The right of citizens to videotape police

Subject: The right of citizens to videotape police Tue Nov 08, 2011 4:48 am

Actions against citizen videographers go against not just the Constitution but good public policy. Without a videotape, Rodney King would have been just another guy with a prior record claiming abuse.

The right of citizens to videotape police 65926522

Twenty years ago, as Rodney King was beaten by Los Angeles police officers, a private citizen in a nearby apartment turned on his video camera. Largely because of that tape, four officers were criminally charged. In July, a homeless schizophrenic man died after a police beating in Fullerton. Audio from a cellphone video caught Kelly Thomas' cries for his father and helped force an investigation that resulted in a first-degree murder charge against one police officer.

The increasing availability of cellphones and video cameras has fundamentally changed police abuse cases, creating vital evidence in cases that were once dismissed as matters of conflicting accounts between officers and citizens. With that change, however, has come a backlash from officers who, despite court rulings upholding the right of citizens to tape police in public, have been threatening or arresting people for the "crime" of recording them. In many states, prosecutors have fought to support such claims and put citizens in jail for videotaping officers, even in cases of police abuse.

In New York this year, Emily Good was arrested after videotaping the arrest of a man at a traffic stop in Rochester. Good was filming from her frontyard; an officer is heard saying to her, "I don't feel safe with you standing behind me, so I'm going to ask you to go into your house." When she continued to film, the officer said, "You seem very anti-police," and arrested her.

DOCUMENT: 1st Circuit Court decision: Citizens' right to record

In Illinois last month, Brad Williams filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department because, he said, he was beaten by police in response to his filming an officer holding and dragging a man down the street from inside a moving squad car. Ironically, Chicago has rejected complaints about the installation of thousands of cameras in the city that film citizens in public for use in prosecutions.

In Maryland in July, Anthony Graber got a well-deserved speeding ticket, but his real mistake was posting footage from his motorcycle helmet-cam on YouTube. It showed an irate off-duty, out-of-uniform officer pulling him over with his gun drawn. Prosecutors obtained a grand jury indictment against Graber on felony wiretap charges, which carry a 16-year prison sentence.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-turley-video-20111108,0,2342191.story?track=lat-pick

The right of citizens to videotape police

The right of citizens to videotape police

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