A North Carolina judge has ordered the Wilmington Police Department and New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office to release law-enforcement recordings of a disputed November 2025 arrest—but the public still had to wait more than seven months after a newsroom went to court to get that answer.
The case centers on the arrest of Corey Rayshaun Temoney on Princess Place Drive in Wilmington. A bystander’s roughly two-minute video appears to show Temoney face down in the street, repeatedly saying he was not resisting while several responders held him down. A New Hanover County deputy appears in the video to strike Temoney in the face with an open hand and push his face toward the pavement, according to WHQR’s reporting.
Temoney and witnesses have described the force as excessive. Law-enforcement accounts differ. The recordings may settle some of those disputes. They may create new questions. What they will not do is make the legal obstacle course used to obtain them look reasonable.
The court did not decide whether the force was justified
Superior Court Judge Ricardo Jensen’s September 21 order is not a finding that any officer or deputy committed misconduct. It decides a narrower question: whether recordings held by Wilmington police and the sheriff’s office should be released to WHQR.
The answer was yes.
The five-page court order says the incomplete cellphone videos and conflicting accounts create a “compelling public interest” in giving the public the full picture. Jensen ordered both agencies to provide the recordings within two weeks of September 21.
The order requires agencies to blur bystanders and a second arrested person who was not part of WHQR’s reporting. It also requires redaction of addresses, birth dates and other personally identifying information. Those are ordinary privacy protections, not a reason to hide the entire encounter.
As of October 2, the court-ordered two-week window had not yet expired. The deadline falls on or about October 5, depending on how the agencies calculate compliance. Until the recordings are delivered and reviewed, the central use-of-force questions remain unresolved.
What the public video and competing accounts show
The arrest happened November 25, 2025. In the video reviewed by WHQR, Temoney is pinned down by a sheriff’s deputy and later assisted by several Wilmington police officers and a firefighter. The visible portion does not show the entire encounter.
That missing context is the point.
In a court memorandum supporting release, WHQR’s attorneys laid out sharply different accounts. A sheriff’s office spokesperson reportedly said Temoney was belligerent and was arrested on an outstanding warrant for driving while license revoked. Officers told bystanders that Temoney approached with drug paraphernalia in his hands. Temoney told WHQR that officers initially allowed him to collect another detained person’s belongings, then abruptly moved to arrest him.
A local pastor who witnessed the incident told WHQR that Temoney had already been placed in a patrol car. According to that account, an officer said Temoney threatened to kick out the windows, after which officers removed him, put him on the pavement and restrained his feet.
Those accounts are not interchangeable, and none should be treated as the final word. The released recordings should show what happened before, during and after the short clip that circulated online.
The criminal case against Temoney was resolved on December 11, 2025, according to the court order. The order also says lawyers for the city and county did not identify any active, inactive or potential internal or criminal investigation into the officers involved. Jensen wrote that the court therefore had to assume no such investigation existed.
That does not prove there was no administrative review of any kind. It does mean no investigation was presented to the judge as a reason to keep the recordings secret.
WHQR filed in February and got an order in September
WHQR filed its petition on February 13. A hearing was held in May, but the matter was continued because the sheriff’s office had not been served as required. The merits were argued September 8. Jensen reviewed the recordings privately on September 19 and signed the release order two days later.
That is more than seven months from petition to order for footage of an arrest that occurred in public, generated public concern and involved two government agencies whose accounts did not fully resolve what happened.
WHQR was represented by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Duke Law School’s First Amendment Clinic. Most residents do not have a newsroom, a national press-freedom organization and a law-school clinic ready to litigate access for them.
The Reporters Committee’s case page shows the petition, supporting memorandum and final order. That paper trail matters because it shows exactly how much work was required to obtain evidence recorded by public employees using public equipment during an encounter on a public street.
North Carolina body-camera video is not a public record
The delay is not simply an agency choice. It is built into state law.
General Statute 132-1.4A declares that law-enforcement recordings are not public records. The law distinguishes between disclosure—viewing footage under controlled conditions—and release, which means receiving a copy. Public release generally requires a Superior Court order.
A judge must weigh eight factors, including public interest, privacy, safety, active investigations, potential court proceedings and whether there is good cause to release the full recording. Agencies, officers and the district attorney receive notice and an opportunity to be heard.
Privacy and fair-trial concerns are real. Body-camera recordings can show victims, children, medical emergencies, private homes and people who were never accused of a crime. Redaction and temporary withholding can protect those interests.
But North Carolina starts from a much broader rule: the recording itself is not a public record. That makes secrecy the default and forces the public to justify access in court.
The same barrier applies in Onslow County
This is not just a Wilmington problem. The Onslow County Sheriff’s Office tells residents that body-camera and in-car recordings are not public records, that footage may only be viewed at the sheriff’s office by people who qualify under the statute, and that the agency cannot release a copy without a Superior Court order.
That means the same basic barrier applies when an encounter occurs in Jacksonville, Richlands, Sneads Ferry or elsewhere in Onslow County. A resident may know a camera recorded the incident and still be unable to obtain a copy without filing a court action.
For readers following our broader police accountability coverage, the lesson is simple: a body camera does not automatically create transparency. It creates evidence. State law decides whether the public gets to see it.
What the recordings can—and cannot—answer
Once released, the recordings should help answer basic factual questions:
- Why officers decided to arrest Temoney
- What happened inside or near the patrol car before he was placed on the pavement
- What commands officers gave and how Temoney responded
- What force each officer used and for how long
- Whether the video supports, contradicts or complicates the existing accounts
The recordings will not, by themselves, decide whether force was lawful. That judgment depends on the facts known to officers at the time and the legal standard for objective reasonableness. Nor will the footage necessarily capture every angle, statement or physical movement.
But evidence does not need to answer every question to be worth releasing. It only needs to be more useful than official ambiguity.
In North Carolina, the body camera can record the encounter. The public still needs a judge to see the receipt.