Why you should go to jail for videotaping police officers

http://reason.com/archives/2010/08/09/police-officers-dont-check-the

by cwan • 16 years ago

34 39 16 years ago

yread• 16 years ago

Best bit: Crawford County State’s Attorney Tom Wiseman is currently bringing five felony charges against Michael Allison...who recorded police officers and other public officials he thought were harassing him...He faces up to 75 years in prison for the recordings... Given the deference law enforcement officials get from courts and prosecutors, how can a citizen who feels he’s being harassed or treated unfairly by law enforcement protect himself?

"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

GiraffeNecktie• 16 years ago

I also liked "At some point, we have to put some faith and trust in our authority figures."

epochwolf• 16 years ago

Why do we need to put faith and trust in authority figures?

Respect and trust aren't the same. You can not trust someone and still be polite. You can not trust and cooperate.

Tamerlin2• 16 years ago

Naturally, he neglects the other side of the coin, which is that our authority figures need to EARN that trust and faith -- he just assumes that if someone becomes a cop, they deserve it.

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.

robobenjie• 16 years ago

I donno, protecting cops sure seems double-plus good to me.

rdtsc5• 16 years ago

> But we don’t have those problems around here. All of our cops around here are good cops. ... no reason for anyone to feel they need to record police officers in Crawford County.

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.

byoung23• 16 years ago

Unlike Maryland, the law in Illnios is much clearer. It is illegal to record anyone in public without their consent.

Does that apply to security cameras?

Yzupnick• 16 years ago

I know in NY there must be some sort of sign that informs people that there are security cameras watching. I assume it is the same in Illinois

byoung23• 16 years ago

So I should simply inform the police that I am videotaping them, but that I am not recording any audio. By continuing to arrest me, they are giving their consent to being recorded.

roel_v• 16 years ago

"Does that apply to security cameras?"

Private cameras, or those put there by government officials?

rdtsc5• 16 years ago

There is an exception: unless you are large enough corporation or you are the state. It works rather well...

fr0sty• 16 years ago

only if there is an audio recording being made.

malabar• 16 years ago

If we need to have camera's to protect court houses, government buildings and banks for security reasons, then it would seem that a citizen has the right to videotape any event they are involved in if they so choose. If we do not get asked our permission to be videotaped when I enter a shopping mall, then I should not have to ask anyone's permission if I am on a public road and some cop is yelling and waving a gun.

dagw• 16 years ago

Most States have laws requiring the mall have some sort of sign at the entrance warning you that you will be videotaped. That sign is asking your permission and by walking passed that sign and entering the mall you have granted them permission to tape you.

rdtsc5• 16 years ago

Should you just put signs on the back of your vehicle, and on your t-shirt that say by talking to you others implicitly grant their permission to be videtaped?

anigbrowl2• 16 years ago

The above should not be downvoted. True, a sign is not the same as a verbal request for permission, but in general the display or frontage of a store is an invitation to examine the goods inside, and by crossing the threshold you are accepting that invitation - and by extension, the terms and conditions set by the owner of the private property you are stepping into.

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.

adolph3• 16 years ago

The self-credulity of the interviewees is amazing. Here is Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police:

"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.

rdtsc5• 16 years ago

> The self-credulity of the interviewees is amazing.

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.

eli2• 16 years ago

Public officials tasked with speaking to the public are certainly trained for that

adolph3• 16 years ago

I suppose that with Pasco, he is "executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police," which I guess is a union boss kind of job--it is certainly part of his job to advocate on the part of police.

dpritchett• 16 years ago

"The key here is that only Message 1 is comprehensible to the truly clueless; this is what makes for plausible deniability. You cannot prove that the other messages were exchanged. Losers can partially understand, but not speak Powertalk. To them, Powertalk is a spectator sport."

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/11/11/the-gervais-principle-i...

mquander2• 16 years ago

"Police Officers Don't Check Their Civil Rights at the Station House Door."

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?

byoung23• 16 years ago

Similarly, when you go to work, you check some more of your civil rights at the door. For example, free speech is limited (e.g. no dirty jokes, because of sexual harassment claims).

eli2• 16 years ago

Lack of chain of custody seems like a plausible (though hardly airtight) argument for excluding a tape from evidence at a trial. Not for arresting the person holding the camera.

mquander2• 16 years ago

I agree -- I sacrificed clarity for flippancy. I meant to imply that the idea that police videos are sacrosanct because they have chain of custody is laughable. The police are the parties with the greatest motive to doctor the videos, and how many times have you heard that important video evidence of alleged police brutality is "missing" or "lost?" Pretty damn often.

timwiseman• 16 years ago

I am not a lawyer, so if anyone has legal expertise please correct me, but I do not think lack of chain of custody is at all a reason to exclude any form of evidence.

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.

anigbrowl2• 16 years ago

Yes, somewhat. It's pretty easy to tell if something has been edited. All but the most expensive professional cameras compress the video they record and editing leaves 'fingerprints' in the file. On cheaper cameras like cellphones, the lens is so cheap and compression so brutal that the images are pretty noisy, and the noise is actually an aid in this because sudden discontinuities are a giveaway that something has been doctored.

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.

Zak• 16 years ago

I nearly went in to law enforcement, and the arguments made by police and prosecutors in this article sound like bullshit to me. The strongest arguments, in my opinion are the lack of a chain of custody, and privacy for third-parties.

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.

ck2• 16 years ago

Not only should all law enforcement be recorded, they should be the ones required to record at all times while on the clock.

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.

iterationx• 16 years ago

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

scelerat• 16 years ago

Does anyone know of cases where photo-/videographers are facing charges for recording police officers performing their duty within the bounds of professionalism, or do all these cases involve some question of police conduct?

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.

Tamerlin2• 16 years ago

If the police can't handle being photographed or recorded in public places, then they can't be trusted.

copenja• 16 years ago

Cops are human, as we all are. And as humans they have the same flaws that everyone else has.

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.

georgecmu• 16 years ago

If these police officers have nothing to hide, then they should have nothing to worry about.

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?

jmcentire• 16 years ago

This isn't a matter of police officers surrendering rights. It's a matter of whether or not they get special rights to privacy. If I can be recorded with video or audio, so can they. If they can have video/audio recordings in their vehicles to record the traffic stop or other encounters, so can I.

earl• 16 years ago

What a shock. Authoritarian glibertarians love them some authoritarian assholes. It of course helps that reason is white and male so they're rarely on the shit end of the nightclub.

hc• 16 years ago

I can tell you did a great job reading the article before you commented on it

Why you should go to jail for videotaping police officers

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