Videotaping to police from your front yard is apparently illegal

[Berkut]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/22/emily-good-arrested-videotaping-police-rochester_n_882122.html

Watch the video. It is rather astounding.

[Berkut]

What kind of bothers me about this (Well, one thing anyway - there are plenty of things to be bothered about) is that she is going to go into court, and it is going to be thrown out. No DA is going to touch this, I am guessing.

But is that it? Because exercising the power to arrest when in fact the law does not support that use of the power should be a pretty fucking big deal, I think. I mean, if I went and grabbed someone and hauled them off against their will and locked them up somewhere for a few hours even, I would go to jail for a rather long time. That is a pretty serious crime.

I am not suggesting that this police officer needs to be arrested - rather I suspect this is a training and culture issue. But if this is as bad as it looks, then there is a very serious systemic problem here. We have a police officer, and where there is one, there is almost certainly more, who simply does not understand his role in enforcing the law and how to use the rather considerable power that has been granted to him.

And for everyone we have video of, how many instances of the police abusing their power do we NOT see? And I am not even talking about the obvious, cop beating someone up or something, *major* abuses, but more the little things. Police not being entirely honest in their reports. Demanding that people do things they have no power to demand. Constructing probable cause. Etc., etc.

[ulmont]

No DA is going to touch this, I am guessing.

Possibly not in New York.  But people get arrested for videotaping the police all the time.

Carlos Miller, a Miami journalist who runs the blog "Photography Is Not a Crime," said he has documented about 10 arrests since he started keeping track in 2007 [through July 2010]. Miller himself has been arrested twice for photographing the police. He won one case on appeal, he said, while the other was thrown out after the officer twice failed to appear in court.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/TheLaw/videotaping-cops-arrest/story?id=11179076
http://www.pixiq.com/contributors/248

[Berkut]

Yeah, the legal case in New York seems very cut and dried - the officer has no case at all. He didn't even arrest her for the typical bullshit charge of wiretapping, which is what is normally used in these cases.

Which just doesn't even pass the most basic of sanity checks, btw - the claim that videoing a police officer is "wiretapping" since the police officer has not consented. If that is illegal, does that mean that someone videoing a baseball game is "wiretapping" unless they get permission from every single player, spectator, person walking by? I mean really, how could that ever go anywhere?

Of course, for every time the police actually arrest someone, how many times have they successfully intimidated someone into stopping their recording by simply threatening to arrest them, or even just ordering them to stop, when they have no legal power to do that?

[ulmont]

Which just doesn't even pass the most basic of sanity checks, btw - the claim that videoing a police officer is "wiretapping" since the police officer has not consented. If that is illegal, does that mean that someone videoing a baseball game is "wiretapping" unless they get permission from every single player, spectator, person walking by? I mean really, how could that ever go anywhere?

In most (could be all, but damned if I'm going to do the research) cases, you have to be secretly recording to qualify as wiretapping (which the person was in the 2006 Massachussetts case).  So if you're obviously holding up your video camera, no problem.

Of course, for every time the police actually arrest someone, how many times have they successfully intimidated someone into stopping their recording by simply threatening to arrest them, or even just ordering them to stop, when they have no legal power to do that?

37.

[Slargos]

Police are obviously going to have to learn to do their jobs in an environment where there will always be cameras around and little cunts more than willing to use them in order to trip the officers up on some technicality.

If you're always going to be by the book, you'll never get anything done as we have frequently learned from watching cop shows.

You're going to suspend a good cop for tripping on vicodin on the job? I don't think so. He needs to be out there, busting heads and taking down colombian drug lords.

[grumbler]

Of course, for every time the police actually arrest someone, how many times have they successfully intimidated someone into stopping their recording by simply threatening to arrest them, or even just ordering them to stop, when they have no legal power to do that?

Recording, or doing any number of other perfectly legal things that a given cop doesn't like.  Unfortunately, this is the kind of shit that goes along with having a police force; some officers are simply not going to be able to resist abusing their authority in this way - the very people attracted to the job are often attracted because it will give them so much power.  I don't think it is avoidable unless you want to pay cops enough that you can afford to be hyper-choosey about whom you take.

[Slargos]

the very people attracted to the job are often attracted because it will give them so much power.

You crack me up.

Go on. Give me a source for this claim.

[Capetan Mihali]

Is videotaping parole officers (or probation officers, can't remember which one Strix is) a crime?   

[Eddie Teach]

You crack me up.

Go on. Give me a source for this claim.

He can't give you a source, because it's simple common sense.

[Slargos]

You crack me up.

Go on. Give me a source for this claim.

He can't give you a source, because it's simple common sense.

I guess we can add another to the list in Marty's dogma thread.

"It is known."

[Eddie Teach]

People don't generally use a d100 when choosing a career. /shrug

[Slargos]

People don't generally use a d100 when choosing a career. /shrug

While we're playing this game, did you know that people often choose to be medical doctors due to the easy access to narcotics?

[Eddie Teach]

It happens.

[Slargos]

Americans often join the army because they want to stack people into naked pyramids.

Jews often join the army just to be allowed to murder arabs without repercussion.