Recording a stranger in public is not a civilized thing to do. Then again, stopping someone and questioning them under the threat of arrest while carrying a gun and a big club is not a civilized thing to do either.
So, recording — on video or audio — a police officer conducting his official duties in public strikes me as perfectly acceptable behavior. Many cops and prosecutors don’t seem to think so.
Glenn Reynolds has an excellent column today on the phenomenon of people being prosecuted for recording police. The most outrageous case involved a woman who accused a cop of groping her and propositioning her when he came to see her on a domestic violence call. When internal affairs tried to talk her out of pressing charges, she recorded it. For that, she was charged with wiretapping.
Radley Balko has written plenty on this topic, including prosecutions based on entirely fictitious laws.
But on Twitter, NYPD Sergeant Marty Browne points me to this op-ed in American Cop magazine:
Should we ever expect to have a right to privacy when we’re in public? I don’t think so; cops are public employees. We can record comments and statements made by suspects/arrestees sitting in the back of our police cars where there’s no expectation of privacy. Thus, there should be an even lower standard of privacy outside the police car. We routinely record and surveil citizens without their permission, so why should there be a separate set of rules regarding them recording or filming us? If a bad guy doesn’t have to consent to being filmed, cops shouldn’t either.
Amen
