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if that's all true, it's ridiculous.
I can't believe some of those rulings were upheld in state Supreme Courts.
Are Cameras the New Guns?
In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.
Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.
The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. 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.
Massachusetts attorney June Jensen represented Simon Glik who was arrested for such a recording. She explained, "[T]he statute has been misconstrued by Boston police. You could go to the Boston Common and snap pictures and record if you want." Legal scholar and professor Jonathan Turley agrees, "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. I have written in the area of surveillance law and can say that this is utter nonsense."
The courts, however, disagree. A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.
In 2001, when Michael Hyde was arrested for criminally violating the state's electronic surveillance law - aka recording a police encounter - the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld his conviction 4-2. In dissent, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall stated, "Citizens have a particularly important role to play when the official conduct at issue is that of the police. Their role cannot be performed if citizens must fear criminal reprisals…." (Note: In some states it is the audio alone that makes the recording illegal.)
The selection of "shooters" targeted for prosecution do, indeed, suggest a pattern of either reprisal or an attempt to intimidate.
Glik captured a police action on his cellphone to do ent what he considered to be excessive force. He was not only arrested, his phone was also seized.
On his website Drew wrote, "Myself and three other artists who do ented my actions tried for two months to get the police to arrest me for selling art downtown so we could test the Chicago peddlers license law. The police hesitated for two months because they knew it would mean a federal court case. With this felony charge they are trying to avoid this test and ruin me financially and stain my credibility."
Hyde used his recording to file a harassment complaint against the police. After doing so, he was criminally charged.
In short, recordings that are flattering to the police - an officer kissing a baby or rescuing a dog - will almost certainly not result in prosecution even if they are done without all-party consent. The only people who seem prone to prosecution are those who embarrass or confront the police, or who somehow challenge the law. If true, then the prosecutions are a form of social control to discourage criticism of the police or simple dissent.
A recent arrest in Maryland is both typical and disturbing.
On March 5, 24-year-old Anthony John Graber III's motorcycle was pulled over for speeding. He is currently facing criminal charges for a video he recorded on his helmet-mounted camera during the traffic stop.
The case is disturbing because:
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.
2) Baltimore criminal defense attorney Steven D. Silverman said he had never heard of the Maryland wiretap law being used in this manner. In other words, Maryland has joined the expanding trend of criminalizing the act of recording police abuse. Silverman surmises, "It's more [about] ‘contempt of cop' than the violation of the wiretapping law."
3) Police spokesman Gregory M. Shipley is defending the pursuit of charges against Graber, denying that it is "some capricious retribution" and citing as justification the particularly egregious nature of Graber's traffic offenses. Oddly, however, the offenses were not so egregious as to cause his arrest before the video appeared.
Almost without exception, police officials have staunchly supported the arresting officers. This argues strongly against the idea that some rogue officers are overreacting or that a few cops have something to hide. "Arrest those who record the police" appears to be official policy, and it's backed by the courts.
Carlos Miller at the Photography Is Not A Crime website offers an explanation: "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."
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.
Happily, even as the practice of arresting "shooters" expands, there are signs of effective backlash. At least one Pennsylvania jurisdiction has reaffirmed the right to video in public places. As part of a settlement with ACLU attorneys who represented an arrested "shooter," the police in Spring City and East Vincent Township adopted a written policy allowing the recording of on-duty policemen.
As journalist Radley Balko declares, "State legislatures should consider passing laws explicitly making it legal to record on-duty law enforcement officials."
Wendy McElroy is the author of several books on anarchism and feminism. She maintains the iconoclastic website ifeminists.net as well as an active blog at wendymcelroy.com.
if that's all true, it's ridiculous.
I can't believe some of those rulings were upheld in state Supreme Courts.
Socialist or Fascist?
Sociofascist?
What. The. ?
Why should police and militarized SWAT teams be allowed to work in secret?
Seems like the cops like to take along a "local news camera crew" and then put it on TV.
Yes, it's ridiculous.
I find the three states, real revealing...
Isn't it obvious. Those three states wish to allow their police to rob you of your cons utional rights.
Welp
That is some bull right there.
that . We are giving the police waaaaay too much leeway as it is.
Things like that made me whip out the ol' checkbook and start forking money over to the ACLU on a regular basis. I may not always approve of every cause that they take up, but they are the best shot for providing help to defeat really obvious bull laws like this.
ers still haven't sent me a card so I can be a genyoo-ine card carrying member tho'.
Do you really think the ACLU will challenge the seats of liberal corruption?
This makes me sad.
Yes. They have before on numerous issues.
The starting assumption that you need to question here is that they are concerned about the "liberal" label. They aren't.
Don't subs ute cynacism for an objective evaluation, and look around.
They have pissed off a lot of people you would call "liberal" on occasion because they have been proponents of things you would probably approve of.
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-no...ies_law_p.htmlThe rules of engagement became clearer in Eugene's U.S. District Court last week, when a civil jury determined that a city police sergeant violated an environmental activist's cons utional protections against illegal search and seizure during a 2009 leafletting campaign outside a bank.
The eight-person panel determined that Sgt. Bill Solesbee arrested environmentalist Josh Schlossberg without probable cause and used excessive force. But it was Solesbee's next act that sent legal minds across Oregon into hyperdrive: He seized the environmentalist's video camera without a warrant.
That's the electronic equivalent of police walking off with several file cabinets of private papers without benefit of a judge's signature, said Lauren Regan, Schlossberg's lawyer.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin ruled in a pretrial hearing in the Eugene case that Solesbee violated Schlossberg's Fourth Amendment rights by searching the contents of his camera without a warrant. That ruling marked the first time that a federal court in Oregon weighed in on warrantless seizures of digital devices.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/01/11/fo...-guy-for-recorMore than four years after arresting Simon Glik for using his cell phone to record another man's arrest, the Boston Police Department has admitted the officers who were involved used "unreasonable judgment." That conclusion, which contradicts the position the department has taken since 2007, comes five months after a federal appeals court ruled that Glik had a First Amendment right to record the arrest on the Boston Common, which he did because he thought the police were using excessive force. Superintendent Kenneth Fong, superintendent of the department's Bureau of Professional Standards, revealed the reversal in a letter to Glik last Thursday. The Boston Globe reports that the officers, Sergeant Detective John Cunniffe and Officer Peter Savalis, "face discipline ranging from an oral reprimand to suspension."
Related:
http://www.wfaa.com/news/crime/138327434.html
Outrage grows over woman's allegations that Houston officers beat her by GABE GUTIERREZ
KHOU
Posted on January 30, 2012 at 10:10 AM
Updated yesterday at 10:13 AM
Gallery
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HOUSTON – There was growing outrage Sunday among Houston’s black community over another case of alleged police brutality – this time involving a woman under five-feet tall.
Annika Lewis, 26, claims several police officers punched her in the face when she tried to record video on her cell phone and later snatched her memory card.
She said several officers were beating her husband after a traffic stop.
“I know my rights,” she said Sunday at a news conference outside her southeast Houston home. “I know that I’m able to record. That’s why when they told me to 'put that damn camera away,' I told them ‘I’m standing on my property and I have my camera in my hand and I’m recording you beating my husband.’”
Lewis’ husband, Sebastian Prevot, was taken into custody early Friday morning and charged with resisting arrest. Houston police declined to comment on his case and said the incident report would not be available until Monday.
His attorney, Robert Collier, said Sunday that officers had only stopped Prevot for a routine traffic violation after he allegedly failed to come to complete stop before an intersection a few blocks away from his home.
"I would like to point out there are certain procedures and protocols for arresting a suspect or anyone for a routine traffic stop," Collier said. "Mr. Prevot, from my understanding, didn't have any weapons."
Collier said Prevot denies the charge of resisting arrest, but wouldn’t elaborate any further about the criminal case against his client.
According to online court records, Prevot does not have any prior criminal history in Harris County.
Activist Deric Muhammad stopped short of calling for Police Chief Charles McClelland’s resignation, but he insisted something needed to be done to calm fears among Houston’s black community.
The officers allegedly involved in this incident were all white, Muhammad said, and it happened less than a day after activists held a town hall meeting urging residents to videotape possible police brutality in their neighborhoods.
Muhammad is asking federal investigators to get involved.
“What kind of so-called ‘public servant’ do you have on your staff that we as taxpayers compensate every day that would take his fist and pummel the face of a young woman, 4 foot 11 inches, 103 pounds?” Muhammad asked. “I would say that only a coward would so such a thing. Only a savage beast would do such a thing and we as a community are angry as .”
For a second straight day, an HPD spokesperson declined comment on Lewis’ claims, reiterating that once Lewis files a formal complaint, it will be taken very seriously.
its funni how they talk about upholding whatever rights and cons utions ur forefathers fought for, only to withheld it from you or slowly changing the cons utions how they see fit.....
Very scary indeed. My biggest beef with Obama has been his failure to reign in the police state that has grown the past ten years under the guise of fighting terrorism. The Patriot Act is one of the most unpatriotic pieces of legislation ever passed in this country. This anti-camera movement by police officers is just as disturbing.
It is good to see the court reversals of this stupid .
This whole movement to criminalize the recording of police is so obviously uncons utional, it is a shame that the courts are taking so long to figure that out and do the only sane thing one can do when presented with something so obvious.
Totalitarian. There are totalitarian forms of both. We are slowly turning into a totalitarian republic.
American
easy solution
Until you post the footageeasy solution
you'll look pretty weird/su ious running around at night with heavy-rimmed sun glasses.
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