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Police Officers Seek Right Not To Be Recorded
linzeal writes "When the police act as though cameras were the equivalent of guns pointed at them, there is a sense in which they are correct. Cameras have become the most effective weapon that ordinary people have to protect against and to expose police abuse. And the police want it to stop. Judges, juries, and legislatures support the police overwhelmingly on this issue, with only a few cases where those accused of 'shooting' the cops being vindicated through the courts."
And I'm sure getting rid of probable cause makes their jobs easier too. I guess I don't want their jobs to be easy. I want their jobs to be really fucking hard. That's what you get along with a badge and a gun... scrutiny. At least, that's what should happen but rarely does.
After all, if you have nothing to hide Mr. Office Sir, what's the big deal?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
All states with heavy Democratic majorities in both Executive and Legislative branches. Still more Hope and Change...
Eventually such laws will end up before the supreme court in a first amendment (freedom of speech) test.
Then (hopefully) it will fail the constitutionality test.
No kidding.
FTFA
In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.
[...]
Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.
[...]
Hyde used his recording to file a harassment complaint against the police. After doing so, he was criminally charged.
And their defense is
The police are basing this claim on a ridiculous reading of the two-party consent surveillance law - requiring all parties to consent to being taped.
Does that mean you can break in and rob a store - and if there is security footage, whoever owns the camera is going to jail for 4 years?
Can I write a legal disclaimer that simply by looking at my face you agree to allow me to record footage of you, and post this disclaimer on my T-shirt?
This over the ear video unit is being used by some San Jose, CA cops after they beat the living crap out of a Vietnamese foreign exchange student who is suing for 6 million dollars now.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
(Please dont mod me down, I am just a messenger)
When you point a camera, it is not just a passive device recording events. Instead, it can actually influence the events that it is recording. A witness at a crime scene may be hesitant to say exactly what he or she thinks because he knows the neighbors may see it. People may run away or refuse to come forward because they are afraid that they will be identified later on television and thus could become the victims of a crime. A lot of things happen in police encounters and sometimes a camera can have a chilling effect on the proceedings. Sometimes the influence of camera presence can benefit society by keeping police abuses in check. Sometimes it can be a harm.
Personally, I think the police officers only have their own benefit in mind when they ask for a ban on cameras.
If you ride the Amtrak Southwest Chief from LA to Chicago, and are a white/hispanic male in coach, you will be stopped in Albuquerque, and your belongings searched (because you're obviously smuggling meth).
I had recently, just before my trip, read a bit on slashdot about people being stopped in Amtrak terminals for taking pictures, and being an artist, was duely pissed at that.
At Albuquerque, there were a couple of rail cops who stopped all of the above mentioned groups coming off the train, I was respectful, addressed him as sir, kept my hands in plain sight...
so when the officer asked if I had any weapons, I jokingly said "just a camera"...
Spent the next 15 minutes handcuffed, sitting on a rail with his partner looking like he was ready to kick me in the teeth while the first officer meticulously went through my baggage.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a vid of that should have been worth a few million dollars.
Instead I'm left with a funny story to tell people one of the reasons when they ask, why I don't explicitly trust cops.
(I do know some good cops, lots of them, but there's always "that guy" that fucks it up for them).
In all fairness, are you in one of the states mentioned? The article mentions that this is illegal in only a handful of states.
Mine's not listed, and I personally have taken to rolling a tape whenever I'm pulled over. That specifically was prompted by a police officer accusing me of "not stopping at the red light for long enough". I asked him if I had come to a complete stop, and he admitted then that I had, but it hadn't been for "long enough" (and he accused me of "cutting him off", apparently because I had turned left before he got to the opposing side and stopped himself. my guess is this was the real reason I was stopped).
When we got into court and I clarified with the judge that I only had to come to a complete stop at the sign, and that there was no stopped time requirement, the officer claimed that I never came to a complete stop at all, contradicting what he himself had said during the actual traffic stop.
Luckily the judge dropped the ticket anyhow, but that one incident has made me overly cautious about the police. Sure, they're good to have around when the shit hits the fan, but the shit just doesn't hit that fan too often. The other 95% of the time they're basically just harassing the public for fines to support their salaries.
Then there was the other time that my brother and I had a (very nervous and panicky) police officer pull his gun on us at a traffic stop because he saw gun cases in the back seat of the truck. We'd been duck hunting. We're pulling a jon-boat with a duck-blind obviously attached to it. We're both obviously dressed in full camo. To anyone with half a brain, you know there's going to be guns in this truck before you even get to it - and this idiot totally freaks out like someone is going to kill him because he spots gun cases in the back seat (which were being legally transported, cased, and unloaded, as per the law). No ticket there, but I don't like having a gun waved in my face because the rookie deputy is jittery either.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
There were a huge number of scumbags in Rampart- a lot were wearing gang colors, others police uniforms.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"