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Comment by logicalmonster | Hacker News Reader

I get this possibility.

The potential problem for the police that I’ve seen is that when there’s an arrest from some resisting person and a sympathetic crowd gathers around to record and voice some words of protest, it’s a chaotic situation. You have people going crazy hooting and hollering and it’s a bad situation to be in even if the cops are 100% doing the right thing by the book. I don’t know what’s the right distance, but I get that cops want to maintain some distance from crowds so they’re not swarmed.

In the end, I don’t know what can be done other than mandating personal recording equipment that can’t physically be switched off.

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> even if the cops are 100% doing the right thing by the book

Public scrutiny is only as issue for those who don't want to be publicly scrutinized. If they are doing the right thing, they should have not problem. They don't want to be scrutinized because they are 100% NOT doing the right thing by the book.

> If they are doing the right thing, they should have not problem.

This sounds awfully close to the bullshit line I've gotten from cops on several different occasions that I've been stopped and questioned, "If you haven't done anything wrong, you wouldn't be nervous."

I don't know if this law is a good one or not, but people (cop or otherwise) will always be uncomfortable when there's a serious imbalance of power.

It seems obvious to me that there should always be a serious imbalance of power away from the police.

That is, they should only feel “comfortable” in any situation and willing to carry out any action if they feel like they have the support of the local citizens (see also the Peelian principles [1]).

In that vein this seems like another regressive step.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles

Ironic, right? Police officers are public servants and this concerns public scrutiny by taxpayers who pay their salaries. I hope you can see the difference between this and what you hear from the cops making you nervous.

> They don't want to be scrutinized because they are 100% NOT doing the right thing by the book.

Do you think a crowd of angry people are experts in proper police procedure? Is the mob ever objective about what they see? Is a crowd going to understand that when somebody is hopped up on meth/cocaine that maybe they’re going to be hella strong and hard to take down and it’s going to take some actual force to stop them?

You’ll have angry people screaming bloody murder regardless of whether or not the police are doing the wrong thing in some cases.

I agree, scrutiny on the police is good, but a mob of people screaming from a few feet away during an arrest isn’t the thing to bring about a safe outcome for anybody and I can easily see that happening and being something that needlessly escalates a situation.

If you see somebody getting arrested and are concerned about their safety, I’d totally say filming the encounter from a safe distance is justified and a good idea, I just don’t think a crowd of people going a few feet away is good.

Downvote me if you want, I don’t care. I’m just recommending what I think would likely be best for a safe police encounter

A specific distance isn't going to prevent a crowd of people from forming; but it does it give police officers the ability to punish/threaten/intimidate witnesses for something that was previously legal.

I hope people don't downvote you for expressing an incorrect opinion, but I do hope that you understand that the purpose of this law is 100% about preventing scrutiny. The angry mob scenario that you describe is fiction used by police officers to prevent you from looking into their job performance.

The responses to my posts in this thread such as "Fuck what they want" only reinforce to me that the proverbial mob isn't capable of being objective about many police actions.

Having a crowd of people trying to scream a few feet away from the cops trying to apprehend a resisting person is a recipe for disaster.

this is dangerously close to saying you don't need privacy if you have nothing to hide.

the public doesn't know the full situation, they don't have police training, the video might be cut or not capture everything the police saw/heard.

police should be held accountable for sure, but we need to let them do their jobs without villainizing everything they do.

>this is dangerously close to saying you don't need privacy if you have nothing to hide.

Yes, philosophically it's different because when the police say it (nothing to hide), they are trying to violate our civil rights through trickery or whatnot. In this context, it's the citizens making sure the government actors (police) are doing what they are legally required / allowed to do. The government run by the people shouldn't be hiding anything from the people, unless it's absolutely necessary. How can a country run democratically if the voters are in the dark and can't find out what's going on?

They should know what's going on, but they need the full story, not just what they perceive to be happening because they don't know the suspect is on drugs, or just robbed a store, or is a violent felon. I don't know how we do that. Body cams on the police sounds good, but even that doesn't capture the full picture I think. Maybe also rotate cops partners occasionally so they don't form bad habits.

Maybe a bad example, but I don't expect non-programmers to be able to review my code. I don't know how we can expect non-police to properly review police behavior unless it's outrageously wrong.

> this is dangerously close to saying you don't need privacy if you have nothing to hide.

We empower police to harass, detain, and use deadly force against the public.

This power has to be counterbalanced by accountability. If the way they use that power cannot stand up against public scrutiny, then they shouldn't have it.

> but we need to let them do their jobs without villainizing everything they do.

We wouldn't do that if they didn't so consistently fail at doing their jobs, or at being held accountable for those failures.

> Public scrutiny is only as issue for those who don't want to be publicly scrutinized.

Scrutiny on police isn't the issue. I'd mandate for cops and cop cars to be equipped with a dozen+ cameras if I could and it should be legal to always record cops in public.

The issue is a loud crowd forming around an already tough situation and making it worse for everybody. Think about what happens if you have 30 people shouting loudly around a guy resisting arrest and jostling for position trying to get a video for their social media and it's a recipe for disaster. Cops can't communicate with each other and the guy being arrested can't hear commands. It makes an already bad situation more stressful and easier to go wrong.

I get wanting to monitor cops (I'm 100% supporting that) but you can't have a crowd forming 5 feet from a tussle shouting and expect things to be improved.

> I get that cops want to maintain some distance from crowds so they’re not swarmed.

Fuck what they want.

ah, so police need access to my pornhub searches, alexa recordings, and phone location becayse if I have nothing to hide I have nothing to fear.

but when the shoe is on the other foot suddenly it's a problem?

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