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Federal Appeals Court: You Have a Constitutional Right to Film Police Officers in Public (slate.com)
On Friday, a panel of judges for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the First Amendment protects individuals' right to film police officers performing their official duties. From a report: The 3rd Circuit now joins the 1st, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th Circuits in concluding that the Constitution guarantees a right to record. No federal appeals court has yet concluded that the First Amendment does not safeguard the right to film law enforcement officers conducting police activity in public. Friday's decision involved two instances in which the Philadelphia police retaliated against citizens attempting to film them. In the first incident, a legal observer named Amanda Geraci tried to film police arresting an anti-fracking protester when an officer pinned her against a pillar, preventing her from recording the arrest. In the second, a Temple University sophomore named Richard Fields tried to film police officers breaking up a house party when an officer asked him whether he "like[d] taking pictures of grown men" and demanded that he leave. When Fields refused, the officer arrested and detained him, confiscating his phone and looking through its photos and videos. The officer cited Fields for "Obstructing Highway and Other Public Passages," although the charges were dropped when the officer failed to appear at a court hearing. Geraci and Fields filed civil rights suits against the officers who interfered with their filming attempts.
They can still be filmed shooting and killing people without any reason and get away with it.
Well, black people anyway.
The 3rd Circuit now joins the 1st, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th
Something different about the even-numbered ones?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
ends on an officer's fist. Please remember: officers enjoy qualified immunity even when they are completely wrong about the law as long as they can make believe that they are clueless, and they are preselected for stupidity: a high IQ score disqualifies applicants from service.
that the police officer has the right to use deadly violence to defend himself, if he feels that his life is threatened by a camera. And the law is always on its own side, never yours.
Mike Ermantraut told me
Good lord, how many circuits are there? And when are they going to be combined into one integrated circuit that doesn't generate as much heat?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
If you're not doing anything wrong you've got nothing to hide, right? This applies to them too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Selective editing of one sided videos is a real threat to cops and anyone not protected by their own videos. The ghetto lottery has become a regular cottage industry about this kind of abuse. I have no problem with holding cops responsible for mistakes and wrong doing, but many edited video payoff demands have been clearly shown to withhold crucial information too.
I'm sure there is an invasion of privacy reflex, that of course, is misplaced.
I found it very interesting in the primaries someone tried to do this to Trump and his campaign had extensive videos, derailing an attempt by provocatuers. Oopsie.... a good lesson for all of us.
They are cheap enough for ANYONE to own one now. Even a Covert one! And just Like My Amex.... I Never leave home without it. If they want to beat people up, violate their own laws, and generally act like thugs... At the Very LEAST They will become Internet Infamous for it! :-)
... why are the so against being filmed by others?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
BLM are officially against arrests/etc. being filmed. So while you can legally film some police action legally, you are increasing the chances of clearing a police officer of charges and are explicitly working against BLM.
You left out the logic part. There's a whole bunch of your comment missing in between "filmed." and "So", like all of the justification for the statement that "you are increasing the chances of clearing a police officer of charges and are explicitly working against BLM".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm so stealing and using your "If you're not doing anything wrong you've got nothing to hide, right? This applies to them too." statement. Call a cop if you have a problem with my petit theft.
Though I agree with the court, that recording anything one can legally observe should itself be legal, I do not understand, what the First Amendment has to do with this right. What is the connection between such recording — which can (and often is) done silently — and Free Speech?
If it is the plans to later publish the recordings, that place their preparation legal, then a lot of other activity may fall under the Amendment's protection — such as leaking state secrets or "entering federal property under false pretenses.
Also, are the First Amendment protections lost if the person recording never ends up publishing anything within "reasonable" time — can he then be charged under lesser local laws for things like "intimidation" or "refusing police orders"?
Meanwhile, the Second Amendment gets trampled every day — forget "assault" weapons, mere knives are illegal in many places and in New Jersey you can be arrested for possession of a slingshot "without explainable legal purpose"...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If that's your argument, that mere plans to publish a recording later protect any activity making it, you need to answer my follow-up questions for it to make sense:
Other activities If any and all preparations of a future publication for the "press" are protected by the First Amendment, why should not other activities be protected too? For example:Prostitution, as in having sex for money, is illegal in most places. But being paid to do it on video is perfectly fine — because pornography is protected by the First Amendment.
What if nothing is ever published? If none of the recordings are published withing "reasonable" time, do the people who made them (in defiance of police orders, for example) lose the constitutional protections? Can they then be charged for such defiance? Other Amendments If the First Amendment is interpreted so widely and liberally, why not the Second, for example? If, as many would claim, the Second covers only single-shot pistols and muskets, why does the First cover video-recordings? Why do people — ACLU and the sympathetic judges — defend and protect such wide interpretations of the First Amendment, but continuously ignore the daily trampling of the Second?In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Seriously, we should have the right to record all courts, in particular, the media should. If the judge is worried about harassment, then simply set aside several cameras in the room, and make the take available to the media and public.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's what the NSA says, when they demand authority to anal-search your data. So, no, it's not about a criterion of "nothing to hide". Rather, it's about the expectation and right of privacy. Public servants (the police) doing their public duty are a public matter, and therefore have no right of privacy, and are subject to public scrutiny.
Why should they be protected when they have nothing to do with recording things for news? If you wanted to not wag your tongue at strawmen, you'd come up with a relevant example like calling the swat team on an innocent victim for the purpose of recording the results. In which case, filing a false police report is illegal, filming it would not be.
As for playing Nightcrawler, here's a handy guide for you:
murdering people illegal Faces of Death tasteless but legalNo, it is an unlawful order, and people should not be punished for defying that order. If you think otherwise, then maybe I should become a cop and go around ordering people to become my slave. If they cite some constitutional mumbo jumbo at me, then I can arrest them for defying my order and then enslave them as per the 13th Amendment.
Because liberals hate it duh.
Because conservatives are too busy fondling their guns to form a Conservative Civil Liberties Union to defend all of our rights as American Citizens, and would rather donate to the NRA, whine about the ACLU, and insist that nothing else should be done until after the government has gone off the deep end, when they will finally get around to taking their pea shooters and doing something about it.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Last time I checked I have the right to film my employees.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just because they get their rhetoric from Joseph Göbbels doesn't mean that we should.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, yes, I know it sucks to be a police officer rather than switching sides, no need to rub it in...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't care who likes to be filmed. I care about police doing their work within the boundaries of legality. If that means they shoot someone because they feel threatened and that was warranted, good. If that means that they shoot someone cold blooded who surrendered and they get into trouble for this, good.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is just an example of odd-numbered appellate courts showing their bias. Courts 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 have yet to weigh in---not a coincidence! My forthcoming whitepaper will demonstrate the clear link between uneven integers and constitutional jurisprudence.
The logic is self-evident. The BLM knows that as soon as the majority of police interactions are filmed, their narrative of "the majority of police are out of line" dries up. They know that as soon as 3 people have a video that the hands were not up or that the only non body cam videos in existence don't start until after the shooting that they won't be believed when they say "no, really, his hands were up before they shot that poor innocent kid and he only brought them down because it hurt when the shot him".
Why did you ask the question when you already knew the obvious answer?
How about this. It has nothing to do with the 1st Amendment but the courts don't want you to know the real reason that you have a right to film/video the police when they are in public doing their job. The real reason is that because nothing in the Constitution of the United States gives the government the power to prevent you from doing that and most states copied the Bill of Rights into their constitutions and the 14th copied them even if they hadn't.
But, we can't go around reminding the citizenry that they have all manner of rights that have yet to be enumerated and that the Constitution is only there to very explicitly clue the government in as to the few rights it is allowed to take away and under what circumstances it may do so.
No, if the government were to start reminding the citizenry about that, then whole sections of the government would have to cease functioning. Better to just tell a little white lie about how the citizenry is too dumb to be bothering with this is if it can't clearly see how the 1st amendment applies here.
Seeing as how the NRA has been involved in 1st Amendment cases (campaign finance, documentary film distribution, etc.) and some 4th amendment cases (restricting rights without trial-no fly lists and property confiscation without trial-CA,CT, CO, NY magazine capacity laws) it pretty much is the Conservative Civil Liberties Union. In fact, the ACLU is on the same side as the NRA in regards to the no fly lists. The proper question is really why does the ACLU not fight against those violations?
How many instances of police shooting into cars without either a weapon being clearly visible and brandished are there? Seriously, how many? Once a person has brandished a weapon at the police, society should assume that the person intends to follow through on that threat and we should not care that they have been removed from society.
"News"? Who said anything about "news"? We are talking about speech and press here. If it is my pleasure to talk about murder and/or write an article about it, according to this ruling, my actual murdering someone is protected by the First Amendment as long as I duly record it.
Why? What makes it "unlawful"?
This is not a "Conservative" issue — if you (and ACLU) weren't too busy fondling your hypocrisy, you would've defended all articles of the Bill of Rights equally.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
On what grounds? I'm having a hard time seeing how you're managing to draw an equivalence between the government being forbidden to stop you from filming a cop, and you being allowed to kill someone without repercussions just because you filmed it. You're free to film all the murders you want, but murdering someone is still illegal, and your film will be used in court against you, where you will be facing a charge of "murder," not "filming a murder". I just don't see how you're getting from "ok to film cops" to "ok to kill people if you film it," unless your camera literally "shoots film" at the muzzle velocity of a colt .45 and you are actually killing the cops you are filming (which would still be murder and therefore illegal).
That's actually a really good question. For cops, anyway. It appears that for some reason the UMCJ has a whole hell of a lot to say about what makes an order unlawful.
In absence of an actual definition that applies to cops, consider for starters court rulings (like this one!) indicating that per the amended Constitution, the government cannot compel you to stop filming a cop, presumably subject to the same limitations that have been placed on other First Amendment rights such as "imminent lawless action" (such as murdering someone! Or more realistically, getting between the cop and the arrestee so the arrestee can evade arrest). Given that, may I suggest that orders that are unconstitutional are unlawful?
But hey, who knows. Maybe the Supreme Court will issue a ruling that says "well, we've decided that cops are obscene and therefore films of cops are not protected by the First Amendment."
For the record, I'm pro-gun. I'm also pro-recording because I believe that being able to document what is occurring is vital, whether that recording is used for headlining, editorializing, blogging, or just to create a personal record of events. ALL of which I believe should count as speech, whether published publicly or privately.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
This whole thread is about an illegal activity (such as disobeying a police officer's otherwise lawful order) suddenly becoming legal, when it is done to record something.
And here we finally come to my point — the police's order to disperse in general and/or to stop recording in particular was unlawful on its own, the cops should not have have issued it, the citizens didn't have to comply with it, and the First Amendment has nothing to do with it. It should not matter, whether I am recording anything or just watching the events — but, according to the court and you, it does.
That's the part that worries me greatly.
Whatever. The glaring hypocrisy, whereby the First Amendment is stretched in all directions and is continuously reinterpreted to become the fount of more and more rights, while the Second is ignored even on the matters and issues it obviously covered from its very beginning (such as the carrying of knives and brass knuckles), should be keeping you (and the ACLU) up at night. But does not...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
On what grounds, if not the First Amendment then?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.