In Illinois You Can Now Secretly Record the Police

[crossfire]

Supreme Court rejects plea to ban taping of police in Illinois

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from the Cook County state's attorney to allow enforcement of a law prohibiting people from recording police officers on the job

Comments

[tiddlywinks103]

Yyyay! I hope becomes a thing, these police need to be recorded at all times, imo.

[romp]

I think Cop Watch is still going on. I guess I figured it would just become an institution but sounds like it hasn't gone mainstream. Still, decisions like this help.

[coyotesuspect]

This is weirdly timely for me. A friend and I were in downtown Chicago on Saturday and heard a woman screaming for help. A man dressed like a police officer (there was something a bit off about the color of his uniform) was trying to pull her out of the car.

My friend ended up calling 911 because it really did look very suspicious, but they pretty much hung up on her. We just watched until another police officer showed up. :\ I remembered it was illegal to tape a police officer while he was on a job, so we didn't. But now I wish we had.

Also, in cases like this where you think someone is either a) not actually police or b) a police officer abusing their power, who should you call?

[lil_insanity]

That's really scary. :/ I would assume 911 is who you should call.

[romp]

I think you did the right thing. And I don't know how common it is for recording a cop in a public place to be illegal.

Chicago Copwatch has a FB page but the site it links to is dead. Not very active but you might be able to reach someone to ask if anyone knows about this.

Scary thing to see. :/

[shhh_its_s3cr3t]

Good. They need to be checked and be held accountable at all times. Watchers need to be watched. I mean they are paid with our tax dollars why shouldn't we be able to record them? Its not like we want to record them when they're off duty.

[girly123]

Good. It was hypocritical as hell that they'd have all of those stupid police cameras everywhere watching the populace, but we couldn't videotape them beating the shit out of someone without being threatened with jailtime.

[lil_insanity]

Agreed. I think that power-hungry douchebags are drawn to jobs like that, so there are a higher percentage of assholes who are police than who are bank tellers (or whatever).

[betray802]

My father has a friend who thinks 'Badge = Right to shoot everyone I don't like on sight.' He has applied to every police department in metro Denver. The best he can get is rent-a-cop jobs. Of course it's because he refuses to apologize for his political beliefs, not that he's a flaming bag of shits.

[sidesmile]

Good.