BATON ROUGE - After lots of back and forth with the Zachary Police Department, the WBRZ Investigative Unit has obtained the un-redacted body camera video of a suspected drunken-driving officer-involved crash.

The original video sent by the Zachary Police Evidence Department was completely blurred out and had minutes of audio missing, redactions that the department charged for. 

The Investigative Unit wanted to get the full story on why Baton Rouge Police Officer Loren Gaskin was not charged with operating a vehicle while impaired, despite the obvious presence of alcohol that came out of his unmarked police unit, and we felt the edited video did not cut it.

Attorney Henry Olinde represents the Zachary Police Department and said the omission was an error. 

"I think by producing that video, it made the department look less than transparent," Olinde said. "I mean honestly, the department made a mistake. What they produced to you — they should have produced more."

Olinde says he was not consulted during our initial public records request, nor was Chief Darryl Lawrence, but says he was made aware after our story questioning the department's transparency aired.

According to Olinde, most of the time, the department is not able to produce any body camera video at all.

"Probably 98, 99 percent of all requests for body cam video come when there's pending criminal litigation. So when there's pending criminal litigation under the Public Records Act, we can't produce it anyway. So we never cross the bridge of how do you redact it."

Since the investigation into the crash and officer Gaskin is closed, ZPD had to turn over the video, but still blurred it. 

We asked Olinde why it appeared they were trying to hide something. 

"When you use the word 'hide,' you've got to understand, no one tried to hide anything. There's a lot of innuendo and implications in that word and that's not what happened here. They produced the video blurred, like they did before. Whether that was right or wrong, we all know it shouldn't have been done that way, but I don't think at the level it was produced, there couldn't have been any intent to hide anything."

As for who made the decision to redact the video before giving it to us, it's still a little blurry.

"The chief of Zachary Police did not get involved in it until probably shortly before I got involved in it, and I think from this standpoint, he understands the department made a mistake and he understands he needs to fix it."

Olinde says moving forward, Zachary Police will no longer blur body cam video to the degree in which they did for us.

Zachary will also be acquiring software to help with any redactions — the same kind the Baton Rouge Police Department uses — and they will be putting someone in charge of those requests full-time.

As for Officer Gaskin, he nor the other driver were charged with anything despite both being suspected of alcohol use.

Gaskin was disciplined internally by BRPD but is back on the job.