The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has a chance to set the commonwealth on a path to more reasonable and responsible handling of police video recordings, as it considers this week whether to uphold a Commonwealth Court ruling that ordered state police to publicly release dashboard camera video of troopers at the scene of an accident near State College.

The Supreme Court should uphold the lower court’s ruling and reaffirm that these videos — “mobile vehicle recordings” — are public records. But the issue doesn’t end there.

Pennsylvania needs clarity when it comes to the handling of police video recordings, and that starts with taking final decision-making authority regarding their release to the public away from state police officials.

There’s already been legislative effort expended trying to make sure that doesn’t happen, and keep police videos — particularly those shot with body cameras — entirely exempt from public record requests. That bill, SB 976, cleared a Senate committee in 2015 and has since been tabled. But it’s far from an outlier. As of March, 10 states had passed laws restricting public access to body camera footage, and another 20 had proposed such legislation, according to Philadelphia-based newspaper The Legal Intelligencer.

Here’s a simple question: What public good does video of police conduct do when it’s not available for public review?

Some footage — say, a recording of police interrogating a defendant currently on trial — obviously meets the state’s “criminal investigative records” exemption under Right To Know law.

But the issue isn’t always so clear-cut, and state police shouldn’t be the ones with the final word. That’s a job for officials at the state’s Office of Open Records. And state police have refused to let them do it.

In August the office asked a judge to order PSP to turn over video footage after the agency denied a newspaper’s request for access. The newspaper appealed PSP’s decision to the office, which asked to review the tapes to determine if an exemption was warranted. PSP refused, saying the office didn’t have the authority to review the information because it isn’t a criminal justice agency.

This leaves state police in an enviable position. They get to point out that troopers’ actions are consistently recorded and scrutinized. But then they still control who gets to see what, and when — if ever — the public gets to see it.

It might seem like a workable, if inadvisable, arrangement until you recall the case currently before the state Supreme Court. Police are claiming that videos recorded automatically by a dashboard camera in a public place — and in some cases with no audio component — are of too much investigative value to release to the public.

That’s baloney, and it is part of a long-running pattern of blanket denials from PSP when recordings are requested by newspapers and members of the public. The agency is clearly not up to the task of objectively determining what is and is not subject to public disclosure.

The idea of police cameras was sold to the public as a way to improve transparency and accountability. Many police agencies, in turn, cite the cameras when assuring communities that officers are accountable for their actions and the department’s investigations are complete and honest. It’s hard to see how indiscriminately denying the public access to police videos accomplishes the stated goals of transparency, accountability and trust.

If anything, doing so flies directly in the face of those goals.