NYPD barred from telling people they can't film in precinct stations

https://hellgatenyc.com/you-can-now-film-in-nypd-precincts-thanks-to-this-youtuber

by danso • 3 years ago

260 113 3 years ago

NickC25• 3 years ago

Good.

Barring any attempts to hinder a police investigation or crime scene, the right to record law passed in NY should be absolute.

I see no reason why it's a bad thing to keep law enforcement honest and make sure their actions are legal and above board....because otherwise, their mistakes and ignorance of the law can cost the public money.

It also allows the good folks within police departments to have a straightforward way to root out the bad folks and the corruption that a police union might traditionally try to cover up. If I were a cop and I knew one of my coworkers was a bad apple, and might screw things up for me, knowing that they are getting recorded on the job would give me peace of mind.

SketchySeaBeast2• 3 years ago

The only reason I see is if it captured citizens that don't want the fact that they were in a NYPD Precinct livestreamed.

stronglikedan2• 3 years ago

It's a public place. If a separate law gave them a right to privacy then the police have to make accommodations to bring them into the station privately, like through a back door.

JackFr2• 3 years ago

What about crime victims?

themaninthedark2• 3 years ago

What if the mob is paying people to film inside the Precinct?

JohnFen10• 3 years ago

I get the argument. This is a tough problem, though, because someone recording in a police building can easily prevent citizens from conducting their business in there. I know that if I saw some random person recording in the building (or in other sensitive places), I wouldn't set foot in there. I doubt I'm the only one. Particularly if someone is going in there to deal with an issue where they don't want others to know they're going to the police.

MrDrMcCoy2• 3 years ago

I'm still in favor of absolute recording rights despite all that. You're quite right to point out chilling effects of active recording, but you have to also consider that bad police behavior is chilling in and of itself. People don't want to make reports when the police might make things worse or neglect things they're supposed to help with. Recording can help with that and will become less common as bad police are held to better account. Another thing that can balance that would be for police stations to have a reception desk with a transparent, soundproof box for citizens to make reports with some privacy and safety regardless of recording.

JackFr2• 3 years ago

Should other people in a police station have any expectation of privacy? Victims of crimes? People who've been arrested?

Kab1r• 3 years ago

People who have been arrested don't usually just hang out in the lobby. There is no expectation of privacy in any public space

Lord-Jobo• 3 years ago

You are legally allowed to, but doing so may result in excessive bodily harm and weeks of incarceration, with low or zero repercussions for the police that do it to you. Until Qualified Immunity is uprooted, these lawsuits really wont do much to move a needle. Still a good outcome from the courts.

stronglikedan2• 3 years ago

may result in excessive bodily harm and weeks of incarceration

It won't, because that's exactly what this law prevents.

woodruffw2• 3 years ago

The law has historically not been a significant concern for the NYPD.

Put another way: this is a "win" in the sense that there's judicial recognition of the problem, but attempting to test this law is still going to get you harassed and potentially arrested. The question then becomes whether 24+ hours in jail is worth ultimately being vindicated in court.

Compare recent attempts to get the NYPD to stop parking illegally[1][2].

[1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/01/23/tipster-sues-nypd-for...

[2] https://hellgatenyc.com/nypd-try-to-illegally-park-then-tick...

Centigonal• 3 years ago

But... who enforces that law?

contravariant• 3 years ago

You mean like the constitution and two other laws prevented it?

mangosteenjuice• 3 years ago

https://signalscv.com/2023/11/lasd-statement-forthcoming-on-...

Do you think anyone is going to be held responsible for this?

thrdbndndn• 3 years ago

Just curious, how does the law distinguish "public" part of a public place, and "private" part of it like staff's rooms, evidence rooms etc?

LegitShady4• 3 years ago

signs, locked doors, public ability to go into an area. Generally publicly accessible foyers, hallways, are ok.

NoMoreNicksLeft• 3 years ago

Statutory law rarely spells that out, leaving it to judges and case law. My guess is that judges would be pragmatic in such matters, and in those parts of the building where there is no public interest in allowing video recording, they would disallow it.

Likely, those rooms are off limits to the public anyway. And, if I'm not mistaken, as dumb as the public can be, no one's actually attempted to film in those places (though, with the rise of influencers and Youtube and whatnot, maybe we should just be anticipating the coming flood?).

anonymouskimmer3• 3 years ago

From what I've gathered watching Youtube legal videos, Qualified Immunity doesn't apply when the government officials have been explicitly told by a court that their specific behavior is a violation of a right. With this temporary injunction they have so been told.

wefarrell• 3 years ago

Qualified immunity doesn't apply when the officer clearly violates a constitutional right. Unfortunately the article says:

Judge Jessica Clarke, who ordered the injunction last week, ruled that while the First Amendment claim might be a little more complicated, it seems pretty clear that the NYPD violated the state and municipal Right to Record Acts with its policy.

mc32• 3 years ago

In the UK apparently you can’t record past precinct property —which can be just beyond the sidewalk, or if there’s a gate to the parking lot… of if there's police activity on a public street.

There's a guy who goes around challenging them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5G2mL_7BMg

resters2• 3 years ago

One of the best things about Youtube (and now TikTok) is the growing popularity of videos that reveal the shocking extent of police misconduct.

Thanks to camera phones we have all become outraged at the way may police treat black people, and I credit camera phones as the driving force behind the social movement now known as BLM.

But the creators on TikTok and YouTube who focus on police misconduct are going beyond BLM and focusing on the routine, institutionalized bullying of citizens of all ages, races, etc.

We should all be very outraged by this, and we should all rally to support these creators, BLM, etc.

This is what the internet was supposed to give us. Better transparency into government misconduct, and defense against oppression committed against citizens by government.

SamoyedFurFluff• 3 years ago

The only problem is there’s no step in social media to activate people to put pressure on the government to reduce police abuse. I want stuff like cops who beat their significant others taken off the force. Cops sent to jail if they rape or sexually assault their detainees. I want a reversion to the legal precedent that cops have no duty to defend civilians from crime. But there’s no way to do this without large popular action,.

Hell even with BLM mass protests, no city actually defunded the police!

nxm• 3 years ago

Cops do not get sent to jail if they rape or sexually assault their detainees?

CuriousCosmic2• 3 years ago

So do direct action. Go join an org and demonstrate. That's the only way change happens.

resters2• 3 years ago

I strongly agree, what you are describing is what is needed.

I'm also concerned by the chilling effects we've seen lately on speech, starting with attacks on press freedom by government, but also aided by social media firms cooperating in censorship, and more recently the canceling of people who do things like protest in favor of the Palestinians, etc.

We can observe the extent of status quo social media censorship when we see how much "subversive" but legal and helpful/benign content that is popular on TikTok never got legs on other platforms.

kmeisthax• 3 years ago

There were cities that literally defunded the police. More accurately, they deliberately engineered a crime crisis to discredit police reform activism under the common misunderstanding that "defund the police" means "I want the Purge" and not "stop sending cops out to shoot at homeless people in a Wendy's drive-thru".

The thing about cops getting taken off the force is that it actually happens fairly commonly. The term of art in law enforcement for them is "gypsy[0] cops", because they jump from force to force whenever they do something that attracts media attention. Ironically, they are enabled by literally defunded police departments who are looking for someone they can pay peanuts to go issue traffic tickets all day. The really abusive bullies are their perfect employee, at least until they cause a media stir and have to be fired to save face.

In all these cases, there actually is active pressure from people to reform and it does go to the people that matter. The problem is that those people have a vested interest in keeping policing brutal, and they are also rhetorically slippery. They will actively misinterpret your sloganeering, they will ignore your political writings and pamphlets, and generally seek to embarrass you until you go away.

Less depressingly, I do recall a few cities[1] run by people with their heads on straight that did what the "defund the police" people meant, not what they literally said. And it turns out that, given not-crooked people in power implementing these things faithfully, it does work. The problem is entirely the people at the top making the decisions. What we need is not merely bottom-up pressure, but an explicit democratic mandate - i.e. infiltrating local government with competent politicians favorable to the cause.

Also, maybe we should change the slogan. I vote for "Refund the Police", because it has a double-meaning: send back the violent interventions and fund non-violent programs instead.

[0] Their words, not mine.

For those unaware, in Europe this word is basically the N-word.

[1] Whose names I frustratingly DO NOT REMEMBER

logicalmonster• 3 years ago

I'm glad it's legal to film, particularly when you want to protect yourself when reporting a crime and you fear police reprisal for some reason.

However, I can see some truly asshole-ish behavior resulting from this if the influencers get wind of this decision and they decide to use it to make content. Imagine some Instagrammer gawking at a crime victim on the worst day of their life as they go to the police for help and they sit there smugly saying "It's legal, fr fr bruh, no cap. on god".

EDIT: IDGAF, just curious, why the downvotes?

JohnFen10• 3 years ago

I'm glad it's legal to film, particularly when you want to protect yourself when reporting a crime and you fear police reprisal for some reason.

I am not glad it's legal to film, because of the risk of reprisal from criminals you may be going in to the police department to talk about.

pixxel• 3 years ago

EDIT: IDGAF, just curious, why the downvotes?

gqcwwjtg• 3 years ago

The downvotes, I guess, are because this is kind of a silly concern. Steamers do rude things all the time, but that’s not a good reason to change the law to prevent everyone from doing the thing that seems rude in that case.

iandanforth• 3 years ago

The line between 'annoying ego-trip' and 'act essential for the preservation of freedom and democracy' is surprisingly thin. In many cases it boils down the manners and this guy seems to at least try to be polite in his videos.

intrasight• 3 years ago

Is thin or non-existent. But still VERY glad that these individuals do what they do. It's just one example of what can be done, besides voting, to uphold civil rights.

bdcravens• 3 years ago

they needn't be mutually exclusive

tehwebguy2• 3 years ago

It’s vital and we need people who have the resources to be professionally annoying so that regular people don’t get caught up in this.

austin-cheney• 3 years ago

In most US jurisdictions it is still illegal to film within the confines of a courthouse, unless prior authorized, due to potential privacy violations, but anybody can film on the courthouse steps. These privacy violations may compromise persons charged with crimes, witnesses, jury members, court staff, or plaintiffs. Since the conduct and presence of many people at a courthouse is often involuntarily and yet not part of the public record their privacy concerns, and even potential safety concerns, exceed third-party expression concerns.

CobrastanJorji3• 3 years ago

due to potential privacy violations

This may be a thing people say, but it doesn't make any sense to me. The whole premise of the legal system is that it's public. Closed door procedures are the exception. You can generally walk in to nearly any courtroom, observe the whole thing, write down what everybody said, and publish it, and that's 100% legal. So the "no cameras because it might violate privacy" argument always felt weird to me.

thfuran• 3 years ago

But you can't walk in and demand to see the jurors' IDs.

JohnFen10• 3 years ago

I see a really huge difference between being able to observe something and being able to record the thing. The latter is so much more intrusive than the former that different standards should apply.

LegitShady4• 3 years ago

from what I understand this isn't true. Basically restrictions on filming in courts are judicial orders (and they're basically gods in courthouses) but restrictions on filming in public areas of a courthouse building in general are more complicated. You don't have any expectation of privacy there, and if you did they would need to accommodate it.

notacoward• 3 years ago

Cue the copyrighted music playing 24/7 in NYPD stations in 3, 2, 1, ...

No, I'm not joking. This is a real thing that has happened elsewhere, using copyright law to take down evidence of police misbehavior.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/15/california-p...

chimeracoder• 3 years ago

It's a good ruling, but the NYPD will almost certainly ignore it. The worst part is that any restitution will come in the form of fines, which are paid not by police officers, but by taxpayers.

NYPD officers can break the law with complete impunity, because a third party (the taxpayers) is paying for both their legal fees and any punitive fines.

LegitShady4• 3 years ago

The activist that fought this in court and won will come back and do it again.

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

the public needs something on par with Administrative Law Judges (ALJs)

(for the uninitiated, many state corporations and agencies have judges on staff and inhouse that can hear an agency’s case the same day, getting emergency injunctions done at a moment’s notice.)

it would be cool if this was like a perk with unions or something that wouldnt get too bogged down by the general public immediately, but for the general public.

sys_64738• 3 years ago

NYPD will take you down violently if you show them any lip. No silly regulations will get in their way of running your ID if you catch their gaze.

NYPD barred from telling people they can't film in precinct stations

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