Slashdot Mirror
What To Say When the Police Tell You To Stop Filming Them
HughPickens.com writes: Robinson Meyer writes in The Atlantic that first of all, police shouldn't ask. "As a basic principle, we can't tell you to stop recording," says Delroy Burton, a 21-year veteran of DC's police force. "If you're standing across the street videotaping, and I'm in a public place, carrying out my public functions, [then] I'm subject to recording, and there's nothing legally the police officer can do to stop you from recording." What you don't have a right to do is interfere with an officer's work. ""Police officers may legitimately order citizens to cease activities that are truly interfering with legitimate law enforcement operations," according to Jay Stanley who wrote the ACLU's "Know Your Rights" guide for photographers, which lays out in plain language the legal protections that are assured people filming in public. Police officers may not confiscate or demand to view your digital photographs or video without a warrant and police may not delete your photographs or video under any circumstances.
What if an officer says you are interfering with legitimate law enforcement operations and you disagree with the officer? "If it were me, and an officer came up and said, 'You need to turn that camera off, sir,' I would strive to calmly and politely yet firmly remind the officer of my rights while continuing to record the interaction, and not turn the camera off," says Stanley. The ACLU guide also supplies the one question those stopped for taking photos or video may ask an officer: "The right question to ask is, 'am I free to go?' If the officer says no, then you are being detained, something that under the law an officer cannot do without reasonable suspicion that you have or are about to commit a crime or are in the process of doing so. Until you ask to leave, your being stopped is considered voluntary under the law and is legal."
What if an officer says you are interfering with legitimate law enforcement operations and you disagree with the officer? "If it were me, and an officer came up and said, 'You need to turn that camera off, sir,' I would strive to calmly and politely yet firmly remind the officer of my rights while continuing to record the interaction, and not turn the camera off," says Stanley. The ACLU guide also supplies the one question those stopped for taking photos or video may ask an officer: "The right question to ask is, 'am I free to go?' If the officer says no, then you are being detained, something that under the law an officer cannot do without reasonable suspicion that you have or are about to commit a crime or are in the process of doing so. Until you ask to leave, your being stopped is considered voluntary under the law and is legal."
"If it were me, and an officer came up and said, 'You need to turn that camera off, sir,' I would strive to calmly and politely yet firmly remind the officer of my rights while continuing to record the interaction, and not turn the camera off," says Stanley.
And if it were me, I would think twice or thrice about getting on the bad side of the local police department, being arrested (and who knows what else). Of course I would be vindicated, but that can occur after I spent some time in jail, got charged with some bullshit, spent who knows how much money on laywers and called ACLU for help...
I mean, look -- there were a bunch of recent stories with suspects getting killed or beaten, and if one is lucky, the police is charged afterwards. Sometimes not even that. Basically, most of us cannot afford to stand on principle. Many have family to support or career to preserve, or both.
"The right question to ask is, 'am I free to go?'"
Are you not sort of expected to leave if you ask if you're free to go? I don't want to leave, I want to continue doing the legal thing that I'm doing.
Where I'm from if you backtalk a cop, they take you to jail (if you're lucky they don't beat you for "resisting arrest" too). They make up some charges after-the-fact. Or maybe there are no charges and they let you go after 48 hours of sharing a cell with crackheads. Either way, the lesson is "don't backtalk."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
This whole problem will go away when recording devices become so small that police will not know who is filming them and who is not. Eyeglasses? Could be a camera. Contact lenses? Camera? Glass eye? Camera. Third button down on the shirt? Camera.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Of course, if you get the camera slapped out of your hand while being tazed and the officer then claims you assaulted him who's gonna film it?
Just how many cops have behaved inappropriately and have remained on the force. How many messed up or plainly did wrong and are still earning your tax dollar?
Idealistic talk is nice...facts on the ground is another thing.
Land of the free...yeah right.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I tried to use my tablet to take a picture of the new American Embassy building outside Vientiane, Laos. I was told by the guards that this is prohibited. I went out to the street and took a picture from a public road on Lao territory, but they again told me to delete the picture. I figure they had no right to prohibit the picture, but I deleted it anyway. Then they had the paradox that they were insisting that I delete the picture, but they could not touch my tablet and I could not delete the picture because it was already gone.
So two days later, while I was in a taxi driving from downtown Vientiane to the Thai bridge, I pulled out my tablet and shot a video as we went past the new Embassy building. As soon as I got home I posted the video on my web site at
http://www.andycanfield.com/Th...
So far the idiots in the U.S. State Department haven't contacted me. Is it an act of treason for you to look at it? Ask your lawyer.
The summary isn't quite right. A warrant would not be required to seize your phone or other recording device if the officer has probable cause to believe it contains evidence of a crime (and exigent circumstances exist, which they probably do). Then he can try to get a warrant to get that evidence off your device. An example would be they roll up on a crime scene and you were recording before they got there, or, maybe you got video of the suspect assaulting the police. They wouldn't need a warrant to seize it at that point, because exigent circumstances (you could leave, the evidence could easily be destroyed if they don't secure the phone) would justify seizure without a warrant. However they could not legally search it without a warrant. (Typically in a case where a bystander has video of the crime they'll be cooperative and send the video to the police if possible, or give consent to them to get it off their device).
The smarter police aren't going to go around taking phones. If they believe you have evidence on your phone they'd probably like to talk to you about what you saw anyway and ripping your phone out of your hands isn't going to help that. But just be aware that they can most likely legally seize your phone without a warrant, if they have probable cause it has evidence of a crime, and if seizing your phone is the only way to preserve that evidence from being destroyed or lost (you could delete the video or walk away before a warrant could be obtained).
What?
Remember, Freddie Gray was stopped by police, who later killed him just for eyeballing them.
If you want to play on-the-spot eyewitness news reporter with your cell phone, you should try your best to have white skin.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The "Hands Up" app ( http://www.handsuptheapp.com/ ) has just been released and is designed to deal with these issues. It's quite clever and records the your interaction with the police as usual, but also:
- Turns the screen blank but keeps recording;
- Automatically uploads geotagged video segments to Dropbox every few seconds, preserving the recording even if it's erased or the phone is destroyed; and,
- Sends a text message to your emergency contact notifying them of the recording's existence.
No. Well...maybe. Actually, yes. It really just depends.
If police in the '50s were like they are now, I wouldn't be surprised if Rosa Parks would have been summarily shot.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz