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US Justice Dept Defends Right To Record Police
Fluffeh writes "In recent times, it seems many Police Departments believe that recording them doing their work is an act of war with police officers, destroying the tapes, phones or cameras while arresting the folks doing it. But in a surprising twist, the U.S. Justice Department has sent letter (PDF) to attorneys for the Baltimore Police Department — who have been quite heavy handed in enforcing their 'Don't record me bro!' mantra. The letter contains an awful lot of lawyer babble and lists many court cases and the like, although some sections are surprisingly clear: 'Policies should prohibit officers from destroying recording devices or cameras and deleting recordings or photographs under any circumstances. In addition to violating the First Amendment, police officers violate the core requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process clause when they irrevocably deprived individuals of their recordings without first providing notice and an opportunity to object.' There is a lot more and it certainly seems like a firm foothold in the right direction."
About goddamn time we get a voice of reason and someone "higher up" on our side. Not that it'll make a damn bit of difference. "Protect and Serve" is a joke. Cops don't care and won't care. I imagine the mantra from cops now will be "What photos? I never saw any."
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
The elephant in the room is that they rarely have a good reason to delete the recordings. Why would a police officer not want his work recorded?
(The rare reason: It violates the privacy of a citizen who is involved.)
How about instead, they advise the police if they are caught doing it again, said officers will be arrested by the FBI or similar, and put in federal prison. Seems that would be a good incentive.
...is that you can take pictures, and it won't matter if the cops take or even if they destroy your device. As technology improves, and the service gets faster, it expect it may even become possible to upload video in real time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's a sentence. Just because we have insisted on simplifying everything down to where those who can barely read at a 2nd grade level can "understand" it, that doesn't mean that complex sentences that express a sophisticated set of connected ideas are invalid.
The police harassment of photographers won't really end until either:
1) A settlement over this costs a city a Whole Lot of Money (>$100,000.00 + all lawyer fees).
-or-
2) A police officer goes to jail for at least a year over this.
Until then, threatening letters, especially from this Justice Department, are little more than toilet paper.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If they are doing nothing wrong, then they should not have any problem whatsoever allowing recordings.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
latin for "Who watches the watchmen?"
it seems we have finally answered the ancient conundrum:
everyone, on youtube
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's great how when something good actually happens in the US the comments on Slashdot are still mostly negative.
The existence of these letters and their public nature will make it basically impossible for any police department in the country to win a case in which they are accused of illegally destroying a recording. The legal arguments are handed to us here, by the DoJ no less. This creates a huge financial incentive for states and cities to make sure that their officers are not destroying recordings, and as they say, money talks. This seems like a good move which saves the administration from having to arrest police officers while accomplishing basically the same goal.
but when you get to seventh or eighth grade, you'll find that your teachers call this a "run-on sentence", and penalize you for writing such sentences yourself.
No they wouldn't. because the schools i went to had english teachers who understood the language. hint:just because a sentence is long does not make it a run-on sentence.
They'll also point out that "US Justice Department has sent letter" is missing an article.
what would you call that word before it.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
They'll also point out that "US Justice Department has sent letter" is missing an article.
So we can't RTFA then?
Why? Because there is no gray area here. Nobody has a right NOT to be recorded in public.
The US Justice Department HAD to act because local DAs gave them no choice. Every DA that thought arrests and confiscating/destroying video was an acceptable response to the public recording of LEOs should be disbarred. They are either to incompetent or corrupt to hold office.
Ever heard of Cop Block? Not 24-hour recording, but a similar idea of always keeping the cops on-the-record.
Liberty in your lifetime
Individual police officers (and other government agents) who violate a person's civil rights may be sued under federal law and/or state law. The main federal civil rights law is 42 U.S.C. 1983, which authorizes suits against state and local officials who violate a person's constitutional rights. Federal officials may be sued under an analogous judge-made law called the "Bivens doctrine". In addition, state and local officials, but not federal officials, may be sued under state law.
When a police officer loses his house, his car and a lot of his future income maybe he will pay attention to the law next time. Maybe his fellow officers will learn something, too.
Yeah, but it's an awkward sentence. I can make a very minor modification and make it flow much better:
In recent times, it seems that many Police Departments believe that recording them doing their work is an act of war, with police officers destroying the tapes, phones or cameras while arresting the folks doing it. In a surprising twist, the US Justice Department has sent a letter to attorneys for the Baltimore Police Department, who have been quite heavy handed in enforcing their 'Don't record me bro!' mantra.
FC Closer
I wonder why people would think I only carry ONE?
There's the visible camera.
Then there's the two invisible cameras. (buttonhole HD and pen HD. Oh yes, I have both)
Then there's the highly sensitive voice recorder.
Then there's the Android phone streaming video and audio to justin.tv
Better to be prepared and not need it than to need it and not have it!
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I was recently at a US border crossing office where I saw a posted notice, as well as being informed verbally, that it is against the rules to have any electronic device inside the office. What many people don't realize is that the courts have repeatedly agreed with the notion that border officers have much broader powers than police. You can find yourself detained, searched, your possessions searched (including your computers and phones electronically searched, etc) and it's all 100% legal. Let's suppose we agree with the principle that because it is a special crossing meant to protect the country that the officers then have special powers. Fine. But, shouldn't it also hold that because these officers have special powers then they should also allow video and audio recordings even more?!
I can see a point on privacy, but inside an office talking to an offcer across the counter, one doesn't really have an expectation of privacy.
In fact, why doesn't the government itself *require* all interesactions by authorities be recorded? It just seems like good common sense.
City police are only one of many police forces in the US. There are plenty of others out there, many that offer better jobs in terms of less danger and more pay. For example if you've ever been around non-military federal government buildings, you'll find they are guarded by police, not some mysterious quasi-military force or something. That's right, the security guards at the CIA for example are police, uniformed ones in fact.
Well needless to say, those people have to be good. Not only do they need to be vigilant in their job, but they'd better be good at being respectful to people at well. The CIA is not going to be amused at all if one of their security cops assaults their analysts or case officers or something. However for that there are compensations. Nobody is very likely to actually try anything there, your on the job danger is very low, same as pretty much any other office worker. You get to deal with people who are generally nice to you all the time, not people who are hostile, crazy, on drugs, etc.
So that also is part of it. The best police are able to get better jobs with better agencies. Those agencies can afford to be more selective about who they hire. That leaves less talent for regular city police.
I am not saying that the police shouldn't be recorded, they should, but I can understand why even if they aren't doing anything wrong they don't like it. First off it just kinda sucks to get recorded when you are doing work. I think if I came in to your cube/office and setup cameras to record you all day long, you might get a little mad at me and the "if you are doing nothing wrong" argument won't help mollify you.
Then there's the fact that given enough recording time, you are going to do something that makes you look bad/stupid/mean/whatever. If I roll camera on you long enough, I can find something taken out of context that won't look good for you. Just how it goes. We are not perfect angels all the time. Enough footage and you'll slip up with something you say or do that you wouldn't want the world to see.
Finally there's the fact that people recording may not have your best interest in mind, may want to make you look bad, and thus will edit things to try and show you in a bad light.
So I can understand why they don't want to be recorded and it isn't just because they want to get away with shit. Even people who are on the up and up don't like it. However, they need to deal with it.
Your mother is so fat, I swerved to avoid her, and ran out of gas.
There. I have ignored the point of this original post, the reply post, this thread, and have managed to cleverly insult your mother and you in the process.
I believe I win.
This is the most pedantical pendanty I have ever had the misfortune of stumbling across.
The truly pathetic part is the state could easily prevent a lot of police beatings and misconduct by simply forcing them to get video recordings for any of the typical cover and contempt of cop charges. Resisting arrest? Disorderly conduct? Disturbing the peace? Failure to obey a lawful order? Assault and battery against a police officer? With a deadly weapon? In my case they even included little things like "failure to identify oneself". All of the attorneys know that a lot of the time these charges are bogus and in fact likely mean that the alleged aggressor is in fact the victim. So why treat the situation the same as any other charge? When it comes to these sorts of charges the police should need real evidence and only unbiased civilian witness testimony should be admissible.
You obviously can't trust other police officers to come forward and rat out their fellow officer for beating up or in some cases even killing someone for some minor insult or sign of disrespect. In fact you can pretty much count on every last one of them to lie about it even under oath. I mean, you are talking about accusing a fellow officer of excessive use of force, false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, violating the victim's civil rights and tort assault and battery. It's just not going to happen. To pretend that it is is completely ridiculous. There is simply no police misconduct case where the police officers themselves can be counted on to testify truthfully. In such situations it is quite reasonable to assume that they are going to lie to protect themselves and lie to protect each other under the assumption that if they ever ended up losing control and injuring or killing someone out of anger that their fellow officers would back up their story as well.
I was attacked by a pissed off psycho cop at a DUI roadblock They had to drop the DUI charges against me when they finally allowed me to take a breathalyzer test at the police station and after 3 separate tries the machine refused to output anything other than 0.0% alcohol. They really wanted to get me on that, but I don't even drink. Luckily I don't use alcohol based mouthwash either or I might have been fighting a DUI charge as well and probably wouldn't have gotten such a favorable plea bargain. DUI roadblocks shouldn't even exist in this country and some states don't allow them, but if we have to have them all the encounters should be filmed. Police simply cannot be trusted to not abuse their power in such situations. If they can't videotape the stops and sobriety tests they should at least have an unbiased witness not associated with law enforcement there to observe and make sure things don't get out of hand or serve as a witness if they do. Former victims of police brutality would make good witnesses although most of us would probably be too scared. Once you realize that cops can and will severely injure or kill you for even the most minor sign of disrespect, it's difficult to have voluntary contact with any of them for any reason ever again. I can only admire the courage of those NH guys intentionally filming the police. No doubt if one of them is killed or very badly injured people will consider that courage to be stupidity. People will say, "What did he expect, provoking a cop like that? I have no sympathy for him."
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
When the parent says the sentence is missing an article, he is correct. It should read "the US Justice Department has sent a letter." The word before the quotation, "the," is also an article but it modifies "US Justice Department" not "letter," which itself needs an article.
Additionally, missed by all of you, "Police Departments" should not be capitalized as it is not a proper noun. You would capitalize "Boston Police Department," because it is a specific named department but "Police Departments" should instead read as "police departments," as it not referring to any named department specifically.
Yet, the thrust of your argument is correct in my opinion. The general sentence structure of the original statement is sound and the sentence does not represent a run-on. Some ill-informed teachers may wrongly mark such sentences as run-ons, but if that is the case they themselves are incorrect in doing so.
Still, sometimes teachers request a sentence be simplified so the reading of it is smoother, rather than any actual infractions against the laws of grammar having been committed — and that case may very well apply to the sentence in question. For example, the above sentence would read better if "(PDF)" was omitted or if the same information was stated in a less jarring form, such as "the US Justice Department has sent a letter in the form of a PDF" or ""the US Justice Department has sent a PDF letter," rather then placing "PDF" inside a parenthetic expression.
Thus, we could say that the sentence could be improved in some ways, but is not technically a run-on, even though other grammatical errors are present.
Elephant Writers - Dull website, sharp writers.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
In reality - and it never even has to be said out loud - if a cop narcs on other cops, s/he knows the rest may take their sweet time in providing back-up in a deadly emergency. Taking the moral high road could literally cost you your life, thus...
This is a good step. Now I wonder if the Feds feel the same way when someone is taping THEIR activity? DEA? BATF? TSA? FBI? DHS?
This practice of blocking recordings, seizing and destroying cameras, etc. has been going on at the federal level as well, so I'm not about to fall on my knees and thank the DOJ for lecturing Baltimore.
Note that there ARE complications when videotaping because certain states have laws which prohibit audio recording of a conversation unless all parties give their consent. The cops have used this as an excuse to charge people with a crime for making video recordings of cops.
This is a useful resource from the ACLU:
https://www.aclu.org/free-speech/know-your-rights-photographers
So keep recording government abuses and posting them online, but know your rights and be careful.