An Orange Beach councilwoman said publicly what none of her colleagues has said in an open meeting: she wants the city to find a legal way to release body camera footage of Mayor Tony Kennon from a 2024 police call at a public building.
“I want to release the body camera footage,” Councilwoman Ginger Harrelson said from the dais during a chaotic council meeting, as verbal exchanges between her, the mayor and local residents escalated.
It was not the first time the idea had floated around Orange Beach City Hall since the new council took office in November 2025. Until now, those opinions surfaced only in executive sessions on litigation strategy, private conversations, or interviews with reporters.
“I want to find a legal way to move to release the body cam footage based on the public interest with the goal of being transparent and accountable for public officials,” Harrelson said hours after the meeting.
The footage at the center of a citywide fight
The video captures police officers speaking with Kennon after they responded to a 911 call about a naked man punching a woman on the balcony of a public building in 2024. Reporters who viewed the footage last summer described officers finding the mayor inside the government building after 1 a.m. on Sept. 2, 2024, following a 911 call from a waitress at a nearby restaurant who said she saw a “butt naked” man on the balcony of the Coastal Resources Building punching a woman three times and dragging her into an office while screaming, “Don’t you ever walk out on me!”
During the interaction, Kennon told officers the space was “our [his and his wife’s] getaway on the weekends,” and said his wife, Paula, was with him and could speak to officers. She did not. Kennon has repeatedly denied hitting his wife that night, while admitting he was in the building. No charges were filed.
Efforts to release the video have drawn hostility from the mayor, according to an Alabama Ethics Commission complaint filed in May by councilors Harrelson, Jeff Silvers and Robert Stuart. The complaint alleges Kennon opposed the idea during an April 1 executive session to avoid embarrassing “his wife and family,” and that during an April 21 meeting he threatened councilors with legal action and political revenge if they attempted to release the footage in hopes of settling a federal lawsuit filed by local attorney C.C. Dixon Moreno, who sued the city after her public records request for the footage was denied.
How the council would vote
If a member introduced a resolution to release the footage, the council appears divided. Harrelson and Stuart said they would vote to release it, but not if doing so fiscally harms the city. Both said they have asked attorneys representing the city’s liability insurance provider whether release would affect coverage and are waiting on answers.
Councilman Pat Simpson said he is “on the fence” and would want to know there were no negative ramifications first. Silvers said he would abstain, arguing the ethics investigation needs to run its course. Councilman Jack Robertson and Kennon declined to say how they would vote, with Kennon calling a hypothetical resolution something he could not comment on.
“I will say this, that tape doesn’t cause me any concern whatsoever,” Kennon said.
“Whenever you have the unknown, it always is someone fighting so hard to prevent something from being released,” Stuart said. “I think the main reason [to release it] would be that I’ve just had so many people within the city of Orange Beach say that they think it needs to be released.”
What state law actually allows
Whether the footage can legally be released is itself contested. City Attorney Jamie Logan sent a memo to department heads in January stating that under a 2023 state law, body camera footage cannot be released through a public records request, and that “it is the policy of the City of Orange Beach that police body camera footage, narrative reports and accompanying notes are not released to the public.”
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that police footage is investigative material protected under the Alabama Public Records Act, and the Legislature codified that ruling. But agencies across coastal Alabama have released or allowed review of footage on a case-by-case basis anyway. The Semmes Police Department released body camera footage of a December 2025 shootout to a television station, the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office let a reporter review pursuit footage in 2025, and Fairhope footage surfaced as discovery in a criminal case.
Some councilors are also calling out Logan for creating internal policies without informing the council, policies the mayor has cited as a reason not to release the footage or discuss it. Kennon said this week the city’s body camera policies had not been updated since the 2024 incident, then recanted, saying he may have been wrong, and deferred questions to Logan: “I don’t want to talk blind. Especially when it comes to anything from the legal side, that’s just the attorney needs to do the talking.”
Silvers and Harrelson both said they believe it is the council’s role to dictate city policy on releasing footage.
What’s next
The ethics commission complaint remains pending, and the federal records lawsuit continues. Kennon declined to comment on the ethics complaint, citing it as an ongoing investigation, but said the tape does not concern him. For now, the question of whether Orange Beach residents ever see the footage rests with a divided council, an insurance carrier’s answer, and the courts.
A resident asks the council to keep the footage sealed
The public fight over the footage spilled onto the council floor when local resident and private investigator Wendy Pickering urged the council not to release the video, telling members she worried about the precedent of handing police body-worn footage to any requester. ‘I do want to kind of dip into the precedent that would be set if we start where we send body-worn footage to any person that goes to request it, especially if they’re not someone that’s personally involved in it,’ Pickering said. ‘My greatest concern, like I said, is with the precedent set that every decision the government makes today becomes the example for tomorrow.’
Her testimony was met with a heckle from a council member’s spouse in the audience, and was followed by pointed questions about whether Kennon had hired Pickering to investigate members of the City Council. Other speakers said the political controversy unfolding in Orange Beach is harming the city’s reputation on a national scale. The exchange came during a 54-minute meeting and laid bare the rift that has driven Kennon to stop attending executive sessions and to further distance himself from several councilors.
What the footage shows
The video stems from a Labor Day 2024 911 call by a waitress at a nearby restaurant, who reported seeing a ‘butt naked’ man on the balcony of the Coastal Resources Building punching a woman three times and dragging her into an office while screaming, ‘Don’t you ever walk out on me!’ Reporters who reviewed the footage last summer saw officers find Kennon inside the government building after 1 a.m. on Sept. 2, 2024. He told officers the space was his and his wife’s weekend getaway, and said his wife, Paula, was with him and could speak to police. She did not, and was not interviewed until days later, when she denied being assaulted. Officers did not follow standard procedure by interviewing a potential domestic violence victim that night.
Kennon has denied any assault occurred, while acknowledging he was in the building. The rift over the footage and the ethics complaint has grown so deep that the mayor has stopped attending executive sessions, and the ethics commission’s October hearing now looms over the dispute.