Why you should go to jail for videotaping police officers
reason.com
reason.com
"The only person doing any harassing here is Mr. Allison, who was harassing our public officials with his tape recorder," Wiseman says. "They may have problems with some bad police officers in some of your urban areas. But we don’t have those problems around here. All of our cops around here are good cops. This is a small town. Everyone knows everyone. If we had a bad police officer here, we’d know about it, I’d know about it, and he’d be out. There’s just no reason for anyone to feel they need to record police officers in Crawford County."
And that's exactly why it is neccessary to tape them
Respect and trust aren't the same. You can not trust someone and still be polite. You can not trust and cooperate.
Because they just told us to.
Didn't you read him telling us they are all good cops and we should trust them?
Some of the things that went on in DC and Baltimore (I personally witnessed police breaking traffic laws more than once in Baltimore) severely undermined my faith and trust in the police.
My personal rule: As soon as any official says that about their deparment one should assume the opposite and suspect, corruption and abuse of power and authority.
Why not? I check a lot of my civil rights at the door when a police officer pulls me over.
Slightly more seriously, check this out:
“There’s no chain of custody with these videos,” Pasco says. “How do you know the video hasn’t been edited? How do we know what’s in the video hasn’t been taken out of context? With dashboard cameras or police security video, the evidence is in the hands of law enforcement the entire time, so it’s admissible under the rules of evidence. That’s not the case with these cell phone videos.”
Did he really say that with a straight face?
Now, what it does do is provide an opening for arguments that that evidence has been tampered with. That claim must then be dealt with, but there are ways of doing that. There are experts that are precisely employed to determine to a high degree of accuracy (though not certainy) whether such things have been modified since their point of creation.
Moreover, the exisence of a chain of custody does not absolutely prove it was not tampered with, it can certainly help in that you know who was accountable if it was modified at certain points of time but that is not the same.
These three individuals are really sounding like parodies of themselves, essentially claiming that only evidence they collect is admissible. By that standard, defense attorneys in criminal cases should never be allowed to submit evidence, because anything not coming from the police could be fake. In any case, the court is the trier of fact, not the DA or the officer on the street.
Police officers and prosecutors do a necessary, but often unpleasant and dangerous job, with a complex mix of responsibilities and liabilities. I don't like to stereotype them any more than I do poor people or even criminals. But when they offer such nakedly self-serving arguments designed to bypass critical thinking, I want to see them out on their ass ASAP - it does a disservice to all the dedicated individuals who serve with integrity.
Chain of custody simply means knowing who had control over a piece of evidence and when. It comes in to play when someone in a trial claims that a piece of evidence does not match reality and may have been tampered with. In a criminal trial, deciding the credibility of evidence is generally a matter for the jury. In a non-criminal complaint about an officer, it's a matter for the officer's supervisor. In no case that I am aware of is it illegal to collect evidence because the chain of custody may be difficult or impossible to determine.
Privacy for third parties is a bit more tricky. I think it might be a good idea to have some restrictions on distributing videos of police encounters with other people without permission from those people (but not the on-duty police officers involved) or obscuring their identities. Many states already have rules against recording conversations without permission, and an exemption for recording police officers wouldn't necessarily apply to recording interactions between a police officer and a third party, so this may be a non-issue in certain debates.
"With dashboard cameras or police security video, the evidence is in the hands of law enforcement the entire time, so it’s admissible under the rules of evidence."
Never mind that dashboard video cameras have an amazing rate of "forgotten tapes" whenever the actions of police come into question.
I suppose that a person could reply that I only have anecdotal evidence of that. However, the point illustrated by the anecdote is that in these circumstances the role of law enforcement as a neutral party is in question.
I often wonder if public officials have some kind of special newspeak training or do they just internalize the rules implicitly as part of their job.
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-i...
Because they have positions that grant them so much power, they need some serious checks and balances.
Citizen monitoring seems like an obvious and fair system.
Why would an on-duty officer that is in the act of making an arrest need to have his words and actions protected by privacy laws? We are not talking about when he is in locker room bullshitting with other cops.
If they do not like it, do not be law enforcement.
That should sort out the honest ones from the dishonest rather quickly.
Any cop can make your life living hell in a heartbeat. Anyone who is against recording has just never been on the wrong side of a cop. You have ZERO chance.
Seriously, though, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in one's workplace. Once you cross the threshold of your office, you check in a lot of rights at the door. You may be videotaped and your communications may be eavesdropped on.
What makes these public officials special?
Does that apply to security cameras?
Private cameras, or those put there by government officials?
A printed notification at the entrance of a property or event is the norm, and legally sufficient. In commercial video/TV production posting them is a standard pre-show requirement, to avoid lawsuits from people claiming their right of publicity was infringed. The current mania for blurring out logos and anything even vaguely offensive on TV is to avoid frivolous but legally expensive lawsuit threats from brandholders or obscenity investigations from the FCC, which can be triggered by as few as 50 complaints.
This answer (how should citizens know whether a recording is protected or will result in felony charges?) from Maryland's state attorney seems most relevant:
"I don’t have any hard and fast rule I can give you,"
If that's the case, this is bad law/bad policy.