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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Is it ever legal to physically defend yourself against a police officer? OK. This is a very complicated question. First thing: in most states you have no right to resist false arrest. (There are exceptions, such as Virginia.) In ALL states you have a right to resist false assault. The next huge question is "are you in reasonable fear of losing your life or suffering great bodily injury from the criminal assault in question"? This is the basic standard on the use of deadly force in most states, and probably the most common way that it's phrased. In a lot of the "filming the police" cases, cops are caught on tape using severe force on somebody else, and then they turn on the guy with the camera. Having just seen a major beat-down on somebody else, the "reasonable fear" thing could very well kick in. In some states you have a "duty to retreat" (if you can). If the threat involves guns and there's no cover, there's generally no duty to retreat. (As a practical matter, all too often you can add "unless you're a minority" to the end of that...) The next really huge "gotcha" is "can you prove it"? And that's usually the stumbling block. Tech is going to solve this one eventually...an early example of the tech involved is: That's roughly "gen 1" of the on-body camera setups...head-mounted so it points where you look, which is good. Once that gets to about "gen 3" and is no longer visible except with a detailed exam of your glasses (off your face), the world of "copwatching" will change dramatically and for the better. At some point the tech will be compact enough to have a role in ending abuse within prisons... There have been several incidents recorded at Carlos Miller's "Photography Is Not A Crime" blog where cops reached for guns to threaten people who were filming them. In many of these cases the threat was clear enough that shooting the cops in question would be legal, and assuming you win the resulting gunfight and retain control of the video the people involves at least should have been OK in court. Right now, my "copwatcher" setup involves a 4G Android cellphone rigged in my vest pocket to poke out and up so that the camera is barely exposed to view. I have a homebrew leather holder in there that raises it and tilts it to where I need it. I can live-stream the video to Sweden via the bambuser app. I plan to add a Looxcie as soon as I can, transmit the video via bluetooth to the phone and then "up and out" that way. I'm also one of those sorts who carries a gun daily, and I live in a state where the legal right to film in basically all cases is unquestioned (Arizona). Poster Comment: Check out the weblink to the mini-cams!! Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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