With those three suppositions in mind, it seems like a legal no-brainer that citizens have the right to film and record police officers performing their official duties in public places and to disseminate the resulting images to others as they see fit.
But as TechDirt recently reported, "people are still being arrested for recording police officers. Sometimes it's a bad (and outdated) wiretapping law that gets abused. Sometimes it's other, unrelated laws that are stretched to fit the circumstances, which means those recording officers are hit with charges ranging from interfering with police investigations to criminal mischief, depending on how the interaction goes."
For example, the Baltimore Sun reported in February 2014 on a man filming an arrest in Towson, Md., who allegedly was told by an officer to "shut your [expletive mouth] or you're going to jail." When the man replied he had a right of free speech, the officer retorted "You just lost it."
And that's worse because it means they enjoy being dicks. I was kinda hoping that when cops are being dicks, it's just because they're stressed out and doing a shitty job, etc.
~ ~ ~
With those three suppositions in mind, it seems like a legal no-brainer that citizens have the right to film and record police officers performing their official duties in public places and to disseminate the resulting images to others as they see fit.
But as TechDirt recently reported, "people are still being arrested for recording police officers. Sometimes it's a bad (and outdated) wiretapping law that gets abused. Sometimes it's other, unrelated laws that are stretched to fit the circumstances, which means those recording officers are hit with charges ranging from interfering with police investigations to criminal mischief, depending on how the interaction goes."
For example, the Baltimore Sun reported in February 2014 on a man filming an arrest in Towson, Md., who allegedly was told by an officer to "shut your [expletive mouth] or you're going to jail." When the man replied he had a right of free speech, the officer retorted "You just lost it."
-- Huff Post
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