Lawyers for open-government activists and law enforcement squared off before the New Jersey Supreme Court Tuesday on the issue of whether police dashcam videos should be made available for release to the public, and how quickly.

The issue is in flux since law enforcement officials say videos should not be made public until investigations are over, while good-government watchdogs insist they should be considered public records and thus made available for public release.

The arguments before the court came one day after Attorney General Gurbil Grewal announced that, specifically in cases where police use deadly force, dashcam and police body cam videos should be made available for public release after the conclusion of an initial investigation.

Both sides in the case, Paff v. Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, appeared to seek guidance following the court's ruling last year in North Jersey Media Group v. Lyndhurst, where the court opened the door to dashcam videos being released to the public on formal request.

“We need black-letter law in this area,” Samuel Marzarella, the chief appellate attorney for the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, told the court Tuesday. “The more bright-line law there is, the better off we are.”

In the Paff case, a divided appeals court ruled in a 2016 published decision that dashcam recordings amount to documents that must be released under the Open Public Records Act. The majority said the recordings should not be shielded under the privilege for ongoing criminal investigations, affirming a decision by Ocean County Superior Court Judge Vincent Grasso to make public the Barnegat Police Department dashcam recording at the request of open-government activist John Paff. The dissent said such recordings should be considered records of criminal investigations.

Paff is an activist and frequent filer of OPRA actions.

His attorney, Montclair solo Richard Gutman, argued that the videos should be subject to release, especially given recent incidents in which police have been accused of using undue  force to either kill or subdue members of the public without cause.

“There is a very high amount of public interest,” Gutman said. “There is a general need to monitor the police. Every time there is an excessive use of force, there is a victim.”

Justice Barry Albin asked what should happen when a private citizen, whether arrested or not, objected to the release of a video recording.

Marzarella said law enforcement officials had to ensure that both defendants and those not subject to arrest had their rights to privacy protected.

Gutman said videos were essentially no different from written arrest records, which are already publicly available.

The case involves a Jan. 29, 2014, incident in which a Tuckerton police officer attempted to stop a driver, leading to a chase that ended in Barnegat. The driver was charged with eluding, but the Tuckerton officer, in an incident that was captured on the Barnegat cameras, also was charged with assault and misuse of a police dog. Because of the Appellate Division's split ruling, the prosecutor's office had an automatic right to appeal.

Grewal's Monday announcement was about a new directive that, pending Supreme Court review, would mandate that police dashcam and body cam videos documenting use of deadly force should be subject to public release once the corresponding initial investigation, usually done in 20 days, is complete. Grewal highlighted “strengthening police-community relations” and “policies that promote both public safety and public accountability” as reasons for the directive.