From [HERE] Boosting police accountability in the Garden State, New Jersey’s highest court ordered the release Tuesday of dashboard footage that will shed light on the shooting of a man after a high-speed chase.

“Footage from police cameras without accessibility to the public is nothing more than surveillance,” Ed Barocas, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union New Jersey, said in a statement. “Today, the New Jersey Supreme Court acknowledged the crucial role that transparency plays in holding police accountable.”

The ACLU-NJ got involved in the case filed years earlier by North Jersey Media Group, a publisher of newspapers including The Record of Bergen County.

Along with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the challengers sought access to dash-cam footage captured by New Jersey state troopers and municipal police while responding to a 911 call on Sept. 16, 2014, about an attempted car theft.

Police identified the suspect who drove away in a black SUV as Kashad Ashford. Several officers ultimately fired on Ashford, killing him, after a high-speed chase through several towns ended with Ashford crashing into a guardrail on Route 3, after having already rammed into a Lyndhurst patrol car.

Though a lower court kept the shooting footage under wraps in 2015, the New Jersey Supreme Court awarded North Jersey Media Group access both to the video to and to the police’s unredacted use-of-force reports.