Pixiq

It’s your favorite judge:
http://tinyurl.com/2ufjy2t

Amazing blog you got there, alot of good reading. Regards from Romeo , Sweden.
Romeo Patrick recently posted..Att få vara ensam ibland- en omöjlighet

Great post Carlos! You provide a great counter-argument to the police’s First Amendment “violation.” One of the silliest arguments against recording police I’ve heard is respecting their privacy rights. This is silly because no one has an expectation of privacy in public! If anyone has a hard time understanding this just think of how celebrities get photographed in public and then published without their consent all the time!

Anyway keep up the great work Carlos, you did great on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. I truely believe this issue is getting mainstream attention only because of you and Radley Balko’s work. So thank you!
billy_ran_away recently posted..AT&T Criminally Dumb

Great write up. I definitely think that what they fear most is being held to the same standard and laws as the rest of us and not being able to satisfy their urge for violence on a whim.

So the next time an officer tries to explain how dangerous the job of a police officer is, and how many get killed or injured each year, the simple retort is “How many of those were killed with a camera”

Wow their response is horrible. The “we don’t understand what is going on” idea has nothing to do with the arrests. Even if that is true, that still doesn’t mean they need to arrest anybody. Just explain it later.

But of course we do understand what is going on- and that is the problem. We see them constantly violating people’s rights, and breaking they law. That’s what they fear.

Just read a nice piece in Popular Mechanics, of all mags, by Glenn Instapundit Reynolds about the futility of cops trying to stifle citizen photography/journalism in an age where just about every portable device has a video camera. This movement has gone mainstream.

“an average of 160 will be killed, 60,000 will be physically assaulted and 20,000 will receive serious injuries in the line of duty every year”

And how many of those 80,160 were killed, assaulted or injured by a video or still camera?

Riddle: What’s the difference between SEEING what the cops are doing and RECORDING what you see the cops doing?

Answer: If you SEE it, you’re just a witness and it’s your word against theirs — and we know how THAT goes.
If you RECORD it, that’s permanent objective documentary evidence and that’s a LOT harder to beat in court — especially the court of public opinion.
I’d bet a bottle of good hooch that the average person knows excessive force when they see it. No “special training” required.
That’s why the cops don’t want anyone to see it.

Liberty & Justice,

sj

Police is not even in the top 10 of dangerous jobs. They are number 12.

The police arguments are just awful.

Try appending “therefore it’s reasonable for us to arrest people for taking pictures of us” to any of their arguments. Without that addedum the arguments are irrelevant; with it, the arguments are non sequiturs.

These guys need better spokesmen.

It’s disingenuous of the cops to tell us how dangerous their job is compared to the rest of us. Try being a fisherman; a much more life-threatening profession than being a cop. I like fishermen, though, as they don’t threaten you with arrest or beat you with a fish if you take their picture.
William Beem recently posted..Compliments &amp Community

Cameras keep getting better and smaller.

At some point everyone will be able to afford a camera that can be worn as, and is indistinguishable from clothing or jewelery.

They’ll be cheap, and will not store video but will instead send it to the user’s server online somewhere.

What will the police do when these become ubiquitous?
Calladus recently posted..Won in the Emergency Room

The “we police don’t have First Amendment rights” is an old canard that I believe even a certain anonymous police apologist has used here before as the reason for his anonymous blogging.

Just because we have a right to speech doesn’t mean anyone has a special right to be immune from the repercussions of that speech.

But then, many police officers seem to not know the difference between rights, which they have no more of than any other citizen; and granted limited powers,which they are give in order to make arrests and to keep the peace.

But I see they also brought out the standard “you don’t do the job so you can’t understand” defense, which is of course ridiculous. We’re the public, they work for us in our name, it’s part of our job as citizens to have oversight of their actions.
Michaelk42 recently posted..Unsurprisingly- Pogan gets no real punishment

Police officers have reduced expectations of privacy and first amendment rights. This has always been the case. They know it going into the job. Quite simply this isn’t an excuse, if you don’t like this, go find another damn career and stop your whining. My lack of pity for police officers in this instance is extended to everyone who whines about limitations of their job when they knew they’d have those going into it. It’s your own damn fault for picking a career that has limitations you knew you’d dislike. No sympathy from me whatsoever there. It’s not warranted, no matter what job the person’s doing.

So proper knowledge on how to properly interpret these videos is a problem. OK, fine, then start teaching people what they need to know to interpret them properly. Do this BEFORE you end up making national news for a video of apparent police brutality and/or thuggery. Community outreach is a part of law enforcement, or at least should be.

Anyone ever seen any cops actually suggest, much less implement, a program like that? I haven’t, so I’m not buying the argument. This like saying “people can misinterpret what they read in newspapers, so we need to stop allowing people to have newspapers”. The answer is education, not banning stuff. You only go the banning route because you’re 1. lazy, 2. hiding something, or 3. both.

tl;dr: less whining, more educating the community. And of course, less actual thuggery.

This is very well written, Carlos. I wish I had more to add, but these existing comments do a really good job.

My wife and I are law-biding citizens and I really hope a day comes when we’re not gripped with fear at the sight of a police officer. As it stands, we don’t feel terribly protected.

While that is possibly a misperception (with regard to many fine officers), statistically speaking, it is not helped when those noted officers play like their the victim.
Matt Warren recently posted..Boomer- Gen X- and Millennial Slapfight

Aside from all the legal arguments, there is the moral argument too: It is fundamentally un-American to have the government arrest people that are engaged in civic duties to hold the government accountable. The Founding Fathers would find the entire practice unbelievably abhorrant. They did not fight a Revolution just so that the government could boot-stomp all over everyone trying to hold the government accountable.

Notwithstanding the power of police unions, theirs is a losing argument for that moral reason alone. That sort of Founding principle from the Founding Fathers still resonates deeply with Americans of all types. Due to that moral integrity, the voters will broadly resist any attempt to permit police to do this. There is no way in hell that the police will be able to broadly arrest people who film them, given such resistance, and I predict that those few states which do have such laws will not have them for much longer (or will be subject to many strong challenges if they try to keep them). The cops are fighting a losing battle here morally and legally. Also, as the technology improves, the problem will only grow for them.

They had better learn to live with the new times.

Sydney,

The problem is we (their bosses, the tax payers) still have to pay for their illegal acts.

In fact, they refuse to learn to live with new times. We have to force them to live with the new times.

I feel so sorry for all of these individuals who were forced (at gunpoint?) to become police officers. We really must look into this forced-coercion that is making so many unwilling folk get badges.

It looks like the Illinois law has a specific exemption:

(h) Recordings made simultaneously with the use of an in‑car video camera recording of an oral conversation between a uniformed peace officer, who has identified his or her office, and a person in the presence of the peace officer whenever (i) an officer assigned a patrol vehicle is conducting an enforcement stop; or (ii) patrol vehicle emergency lights are activated or would otherwise be activated if not for the need to conceal the presence of law enforcement.
For the purposes of this subsection (h), “enforcement stop” means an action by a law enforcement officer in relation to enforcement and investigation duties, including but not limited to, traffic stops, pedestrian stops, abandoned vehicle contacts, motorist assists, commercial motor vehicle stops, roadside safety checks, requests for identification, or responses to requests for emergency assistance;

Note that it doesn’t specify that only a particular party can record it. This small exemption seems to mean that so long as your camera is mounted in your car and the officer’s lights are on, you’re fine. This should be exploited until we can force the idiots in Springfield to make all recording of on-duty cops legal.

Videotape EVERY encounter with police. Overwhelm the court system if necessary in order to halt this nonsensical over-reach of pretended authority.

“Eavesdropping Exemption for Peace Officers – HB 1057 (P.A.96-0670)

House Bill 1057 exempts various law enforcement activities from a violation of the eavesdropping statute. Requires the retention of recordings made by the peace officers. Effective August 25, 2009.”

From http://www.iml.org/page.cfm?key=3600

Looks like the wording is vague enough that it could apply to civilian drivers, but the intent was only to protect cops, going by the wording in the announcement there.

“Videotapes frequently do not show what occurred before or after the camera was on”

I just found this statement to be hilarious! I don’t know that my camera has ever showed me what occurred before I turned it on. When I find a camera that does that I’m going to buy it!

I also found that statement to be ridiculous, “Videotapes frequently do not show what occurred before or after the camera was on”.

They just made a case for requiring the audio and video monitoring of every police officer through the use of dashcams, helmet cams and uniform cams.

What happened before and after the video is a matter for the jury/judge to decide what is relevant. It should not be a basis for prohibiting or excluding valuable evidence.

What if I contended that evidence of a shooting rampage should be excluded because the jury did not know of the hardships in the suspect’s life before he shot those people.

As a society we should assure that any evidence comes forward and its importance and perspective will be determined later by a jury.

If a police officer is acting within the limits of the law, they should have nothing to fear from a video of their actions.
This isn’t about the citizens lack of understanding about police work. It’s about the ‘blue wall’ and protecting crooked cops.
I, for one, carry a video camera wherever I go, just in case I see a cop in a criminal or unethical act.
Somebody has to police the police. They can’t be trusted to do it themselves.

For me this is more a sixth amendment issue, right to a fair trial. Even if there are no wire tapping charges, the police are usurping the courts authority to decide what evidence to admit at trial, either by preventing it from being gathered in the first place or by destroying it outright, including their own dashcam video.

And this, “No one can speak knowledgeably about a piece of video without viewing it through the prism of experience and training.”, is just astounding in the context of what an impartial jury is for.

It is going to take a Federal judge to finally put a halt to this blatant and sickening abuse of the law by the police. Cops have ZERO expectation of privacy when in the public domain, as is true for all of us. The cops want special rights that no one else has!! They want to be able to film and record US, while denying us from documenting their crimes.

It staggers the sound mind to imagine the nerve, the gaul, of a cop wanting to place themselves above all others, in a special class that forbids documenting their words so they can later be held accountable. The cops want to be able to lie under oath without fear of proof that undermines their crimes.

These are civil rights cases; we have an Amendment that protects us from police who want to hide their actions by denying us our Rights. A lawsuit under 1983 provisions would provide a vehicle for damages to be collected from the cops, who should never get immunity for offending the Constitution by arresting people for merely insuring a reliable record of the truth be saved for the future.

The police have a terrible track record when it comes to perjury and abuse of rights, and it is more critical than ever that we rise up as one voice and denounce the efforts at hiding the truth. Cops are always fond of saying ” If you have nothing to hide, why not give up your rights and allow us to……….”? So the reverse is absolutely fair:

If the police have nothing to hide, then they should welcome anyone who documents the events they see so no one can falsely accuse the cops of misconduct…right? But rather than desiring the truth to be known, they want it hidden, obscured, never able to prove…one must ask WHY?

The police should be REQUIRED to wear a camera at all times when on duty, never turned off unless in a bathroom while on break, which records all audio as well. That way there would be no question as to what happened.

But we all know that cop routinely, commonly and egregiously violate the rules day in and out…they lie and give false legal advice to citizens, they lie and bluster to get consent searches and they threaten and cajole and coerce as commonly as we would perform any normal job function.

So naturall cops hate exposure; if what they lie about and threaten over reached an attorney they would lose cases, or have to adapt to legal and proper means of investigating, which would of course cause more care be taken and more rights observed, and cops care nothing about those things.

Sue ‘em!! Sue em in Federal court and watch the practices change. All it takes is a Fed order to get local flatfoot Fife’s to wake up and respect the Constitution.

Carlos, it looks like CATO has also taken notice of you and PINAC because of the USA Today piece, Keep up the good work.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/07/16/cops-and-cameras-the-future-of...

My only problem with that rizzin is that they can still take them off and or shut them down and say oh it must have malfunctioned…… OOOPS
to much like they would lose the tape or digital copy from the dash cam

It should be pointed out that Dennis J. Slocumb and Rich Roberts’s article feature an inaccuracy:

160 cops are not killed each year, it’s actually about 120 for 2008, and 115 for 2009, and steadily declining.

Half of those are from traffic accidents, with a significant percentage of those being attributed to a police officer not wearing a seat-belt.

More people are killed by the police Taser each year than police are killed in total. Does that seem right to anyone?

I’m perfectly fine with police dying while doing their duty, that was rather expected while I served in the military – yet for the police, they can kill American civilians in the name of their own protection.

Hey Carlos,

Just found your blog. Amazingly, I live in nyc and completely missed the coverage of Christopher Logan controversy. Thanks for documenting it. I am a photographer myself and had my own run in with the NYPD last december:

http://www.noshiz.com/index.php?philo_ID=105

Apparently, the concept of the legality filming police activities is still not a part of their training program

Keep up the good work.

-MT

If the cops aren’t doing anything wrong, why do they object to being filmed. But then again, if cops testilie all the time, i can understand why they don’t want to be filmed.

If I was a cop and did my job honestly and right, I would want everyone possible filming me, it would only show that I did what was right.

Seems like cops and prosecutors are at best being hypocritical about this.

By definition, what a cop does is public information.

Dan

I don’t see how the police could have a leg to stand on in these cases: there is no expectation of freedom from photography, filming or recording in a public or semi-public place. Almost every place you can go has cameras: malls, groceries, bars/restaurants, airports, parking lots/garages, government buildings. Not to mention red light cameras. We have no idea how many times we are filmed in our daily lives as we go about our jobs, shopping and recreation. And that doesn’t seem to be against any wire tapping laws.

if we can’t be trusted to record our interactions with the police, to provide evidence in a court of law, the constabulary themselves should be required to. i’m no technical expert here, but it seems the technological hurdle to this has fallen dramatically in the past decade.