Washington, D.C. Police Affirm Citizens' Right To Record Police Officers 210
dcsmith writes "Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier says, 'A bystander has the same right to take photographs or make recordings as a member of the media,' and backs it up with a General Order to her Department. Quoting: The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) recognizes that members of the general public have a First Amendment right to video record, photograph, and/or audio record MPD members while MPD members are conducting official business or while acting in an official capacity in any public space, unless such recordings interfere with police activity.'"
Rights mean nothing if they can be infringed (Score:4, Interesting)
Nowadays we're all media.
We're all bloggers.
And we can upload pics and vids and stream them around the world.
How about we just remove the rights of Corporate Media from reporting, instead of Citizens?
Corporations aren't People.
Police are not supposed to have any special power. (Score:5, Interesting)
Police are supposed to have the same rights as citizens. They are just more highly trained in the area of law enforcement. Citizens and police should be held to the same standards of conduct. In Florida for instance a police officer out of his jurisdiction has the same rights as a citizen to make arrests. They can hold the suspect until the sheriff arrives to take the person into custody. When the case gets to trial you have to show up. If you break the law during the arrest you can be sued as well. Every move police make should be filmed since they are supposed to be experts.
For the majority of posters (who didn't RTFA) (Score:5, Interesting)
It's worth noting that this order is part and parcel of a lawsuit settlement that the MPD reached with someone who was victimized for recording the police at a traffic stop. This order isn't entirely being done spontaneously because the MPD are good little fonzies. I like Chief Lanier, a lot...but for the most part the MPD remain a group of heavily-armed monkeys, most of whom seem to have a racial issue with whatever races they don't belong to. A white officer recently was suspended for stating...openly, to fellow officers...that he would shoot Michelle Obama. And I can state plainly that I've gotten a lot of trouble from non-white officers, personally. It's one of the reasons I moved from DC to a nearby suburb.
Re:Loophole (Score:3, Interesting)
yeah, DC cops have never been keen on being filmed if it would remotely portray them in a negative light. I watched them perform an illegal search and while trying to pull out my camera I was threatened with jail time for "loitering" and they weren't remotely kind about it either; intimidation via threats of violence is how I would refer to it.
First amendment? (Score:3, Interesting)
Rather annoying that it's called a "first amendment" right. It has nothing to do with the first amendment. If anything, the ninth amendment is a better justification. The very best justification is that there is no law against it.
Re:Loophole (Score:2, Interesting)
Police dogs may have to pass such tests during training, but police officers give their dogs a signal to get "excited" when they want to use it as a pretense for a search. It doesn't take much to get a dog excited. "get em boy" under your breath or even just the tone of voice when deploying them will trigger the response and willful ignorance can mistake that for the correct response. Most dogs will react to food smells too and the cop can "mistake" that for a positive detection of drugs. All they have to do is FIND drugs and it will be justified. It's legal for a police dog to walk around the outside of your vehicle and smell, for example.
You're absolutely right though. They'll milk the shit out of that "interference" loophole. It's what they do.
Re:Police are not supposed to have any special pow (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't arrest someone with the same leeway given to cops
In the state whose laws I know best (Utah) the only additional arrest power given to police is the authority to use deadly force to stop a fleeing felony suspect. Other than that, it's identical.
I can't get a warrant to bust down someone's door.
Technically, you can, if you can get a judge to give you one. In fact, prior to the advent of large organized police forces, nearly all warrants were served by private citizens, and AFAIK the law hasn't changed -- though practice clearly has, and in practice it's unlikely any judge would issue you a warrant.
I can't pull a car over for speeding.
Sure you can, legally. As a practical matter you'd have a hard time doing it without red and blue flashing lights, and there are laws against putting those on your vehicle. I'd bet that if you put yellow flashing lights on, though, you could successfully convince many people to pull over. After that you couldn't issue a citation, but you could get the driver's information and take it to the relevant prosecutor and see if you can convince him to issue a court summons on the strength of the evidence you can provide (mostly, your testimony, same as a police officer).
Again, this isn't a difference in real authority, it's a difference in common practice and who's likely to actually be listened to.
I can't own certain weapons.
You can own anything a police officer can own himself. There are some weapons a police department can own that you cannot, but none that police departments commonly issue. You could, for example, own a fully-automatic M-16 (per federal law, anyway; a few states are more restrictive). It'd cost you $20K+, due to the 1986 law restricting civilian ownership of full-auto firearms to those that were already in civilian hands then (fixed supply and growing demand means the price goes up), and it would take a few months of doing paperwork and waiting, but you could do it if you're not a felon or otherwise legally disqualified due to your own record.
We want law enforcement officers to have an edge over the regular civilians, because that means they'll also have an edge over criminals.
I don't agree that there's any significant "edge" we can give to officers that doesn't serve the same goals in the hands of law-abiding citizens. Granted that citizens rarely have need of them, and that it's better to let the police do their jobs wherever possible, but there are rare circumstances in which it is useful for citizens to exercise their police powers, and in general it's better for society if police don't have a special status in the eyes of the law. It's hard enough to keep them from exceeding their authority even without that.
Re:Loophole (Score:5, Interesting)
A Law Enforcement Officer cannot enforce the Law if they do not know what the Law is.
Any officer who doesn't know the law already shouldn't be in uniform.
And, yes, I'm totally cool with requiring a law degree before you can wear a uniform. Think about how awesome it would be to have police officers worthy of the badge for a change.
Re:Loophole (Score:4, Interesting)
A bought jury? That's just hilarious.
I love how very single court decision that groupthink on slashdot doesn't agree with simply *must* be the result of corruption, bought judges or juries...
I don't believe you followed the case any closer than the media reported it.
The police fought this for 2+ years (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone living in DC, I see the summary fails to mention a few things: 1) This was the result of a class action lawsuit settlement, not police wanting to respect peoples' rights, 2) police fought this lawsuit for 2+ years as is common when they're caught oppressing people's constitutional rights (Google "DC Trinidad Checkpoints" or "DC pershing park MPD"), and 3) this has always been legal, but the police have commonly violated our rights- we shouldn't give them a cookie for simply following the law.
Re:Loophole (Score:5, Interesting)