See other Resistance Articles
Title: Are Cameras the New Guns? The move to stop recording of police misconduct.
Source:
The Freeman Online
URL Source: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/headline/are-cameras-the-new-guns/
Published: May 31, 2010
Author: Wendy McElroy
Post Date: 2010-06-03 11:00:49 by F.A. Hayek Fan
Keywords: None
Views: 205
Comments: 15
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 (Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland), it is now illegal to record an 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 document 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 documented 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.”
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: F.A. Hayek Fan, *libertarians*, *Shooters*, *Jack-Booted Thugs* (#0)
ping
Want to look at a new way to make some moola?click here and enter code 4d6a55744e5451354e7a673d-2
The actions of police officers, on duty and in uniform, out in the public square, are a matter of public record and should be available to all to monitor as they wish, as long as that monitoring does not interfere with their duties (meaning that if you're getting in the cops way with a camera as he's running down a suspect, you're in the wrong and need to get the hell out of the way). Put into context, the government(s) of many localities have no problem putting up cameras to monitor *us*, usually under the pretext of us being in a public place and the cameras being no different than a police officer being present and watching. Ergo, tit for tat suggests that the monitoring of cops in a public place performing a public service while on duty, is equally protected.
"The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished.... The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be." - Lao Tzu, 6th century BC
What it boils down to is that cops have been able to get away with murder - in some cases literally, and they are afraid of being held accountable to the same laws which they "enforce" (selectively). Video recordings by citizens of Police Officers violating the rights of another or comitting a crime, which they are used to getting away with, scares them.
"One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order." K.M. Heaton, The National Educator
I can't imagine people staying in those three states for any reason. FTP.....
_________________________________________________________________________ I agree. I also cannot understand how the courts can give permission for the police to record the population but not allow the population to record the police. Yet the people of these states can put a stop to this real easy. If they choose not to then it is on their heads.
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Director, CIA 1973–1976 Nothing in the State, everything outside the State, everything against the State - Jan Lester, Escape From Leviathan "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." - Frederic Bastiat Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone. - Zhuangzi
I'll second the motion. And you can throw Indiana "America's Trailer Park!™! into that shit pile as well.
"One of the least understood strategies of the world revolution now moving rapidly toward its goal is the use of mind control as a major means of obtaining the consent of the people who will be subjects of the New World Order." K.M. Heaton, The National Educator
deleted
The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one. "You've got to put right and wrong above legal and illegal. Because when tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty; and it is not rebellion at all, it is submission to the higher law that our government is in rebellion to. We're not the rebels, they're the rebels."
They hate us because were FREE. I am sick of saying this, but every day it seems appropriate.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" Okay, so if cameras taking video of cops doing bad bad things can't be used in court, and is in violation of Wiretapping and Eavesdropping law, then, traffic cameras, and any other surveillance devices that are trained on the unsuspecting public, should also be inadmissable as evidence, and those who run them should be arrested, and convicted of same.
It is better to be hated for what you are, than loved for what you are not. - Tommy The Mad Artist.
You would think so, but it appears to be a one-sided game in the three states talked about in the article.
"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." ~ William Colby, Director, CIA 1973–1976 Nothing in the State, everything outside the State, everything against the State - Jan Lester, Escape From Leviathan "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that justifies it." - Frederic Bastiat Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone. - Zhuangzi
No question on why they're scared. It's interesting to me how they can twist the law one way to prohibit precisely what they do to us e.g. - cameras. It's a twist that I think is going to cause a break, because it cannot be sustained in both directions at once. Either we can't film cops and the public cameras stop filming us, or they continue to film us and we continue to film them. There doesn't appear to be any legal middle ground on this. That said, I'm sure they'll invent such grounds out of whole cloth.
"The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished.... The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be." - Lao Tzu, 6th century BC
this pisses me off. lest articles like this intimidate the masses from recording,.. only 3 states mentioned have these so-called laws. it doesnt mention which states have the wiretapping charge. abject tyranny. well i am in Ca and will film those f-ing criminal pigs or anything else i want to. one pig tried to intimidate me into not filming after they pushed down a kid. i filed an official complaint, stays on his record 5 years. internal affairs investigated, and i recorded that too, and put it on youtube,. the police chief then sent me a letter thanking me for bringing up training issues! later, another pig from same city tried to tell me i could'nt film him. i did anyway, and he didnt do jack shit! hes mocked daily on youtube also. title is ITS NOT ILLEGAL TO FILM COPS RESIST ILLEGAL ORDERS.
"if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." 1 Cor 12:31—13:13 Good man. Any "laws" like this need to be immediately disobeyed by as many people as possible. The beauty of filming them is, in fact, places like YouTube where we can openly mock them as well. Nothing takes the puff out of their chest like being laughed at.
"The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished.... The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be." - Lao Tzu, 6th century BC
i wil expand on my post above. The reason i carried s live videocam into internal affairs dept is because i dont need 'permission' to exert my God given natural rights. The cops acknowledge on the vid that anyone can film cops! it has no bikinis or car chases, but the entire 40 min interview with IA is about these issues, and is on youtube. people must be confident in their rights if they are to keep them. Also see, Arkansas state trooper meets videocam. featured on prisonplanet.com
"if I have all faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." 1 Cor 12:31—13:13 deleted
The relationship between morality and liberty is a directly proportional one. "You've got to put right and wrong above legal and illegal. Because when tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty; and it is not rebellion at all, it is submission to the higher law that our government is in rebellion to. We're not the rebels, they're the rebels."
#2. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#0)
(Edited)
#3. To: SonOfLiberty (#2)
#4. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#0)
In at least three states (Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland), it is now illegal to record an 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.
Obama is the miscegenated bastard of a white communist whore. True story.
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#5. To: X-15 (#4)
#6. To: X-15 (#4)
#7. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#0)
#8. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#0)
#9. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#0)
#10. To: TommyTheMadArtist (#9)
Okay, so if cameras taking video of cops doing bad bad things can't be used in court, and is in violation of Wiretapping and Eavesdropping law, then, traffic cameras, and any other surveillance devices that are trained on the unsuspecting public, should also be inadmissable as evidence, and those who run them should be arrested, and convicted of same.
#11. To: Original_Intent (#3)
#12. To: F.A. Hayek Fan, tommythemadartist, x-15, sonofliberty, eric stratton (#5)
"I don't know where Bin Laden is. I truly am not that concerned about him"
George W, Bush, 3/13/02 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html
#13. To: Artisan (#12)
#14. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#10)
"I don't know where Bin Laden is. I truly am not that concerned about him"
George W, Bush, 3/13/02 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html
#15. To: Artisan (#12)
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest