deleted after 90 days, and the Bureau found the footage “was not required to be preserved beyond 90 days under that statute.” The request for review was found unfounded because the department no longer had the footage when the request arrived. Name the date, time and location and send your request promptly.

What gets a recording flagged. In binding Public Access Opinion 2019 PAC 58962 (City of Waukegan), the Attorney General wrote that section 10-20(b) of the Body Camera Act provides that recordings flagged “due to the filing of a complaint, discharge of a firearm, use of force, arrest or detention, or resulting death or bodily harm” must be disclosed under FOIA unless a FOIA exemption applies.

Who can get an unflagged recording. In a July 2025 PAC letter about the Fairfield Police Department (Request for Review 2025 PAC 87818), the Bureau wrote that a department is required to disclose body camera recordings under FOIA “only if the recordings are 1) flagged for any of the reasons specified in section 10-20(b)(2) of the Body Camera Act, or (2) if they are requested by the subject of the encounter captured on the recording or the subject’s attorneys.” It described the subject of the encounter as the person who appeared in the recording and “interacted with a law enforcement officer in the course of a law enforcement activity.” In that case the requester received the portions of the footage that showed the requester, and the Bureau found that redacting the other people was proper. If you were involved in the encounter, say so in your request.

See also the police records guide and the section 7.5(cc) hub for PAC decisions on these recordings.

6. 911 audio

A 911 recording is a “recording” under section 2(c). The same exemptions in part 4 can apply: for example, the definition of private information in section 2(c-5) includes “home or personal telephone numbers” and home addresses, so a caller’s details may be redacted, and an open investigation can be a ground under section 7(1)(d). The agency that holds the audio may be a separate dispatch center. Ask the police department which public body keeps it, and send a request to that body too. Name the date, time, location and call details, and send the request promptly. Section 3.5(a) requires each public body to have a Freedom of Information officer, and the directory can help locate one.

7. Deadlines, fees and what to do if you are denied