Freeze! You’re on camera.
I am by default skeptical of all government authority, and any trust or justification of government power most often carries the burden of proof. No where is this more evident than with police force. The tendency of state legislatures to pass nanny-state laws that infringe upon civil liberties irks me in part because the duty of enforcing those laws typically falls to cops whose rate of pompousness and arrogance far outpaces that of the rest of the population.
One obvious check upon power-hungry, out-of-control cops is to simply film their actions. If a cop mouths off to you, treats you with disrespect or, worse, assaults you in some way, the ability to immediately post these things to YouTube would be a great equalizer. Yet as Radley Balko writes in his latest Fox News column, a slew of people have been arrested for simply filming police officers while on duty.
The amateur photographers are most often prosecuted under wiretapping laws which prohibits the intentional interception or recording of anyone’s oral conversation without their consent. Cops are public servants and paid on the public dime. But thanks to wiretapping laws they are able to avoid public scrutiny.
These wiretapping laws apparently don’t exist in Mokwa, Missouri. There the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri is handing out cameras in the hope of deterring police abuse.
7 Responses to “Freeze! You’re on camera.”
I think I understand the instinct for a cop–even a good one–to not like being on camera while doing their job. But I absolutely agree with Balko here that it should be allowed. If they’re doing their job to serve and protect, they shouldn’t need to worry about being videotaped.
Cameras? Wiretapping laws? Here in NYC even a prominent lawyer and his wife can get their butts arrested for asking the NYPD why they are busy kicking a guy while he’s down on the ground handcuffed in a McDonald’s parking lot.
The charges filed against him were obstructing governmental administration, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. His wife was charged with disorderly conduct.
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=71023
“If they’re doing their job to serve and protect, they shouldn’t need to worry about being videotaped.”
Maybe in a one horse town. If you live anywhere where the scourge of drugs (talking heroin, meth, and crack, not a 18 year old with a doobie) has invaded your city, and know anything about what police officers have to do to combat this problem, you might understand why an officer might get nervous about this. Having seen firsthand the presence of videos of police officers in the homes of drug dealers, I understand. One day this officer is working his beat, the next he has to do undercover surveillance or even go undercover to get inside these drug rings. Letting the dealers have video of current police officers could be fatal to an officer in this situation. Again, this scenario has actually occurred. And in at least one of the instances referred to in Balko’s article (the Philadelphia student) I would hope people would understand why the police would be nervous about this.
Like many of Balko’s arguments, they only work in a fantasy world where amoral criminals are not actively seeking to destroy our uniformed officers.
Anonymous’ same protections for undercover cops would then get extended to beat cops illegally cutting thu bike locks and chains and giving the bikes away to random passers-by, and then arrest the neighborhood guy who captures it all on his cell phone (happened in NYC’s East Village recently).
Balko has it exactly correct. Police brass will have to rethink how/where they recruit undercover cops.
JohnS,
That’s interesting. What part was illegal–cutting the locks or giving the bikes away? Were the bikes locked to bike racks or private property? Because if they were locked to street signs, etc., I can understand they would be removed and impounded (though giving them away to random passers-by is still wrong).
Eric
The local community board in the East Village had received complaints about a problem with bikes in the neighborhood left chained up outside on the street for long periods of time (mostly vandalized bikes left for dead by their owners). In that neighborhood, bikes are usually chained to iron fences in front of apartment buildings. You may see some bike racks because of the large numbers of bicyclists there, and the small apartments. Street signs/parking meters are never a good idea for obvious reasons… A solution was worked out among the 9th precinct, the board, and a biking group whereby if there were complaints about a particular bike, cops from the 9th precinct would affix a notice to the bike in question, and thje owner would then have two weeks to move it. If It wasn’t moved the cops would then cut the chain, and the bike would would be confiscated and held for a particular amount of time until the owner claimed it. After that, I don’t know what was supposed to happen to the bike. (I assume it would be auctioned off).
In this case, cops from the 9th descended en masse on 6th St (I think it was 6th) and started cutting the locks and chains on ALL the bikes on that street. The bikes were then given away — on the spot — to passers-by who claimed to be the owners, without offering proof. That is not legal, and the guy from the block who caught it all on his cell phone was arrested.
Correction: My memory served me fairly well. Actually, two people were arrested, a guy for videotaping it all, and a nurse who asked why he was being arrested.
It seems some of the bikes WERE locked to city property (and some were locked to D.O.T. bike racks). However, the 9ths bike program states: “The 9th Precinct program recognizes the chronic bike rack shortage, allowing people to park their bikes at City-owned street fixtures and seeking only to remove bikes that are clearly abandoned, blocking the sidewalk or locked to a tree.”
http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:EyfjQnhqrrUJ:gothamist.com/2007/06/04/dude_wheres_my.php+9th+precinct,+bikes,+cut+locks&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&ie=UTF-8