Police Officers Seek Right Not To Be Recorded 1123
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."
The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
and the general apathetic public sleeps soundly.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Funny)
Now take away their American Idol
Can that really be done??? Please?? Can you do it??
And DO NOT warn about a tornado during a finale... (Score:5, Funny)
YouTube link to the irate caller who didn't like them to interrupt the season finale with a tornado warning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZJdhmsfbPg&feature=player_embedded/ [youtube.com]
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
The root part of the problem is our absurdness in our culture thinking that if you don't have something to hide then the police are our friends rather than the unelected, abusive, thugs they really are. Shows like 24 epitomize this, that police are hindered by laws and the "bad guys" get away the more we enforce the constitution. What we really need for change is showing the evils of the police department, sort of an anti-COPS show, showing abuses in the police system to innocent people.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
[...]
What we really need for change is showing the evils of the police department, sort of an anti-COPS show, showing abuses in the police system to innocent people.
It's called YouTube.
Is this a troll? I can't tell. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you seriously claiming that 18-29 year olds are somehow more in tune to what's "real" in terms of abuse of power than those over 30?
Oh you sad little boy.
I know it must not seem that way from your perspective - that of somebody who only recently got big boy pants and tie shoes - but lots of us over-30 "seniors" are plenty networked.
Besides, some of the greatest abuses of power are perpetrated by gray haired old men.
Probably didn't occur to you that there are plenty of people who were teens in the 60's who can show you actual scars from police brutality. So get on your tricycle and go away. Come back when you've got some experience of the world that doesn't come out of a rectangle on your monitor.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
People wouldn't get it, if they would they'd already be pissed off just watching plain old regular COPS. It happened to be on when I turned on the TV one day and I left it on while I cooked supper. Well, for the first 10 minutes anyway, after that I turned it off in disgust. They followed some pedestrian for 3 blocks until he crossed the street int he middle of a block (not even jaywalking by most definitions) then demanded to see ID (which he didn't have), threatened to arrest him for not having ID, then did arrest him when he tried to walk away, and nearly arrested his mother when she came out to see what was going on. I haven't been that mad at my TV since my sister watched three straight episodes of "My Super Sweet 16" when I was visiting her.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been completely happy with my interactions with cops here in the US. Every time I've been pulled over (for legitimate speeding) the cop was polite and nice, didn't throw his authority around. Another time one helped me catch a neighbor's horse that had gotten loose.
The problem is not that cops are bad guys, any more than anyone else is a bad guy. The problem is that they have an enhanced ability to be a bad guy and get away with it.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolute BS. Speaking as someone who responds to many accidents where people who "are far better drivers than everyone else", you're full of it. The simplest, main reason? Because being a good driver includes "being prepared for the unpredictable behavior of others". If you are driving in a manner that gives you no escape room from any unpredictable behavior, then you're not a good driver. Simple as that.
In all probability, those going 25mph+ over the speed limits are the ones "changing lanes without signaling", "braking for no reason" beyond "attempting to execute a race-style passing manoeuver".
Here's the thing. Excessive speeders may always want to get ahead of you. But they'll always be behind someone else. Unless there's noone ahead of you, then that's always going to be unsafe (and even then, again, part of being a "good driver" is knowing the limits of your vehicle, the condition of it, and the road, and environment, and driving in a manner that accounts for such things).
Ego is a problem, too. People who persistently excessively speed like to think they are far better drivers than everyone else on the road. They like to think that it is some testament to the quality of their skills that they regularly navigate the freeway at 85+. It more often than not isn't. It's blind luck. It's about as accurate as the multitude of people who say "sure, I can talk on a cellphone and drive, it's other people that suck at it". Pop quiz, when was the last time you heard someone admit freely that they can't drive and talk on their cell at the same time?
Trust me, I've seen plenty of people that think they can excessively speed... and for everyone who might blame another person for having the audacity to brake (hint, if the distance between you and the guy in front of you is less than you and your vehicles response time, regardless of speed, you're going too fast, or are too close), etc, there's just as many accidents where Excessive Speeder has painted himself all over the road through no-ones fault but his own (and often taking a few bystanders with him).
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
Some police officers are horrible little bastards that abuse their power and terrorize citizens.
Most police officers are unionized government workers getting a check and protecting all their buddies no matter what they have done.
Edmund Burke called... (Score:5, Insightful)
The first category are clearly a tiny minority, or the second wouldn't be tolerated.
As for the third, they're closer to the second than they'd like to think.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, that attitude is right. While on the job, you are responsible to your employer, and you have no inherent right to privacy. Sure, you can argue that you should be granted some privacy to make it a non-hostile work environment, but ultimately that is a privilege, not a legal right. It starts to get dicey when you're talking about ostensibly personal communication while physically at a work site, but that's not what we're talking about here. Nobody would ever be able to successfully sue for a privacy violation if he/she got fired for stripping nude in front of a security camera. That's essentially the level of privacy we're talking about here---overt activity in a public or semipublic place. To that end, they have no right to privacy, and more to the point, *should not* have any right to privacy while out on patrol or on a bust or whatever.
When it comes to police officers, the general public are their bosses, in effect. Their job is to protect the public, and thus only the public can reasonably determine whether or not they are doing their jobs. As such, we have a fundamental right to know what they are up to. We don't have a right to know instantly; that would put officers in danger. However, much as we have a responsibility as a society to oversee our military and their actions, we have the same societal responsibility to watch our police force. Period.
Moreover, what they do, they do in public. There is a fundamental legal right of the public to photograph and videotape *anything* that occurs in a public place. Period. There's no grey area here. And when they are in private places, the right to determine whether recording is allowed or not belongs to the owner of the property, which again, usually is the person doing the videotaping.
Finally, I would add that preventing police officers from being recorded is a technically infeasible request. We have security cameras all over the place, and individuals have a right to have security cameras on their property. It's just not feasible to have these systems somehow magically identify a police officer and shut off. Any mechanism that could provide such functionality could also be abused by the bad guys to nullify the utility of the security system. This is a fundamentally unsolvable problem.
So what they're asking is either:
In short, IMHO, there's basically a 0% chance that any law like this would make it through SCOTUS without being nullified, no matter how they write the law. That said, it would be nice for a law on this subject to be taken all the way to the SCOTUS just to cement that into binding precedent.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Informative)
Ahh, Rampart (Score:5, Interesting)
There were a huge number of scumbags in Rampart- a lot were wearing gang colors, others police uniforms.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
They like cameras on intersection lights, they put cameras outside their police stations, they allow cameras following them aroound for the show "COPS" and now they don't like cameras all of a sudden?
The police use cameras in the cars that they drive around in all day and use them to record pulling people over without their consent. What the hell is the justification of not being able to record an officer in the exact same situation? He pulls you over and never tells you that you are on camera. You tell him that your car has a built in camera provided by the insurance company: http://www.teensafedriver.com/our-system/faqs.asp [teensafedriver.com]. And that they are being recorded.
Then they arrest you? What the hell kind of protect and server stance is that? I pay the damn sallary and would love it if they had cameras on them at all times. ALL TIMES. What could a police officer do that would be hindered by having one of those cameras strapped around his neck snapping pictures %100 of the time? Clock in, start recording. Clock out, leave your gun, badge and authority with the camera and go home a normal person. If you wouldn't do it on camera as an officer on the clock I don't want to pay you to do it. You get no privacy when you work for the people since you should be accountable to those people every second you're on the clock. I'll excuse you for bathroom breaks since I'm such a nice guy, only in acknowledged gps located bathrooms. Now get back to work!
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
We're a prozac and adderal nation now.
Bread and circuses isn't exactly a new invention.
If they don't want to be recorded they are hiding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If they don't want to be recorded they are hidi (Score:5, Insightful)
If they don't want to be recorded, they may be hiding something.
Now now, be careful with that sword, it's double-edged.
Re:If they don't want to be recorded they are hidi (Score:5, Insightful)
No sir.. Those in positions of authority deserve no such protections... The Sword of Damocles hangs over their heads, where it belongs.
Re:If they don't want to be recorded they are hidi (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're out in public where anyone can point a camera at you, it's the truth. There's a difference between what you do behind closed curtains being private and what you do on a public street being private. If a cop loses his shit and decides to beat your ass down for talking back to him in the middle of a public place, why should he think he should be immune from being recorded?
Re:If they don't want to be recorded they are hidi (Score:5, Insightful)
why should he think he should be immune from being recorded?
Because he's a cop silly. The whole reason he became a cop is to have special privileges.
Re:If they don't want to be recorded they are hidi (Score:5, Insightful)
Because in a court of law, the cop's word is more likely to win. Being recorded takes away the possibility of getting away with abuse by just saying it ain't so. That's *a lot* to lose (for the cops).
So now they are working on making it illegal to prove that they lied by recording their actions.
Just imagine what the police report would've looked like for the BART shootings if there was no video capturing the event. Or the countless beatings, using tazers to torture etc.
Some police brutality on the tube for your viewing pleasure. [youtube.com]
Re:If they don't want to be recorded they are hidi (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the situation is symmetrical. The whole point of our post-Enlightenment traditions in the West has been the understanding that Authority, if left unchecked, will naturally tend towards abuse. The Police, in all their forms throughout the ages, have always been the most visible aspect of abusive Authority. The ability of the citizen to make his fellow citizens aware of abuses by Authority is key to the preservation of liberal democratic values. If you give the Authorities any sort of free pass on this, you simply invite them to do their worst. If you catch them doing their worst (ie. we just had the fortieth anniversary of the Kent State Shootings), then there is some capacity to assure some degree of justice, and more importantly for the Authorities to moderate their own behaviors.
I'm not saying all cops beat perps, in fact I'm fairly certain that most cops are decent men and women who become police officers out of a sense of duty and a desire to protect society. But even the best cops can fall victim to the us-vs-them that inevitably occurs in such an organization. Once you have that, then they start to view a much broader swathe of society than just bad guys as being the "them".
Of course the police don't want to be recorded. In some respects it can interfere, because they may spend as much time worrying about whether swinging that baton may be seen as they do about public safety and even their own safety. But what's the alternative? If we first agree that society has a vested interest in assuring the good and proper conduct of the police, then it strikes me that bans on recording them are utterly incompatible with that notion. Liberty requires constant vigilance and what they're asking is that a tool of the vigilant be removed.
Re:If they don't want to be recorded they are hidi (Score:5, Insightful)
But they also have the double-standard backward. We, the public are entitled to privacy, while the government should be transparent. It is a double standard, by design, and they have it completely backward.
Re:If they don't want to be recorded they are hidi (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't the response of the law-and-order types to privacy complaints "If you haven't done anything wrong you have nothing to worry about"? So if the police have nothing to hide they have nothing to complain about. In fact they could be helped in case someone makes a false claim against them.
The only real motivation they have is that they want to hide their actions. They are public employees and the public has a right to watch them.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Informative)
One last tidbit from the article worth reading
For the second time in less than a month, a police officer was convicted from evidence obtained from a videotape. The first officer to be convicted was New York City Police Officer Patrick Pogan, who would never have stood trial had it not been for a video posted on Youtube showing him body slamming a bicyclist before charging him with assault on an officer. The second officer to be convicted was Ottawa Hills (Ohio) Police Officer Thomas White, who shot a motorcyclist in the back after a traffic stop, permanently paralyzing the 24-year-old man."
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Informative)
I wrote my state legislators... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been reading recently about what seems to me to be a disturbing trend by police agencies, prosecutors and legislatures to criminalize the ability of a citizen to record a police interaction. This is but one example: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/01/12/police_fight_cellphone_recordings/ [boston.com]
While I strongly support the Sherriff and the other police agencies in Arizona, corrupt officers are not unheard of, and I strongly reject the notion that a citizen recording any interaction with any official of the state should be criminal.
What is your position on this issue and what can we do to prevent such onerous laws, such as they have in Massachusetts for example, from becoming law here?
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
what slide? in each of those cases the person violated a law. the NYC one was by a bunch of idiots called Critical Mass who think it's OK to disrupt traffic. they deserve to get beat down for what they do. ...
Nobody deserves to get beat down by the police. They perhaps deserve to be arrested with the minimal amount of force and violence required to effect the arrest, and then detained in a safe facility (safe from both other detainees and staff) until they are released on bail or finish serving their sentence.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:4, Insightful)
so is selling crap on the street with no license
The nerve of someone to want to engage in commerce without first obtaining permission from the government.....
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmmmm . . . an armed revolution because the police don't want to be videotaped.
No. But a revolution because elected officials do not represent the citizens, because the courts and politicians support the police being able to secret violate your rights, because unions and big business get to make law, because we are 13 TRILLION dollars in debt and all they want to do is spend more money on government / union programs, because everytime you bitch about their spending they threaten to cut infrastructure and police and firemen not union contracts and new cars for the politicians.
Look at the whole picture.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Informative)
It is an odd paradox that the further people are removed from having used the ammo box the more they see it as some sort of solution to tyranny. Ask Randy Weaver's wife how well that worked out. Or David Koresh.
I have considerable deployment time as a scout sniper in the USMC and I regularly shoot in long range tactical matches. Usually place well. Knowing what I know about the force capability of even the national guard, I have 0% interest in joining some kind of armed insurrection put together by a bunch of weekend shooters with instruction jackets that consist of having watched a Magpul video and accumulated 1000 posts on gun forums.
People who don't know their stuff think it sounds really awesome printed on a flag or the like, but those of us who've seen the elephant hope you all concentrate really hard on the first couple of boxes.
Re:The steady slide to Police State continues (Score:5, Insightful)
Your mistake is that of the revolutionary war generals placed in modern combat.
Or that of the WWI commander trying to fight WWII on the Maginot Line.
Combat nowadays is rarely a contiguous "front".
The idea that an armed insurrection is going to simply band together and stand across the field from an Army unit with tanks and field emplacements and "trade volleys" is ludicrous.
An armed insurrection nowadays is going to be a guy with a gun popping important people (or people he thinks are important).
And while he's probably a dead man for doing so, he can inflict an inordinate amount of casualties before they finally stop him.
Honestly, if you were concealed, and didn't care about prolonging your life, how many people could you kill off before someone found you and ended you?
Or better yet, if you didn't care about prolonging your life, how many people could you kill in a group simply by walking up innocuously and unloading?
Wow, the police killed ONE WHOLE GUY! How many people did he wound or kill outright before that?
And do they know he was part of an armed insurrection or just somebody gone postal with a gun?
THAT is what the government is going to have to put up with, if it ever REALLY comes to an armed insurrection. Afghanistan in their own back yards.
But worse. Because EVERYONE looks just like you!
This reminds me of... (Score:5, Funny)
When teachers didn't want to be tested as they claimed that testing was a poor indicator of someone ability. Go Figure.
Exactly. It's not like law enforcement can be (Score:5, Insightful)
held accountable for "violating" the same laws when they record citizens behavior without their consent for use as evidence. But somehow when it's a cop being taped, it's an illegal "unconsented" recording and people are going to jail.
This will be fair when those doing surveillance recording for law enforcement can also be sent to prison for recording in public places without individual consent. Until then, it's one more example of the way in which cops are increasingly generally subpar people, recruited from the less educated and less successful demographics of society, eager to hold a gun, and drawn to the profession precisely because they feel powerless in other areas of their life as a result of their general lack of merit, and thus need to abuse citizens in order to compensate for this lack.
Re:Exactly. It's not like law enforcement can be (Score:5, Insightful)
Until then, it's one more example of the way in which cops are increasingly generally subpar people, recruited from the less educated and less successful demographics of society, eager to hold a gun, and drawn to the profession precisely because they feel powerless in other areas of their life as a result of their general lack of merit, and thus need to abuse citizens in order to compensate for this lack.
Perhaps this is true, but I doubt it. For my personal anecdote, the (admittedly few) police officers I've known personally have been intelligent and friendly people with no obvious mental or emotional issues.
The real problem can be summed up most effectively with three words: Stanford Prison Experiment [wikipedia.org]. Put people in a position of physical and legal authority over others and they will abuse it. It doesn't matter who they are or where the authority is derived from, it appears to be built into basic human nature. See also the Rosenhal Experiment [wikipedia.org] for a possible explanation as to why people in that kind of authority act that way, they see what they expect to see in their prisoners/patients/criminals.
Let Them (Score:5, Insightful)
Goose & Gander (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let Them (Score:4, Insightful)
Record anyways. Even if it gets to the point where video evidence a flagrant abuse of power becomes inadmissible, it's potential value in stirring public outcry far outstrips any consequences associated with the establishment seeking to restrict the publics use of video recording and their public servants.
Once again, target fixation prevents you guys from seeing what's really going on: It doesn't matter whether the police abuse their power.
That's a bold statement to make, so let me explain it; Legally, there's almost no recourse. But why? For the system to function, it has to place trust in a group of people at some point. Every method of governance reduces to this basic truth if you dig at it long enough: It becomes a question of who to trust. If the police can't be trusted, then they can't do their job. So even if they do their job poorly, and with frequent abuses, the system will tolerate this because the system depends on the assumption that they can be trusted (regardless of whether they can or not). By arguing about whether or not there are safeguards against police brutality, or legal recourses, or any of that, you're sidestepping the critical issue: At some point, you have to trust them. Cameras expose these breaches of trust, but they also fundamentally undermine the system by doing so.
The system is happy to hide the occasional act of injustice (and punish those who expose them) because the public's trust in the institution is vital to its continued functioning. It's paradoxical, unfair, illogical... and true.
Trust but Verify (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let Them (Score:5, Insightful)
So what is your suggestion? Fold over and let them pass another unenforceable law? Because it is already unenforceable, and with technology going where it does, it will be a total joke in some 10 years from now. Everyone will be wearing a camera attached to a general purpose computer, which is attached to the Internet. What is this law gonna do besides generating the public contempt? If you make these recordings inadmissible in court, it will be only a matter of time before someone records a cop committing a first-degree murder, and courts setting the cop free, which will make everyone LOATH the cops and the system that supports them. I don't believe that system will be functional at all.
Re:Let Them (Score:5, Insightful)
So what is your suggestion? Fold over and let them pass another unenforceable law? Because it is already unenforceable,
All systems, organic or electronic, should be built with error tolerance in mind. The system will make mistakes -- that can't be helped. The system has some safeguards in place to prevent errors from occurring; Both internally and externally. Examples of error prevention; trial by jury, the right to an attorney, the fifth amendment, etc. Examples of error correction: De novo review, appeals courts, and public examination of judgements (and the evidence). External examples of error correction and prevention: the governor's right to commute sentences, the press, and voting for judges, or offering ride-alongs to private citizens interested in what police work is like.
To hone in on the main example of this article; Dashboard cameras have radically changed how police behave. They have also given the public insight into what everyday life looks like for a police officer -- albeit dramatized in the form of Cops and similar TV. But here, the chain of custody is maintained, and the evidence is reviewed by assumedly competent experts, and footage is used to train officers and systemically refine practices across the country. The problem isn't recording of police -- the problem is that the camera doesn't tell the whole story, and when footage is taken out of context and placed in the court of public opinion, the damage to the reptutation of law enforcement can be severe. Witness the Rodney King beatings; By taking the issue public, a massive riot ensued. This damage to public property and trust far outweighed what happened between those five men. It was later determined by a court long after the public controversy had moved off the radar that training practices needed adjustment, which is exactly the kind of self-correcting behavior that is supposed to (and usually does) happen when mistakes are made. But these processes are slow and people want immediate emotional gratification -- and it's that need for gratification that's the greatest threat to justice and security, not the occasional police fuckup.
Re:Let Them (Score:5, Insightful)
For the system to function, it has to place trust in a group of people at some point.
How much trust do we have to put in them? Or do you mean faith?
If the police can't be trusted, then they can't do their job.
If we don't trust the police, then telling us that they require our trust is not going to convince us to give it. If we can't trust the the police, then perhaps we need new police.
So even if they do their job poorly, and with frequent abuses, the system will tolerate this because the system depends on the assumption that they can be trusted (regardless of whether they can or not). By arguing about whether or not there are safeguards against police brutality, or legal recourses, or any of that, you're sidestepping the critical issue: At some point, you have to trust them.
And you are sidestepping another issue. At some point on the road to a police state, you have to stop trusting them. If the system requires that trust, then perhaps we should discard the system.
Re:Let Them (Score:5, Insightful)
because the public's trust in the institution is vital to its continued functioning. It's paradoxical, unfair, illogical... and true
No, it isn't true, and that's provable quite easily by looking outside the US. There are plenty of countries where the police are well known to be massively corrupt, and are completely untrusted by the citizens. Russia comes to mind, but there are plenty of other examples. The people know it, many people in the government know it, yet the institution continues to function.
Trust isn't necessary for the police to function....power is. The problem is, when trust is gone, the society functions much less effectively. Corruption flourishes in such an environment, and you're on a quick road to third-world status from there.
But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes.
Re: A police officer's view (Score:5, Interesting)
(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.
Re: A police officer's view (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. That's why cops have video recorders in their cars. That's why cops have flashlights with video recording capability.
Sauce, goose, gander.
Re: A police officer's view (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of things happen in police encounters and sometimes a camera can have a chilling effect on the proceedings.
Funny, coming from a cop. A camera's "chilling effect on proceedings" pales in comparison to a police officer's.
Is that the Heisenberg defense? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hello, is that you, Dr. Heisenberg?
Re:But... (Score:4, Informative)
"I mean, I didn't intend to rob that old lady, but when I came around the corner she was just standing there with her purse half-open." Would you excuse this person from robbery? Same laws apply to the police as to average citizens.
Your camera has been deactivated due to (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Your camera has been deactivated due to (Score:4, Funny)
Achievement Unlocked: Submissive
Those in the Inner Party... (Score:5, Insightful)
have the privilege of turning the telescreens off.
Obvious abuse of power (Score:4, Interesting)
A movement to remove recording them will only serve to propagate that idea, and remove one of the only tools that civilians have to combat any police abuse.
Re:Obvious abuse of power (Score:5, Insightful)
Most cop cars have dash mounted cameras. It's not the idea that a cop does not want to be recorded, they want a system that the end user does not have the ability to alter. The individual cop can't get to the video, I am sure only internal affairs and their superiors have access.
The problem with these cell videos is they don't capture the whole event. A group of cops beating up a person looks extreme until you find out that person was resisting arrest and put both the cop and civilians in danger.
No doubt power can corrupt but most cops, and I know from personal and familial experience, took the job to "protect and serve".
Re:Obvious abuse of power (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Obvious abuse of power (Score:4, Insightful)
A camera fixed into the hood or dash of a police car doesn't get the "whole" event either.
The argument doesn't hold water, sorry.
Re:Obvious abuse of power (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially when the tapes are mysteriously destroyed.
Re:Obvious abuse of power (Score:5, Informative)
How about the recent story about the police saying that their patrol car tape was erased, and a citizen managing to prove that they were hiding it from him.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/418746_video.html [seattlepi.com]
Why should we trust the police? We give them the right to carry guns and use them on citizens!
Re:Obvious abuse of power (Score:5, Insightful)
You don’t subdue someone with impact forces, dumbass. You subdue them with restraining forces.
Get some fucking rope or something. I don’t know.
Clubbing them until they yield is nothing short of barbaric.
Re:Obvious abuse of power (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obvious abuse of power (Score:4, Insightful)
There should be a constitutional amendment that makes recording of public servants a protected right.
Other than nuking it from orbit its the only way.
FTA (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Graber was not arrested immediately. Ten days after the encounter, he posted some of he material to YouTube, and it embarrassed Trooper J. D. Uhler. The trooper, who was in plainclothes and an unmarked car, jumped out waving a gun and screaming. Only later did Uhler identify himself as a police officer. When the YouTube video was discovered the police got a warrant against Graber, searched his parents' house (where he presumably lives), seized equipment, and charged him with a violation of wiretapping law.
Bureaucratic mother fuckers.
Sure (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, if you have nothing to hide Mr. Office Sir, what's the big deal?
Re:Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Judges, juries and legislatures support the police overwhelmingly on this issue
Honestly, why? What possible legitimate reason do the police have for wanting to keep things (at least things outside the station) off camera?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because discretion works both ways.
Every time they let someone off lightly, every little thing they ever ignored, could be recorded. They could let the teenager with the dimebag off with a warning before, but if they're on camera all the time now, discretion goes out the window.
It's worth it, though. Besides, I figure it would only take a year or two of full on enforcement of all the stupid malum prohibitum [wikipedia.org] crap before some effort was made to ensure that the only things that are against the law are things that effing should be.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, ignoring genuine abuses will do far greater damage in the long run. A few bad eggs is one thing, but if you protect them it calls the whole system into question.
One Fundamental difference: (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of reasons why you can't point a gun at a cop.
There isn't a lot of drawback for a cop pointing his gun at you. (Filling out some paperwork)
While most people have become fine with that for weapons, the fundamental difference is that a Camera is not lethal. There is absolutely NO reason why Cops shouldn't be under the same scrutiny as the general public, and if they are allowed to use dashboard cameras, security surveilance, and whatever else at their disposal to help convict a criminal - then the populace should have the same ability at their disposal to defend themselves. Think of it as the right to bear arms.
Re:One Fundamental difference: (Score:4, Insightful)
There is absolutely NO reason why Cops shouldn't be under the same scrutiny as the general public
Absolutely, I would go so far as to say there are several reasons why they should expect *more* scrutiny then
the general public. Every one of the cases cited in TFA are good reasons IMO.
Make it obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
So it seem one can avoid prosecution (persecution?) by setting up a tripod and a few lights and making it real clear they are recording?
Not surprising police don't know the law . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
And people complain about Miranda rights. Miranda rights exist because of abusive cops.
Re:Not surprising police don't know the law . . . (Score:4, Informative)
umm no... In the arrest of Ernesto Miranda, the police followed the letter of the current laws. His lawyer objected and stated that current policy of not requiring the explanation of 5th amendment rights was directly in violation of the 5th amendment. The supreme court agreed and Ernesto Miranda was re tried excluding his confession and was found guilty of rape and kidnapping.
Re:Not surprising police don't know the law . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Land of the free (Score:5, Informative)
But don't...
The police and the courts should bear the following in mind when considering the recordings:
"If the police are doing nothing wrong, then they have absolutely nothing to fear from being recorded".
Unfortunately the "recording" of police should not be left entirely to police owned CCTV systems. Because those systems can malfunction at the most inconvenient times, causing the images to disappear right when, for example, someone called Charles de Menezes [wikipedia.org] gets shot in the head for his crime of wearing a jacket on a warm day.
While the police have a job to do, and most of them do a damned good one at that; they are still human beings. And as such not infallible and not immune to all sorts of temptation - from wrongly kicking someone in the face who probably deserved it (but deserving has no place in law), to covering one's or one's buddy's ass in an ugly situation, these things can and DO happen. People should not be punished for recording something that is happening - especially in a public place or in the privacy of the recorder's own home. The Romans coined the saying: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The government cannot be trusted blindly. There lies the path to tyranny.
"Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland" (Score:5, Interesting)
All states with heavy Democratic majorities in both Executive and Legislative branches. Still more Hope and Change...
Re:"Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland" (Score:5, Informative)
For the people that obviously didn't read the article, here's some additional context:
---
Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where "no expectation of privacy exists" (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.
---
As much as the OP would like you to think so, these states don't have a law saying it's illegal to video the police. In fact, reading that last sentence would probably lead a reasonable person to conclude that in 11 or those 12 states, recording the police in public would be legal.
first amendment test needed (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Require Video/Audio for all Police Officers (Score:5, Interesting)
ACLU defending cases (Score:5, Informative)
The ACLU has taken at least two cases in that area.
The Maryland motorcycle case [aclu-md.org]: "This prosecution by the Maryland State Police and Harford County State's Attorney is profoundly dangerous, and seems meant to intimidate people from making a record of what public officials do," said David Rocah, Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Maryland. "It is hard to imagine anything more antithetical to a democracy than for the government to tell its citizens that they do not have the right to record what government officials say or do or how they behave."
The video [youtube.com] is on YouTube.
Double standard (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Double standard (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Asymmetric Intimidation (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of the issue is that police officers rely on their intimidation as a tool, and being filmed makes that a lot harder to use.
Police regularly deal with unsavory characters who lie easily, sometimes know the relevant law, or have nothing to lose, and the threatening presence of a police officer (physically imposing, assertive, suspicious and armed) is a useful tool to put the people they're talking to at a disadvantage.
If police are filmed routinely (e.g. we all carry a Schneier Life Recorder [schneier.com]) - setting aside outright murder, corruption and cover-ups [wikipedia.org], even standard practice becomes potentially embarrassing ("YouTube: Cops harass my 17 year-old daughter!"), and anything borderline could easily turn into a career-limiting stink.
No doubt this would make police uncomfortable.
Code of Silence (Score:5, Insightful)
Tips for cop recording... (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to get good video quality in most lighting conditions and to be able to zoom in and catch cops doing their thing from a distance that makes it obvious who they are then you need to buy a good video camera.
Canon GL-1 and GL-2 are really good for this and are rather cheap in the used market for a near broadcast quality DV camera. you do not want HD because HD is not good in low light, and you want optical image stabilization with a long zoom. keep a tape recorded with junk on it in your pocket, and if you are chased by police, press eject, swap tapes, and ditch the good tape in a nearby bush or other items. If recording from a few hundred feet away, you will have a lot of time to do this and can plausibly act like you did not hear the cop.
If your video is good enough for TV broadcast, lots of tv stations will play it. plus when put on youtube it helps incriminate the officer as more details can be seen.
Stay a few hundred feet from the cops and you have not only time to ditch them, but they cant identify you. dress dark if at night, dress in drab colors if daytime... dont stand out.
'Nuff Said (Score:4, Insightful)
People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people.
--V for Vendetta
Obvious thing to do (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be interesting to see if these states slap the same penalties on someone for making a "nannycam" video of their babysitter and catching them abusing their child -- obviously the babysitter has an expectation of privacy when they are in someone's home slapping an infant around!
Anecdote (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Fair's fair (Score:5, Insightful)
They monitor us, we monitor them. That's fair.
They monitor us, we can't monitor them. That's unfair.
They don't monitor us, we monitor them. That would also be fair, because WE PAY THEIR FUCKING SALARIES.
If they don't like it, they're more than welcome to forgo their special extra-legal privileges in exchange for less surveillance.
Naughty cops (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as they aren't doing anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about. Right? Right? Isn't that the argument used by all the people that support the patriot act bullshit? The only cops that don't want to be recorded are obviously the ones that are doing wrong.
It Has To Be Said (Score:5, Insightful)
If the police are not doing anything wrong, what do they have to be afraid of?
The terrible abuses in the Camden PD would never have come to light had it not been for video surveillance.
Do we really want to condone criminal behavior by the police? Can a "good" cop justify hiding or ignoring criminal behavior on the part of police officers? Can any elected official? Any judge? If they do, they are just co-conspirators.
Re:Recording isn't the real issue... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this were the case we could yank all mainstream news off of the air.
Re:Recording isn't the real issue... (Score:4, Informative)