HOULTON, Maine — The Houlton Police Department must release the body camera footage of an officer’s interaction with a minor to the child’s father by next Thursday, according to court documents.
After reviewing the unredacted footage in private late last year, Maine Superior Court Justice Patrick Larson ordered the police department on Jan. 26 to release the entire audio portion of the 18 minutes and 24 seconds of body camera footage and a portion of the video to Houlton resident Mark Lipscombe by Feb. 26, according to court records.
The order is the latest in the Freedom of Access Act case filed by Lipscombe last summer after he was denied access to the body camera footage by police.
“The [police department] will provide [Lipscombe] with an audio version of the entire body camera video and two portions of the video version of the body camera; the first starting at the 2:24 mark and ending at the 3:50 mark and the second from the 17:51 mark to the end of the video,” Larson said in his order.
Segments of the video captured by Officer Joshua Foster contain confidential information, including footage of a computer screen showing an in-progress email which was near where Foster was interviewing Lipscombe’s child in the Houlton Middle High School principal’s office, he said.
Initially, Lipscombe submitted a detailed Freedom of Access Act request to Police Chief Tim DeLuca, seeking all records related to a 2025 interaction with his child, including all investigative records, dispatch logs, reports and body camera footage.
When the police did not fulfill his request for the public records, Lipscombe filed a petition for judicial review in Aroostook County Superior Court, alleging that after 52 days of delay he did not receive the documents.
In his complaint he detailed missed FOAA required deadlines, shifting justifications for not releasing body camera footage and missing documents. Additionally, he said the town and police improperly withheld records concerning his own minor child’s interaction with law enforcement based on legally insufficient exemption claims.
“Rather than conducting the diligent search required by FOAA, defendants appear to have cherry-picked certain documents while remaining silent on numerous categories of requested records,” Lipscombe said in the court documents.
In early July, DeLuca allegedly missed two promised deadlines regarding response timelines and then referred the request to legal counsel, despite Lipscombe’s repeated offers to narrow or tailor his FOAA request to facilitate prompt processing, according to the court filing.
By mid-July, 48 days after the initial FOAA request, an attorney for the town responded to Lipscombe and said many of the records he requested contained confidential information.
The body camera footage was withheld and other documents were heavily redacted, even removing Lipscombe’s name, his minor child’s name and date of birth.
“The HPDs pattern of delays, missed deadlines and secrecy suggest they are more interested in avoiding scrutiny than serving the public,” Lipscombe said in August. “When law enforcement claims they can’t redact body camera footage in 2025, it’s either incompetence or willful obstruction of transparency.”
In September, Larson ordered the police department to furnish the court with the incident report, body camera footage related to the June 6 incident, and audio recordings of the dispatch call and the officer’s arrival on scene within 15 days.
The police chief, a town attorney and Lipscombe, who represented himself in court, met with Larson in November and again in December to discuss the matter, according to Larson’s Jan. 26 order.
Lipscombe told the court on Dec. 18 that if he received access to the body camera video, all his requests would be satisfied, Larson said.
During the December conference, the police said Foster’s body camera video remained confidential, but if the court ordered the release of the video in some form, they would comply with the order, court records revealed.
“This is a victory for common sense after months of stonewalling,” Lipscombe said in a Monday interview. “What should have been a straightforward records request in June turned into an expensive legal battle because the town couldn’t follow basic FOAA requirements. The town can and should do better by simply following the law.”