Being arrested is a big deal and you could be in jail for some time, even if the charges are dropped. Whereas unlawful arrest could result in consequences for officers, this law would give that arrest at least a pretext of being reasonable, all they have to say is they misjudged the distance and then are off the hook - "honest mistake".
Maybe not quite. An interesting dilemma arises. If our law abiding, peace officers arrest someone for filming - then that media becomes the evidence in an arrest. So they may safely arrest someone so long as they (the police) are doing nothing wrong while the cameraman is is "illegally" filming them.
But then why would anyone be filming police who are doing nothing wrong?
As soon as the police are engaged in acts of violence, and people start filming them, it would not be in their interests to arrest anyone, unless they were prepared to follow through, destroy evidence, intimidate detainees into silence or commit perjury.
So this idea puts the police into an interesting bind, and suggests it would only have consequences that lead quickly to tyrannical outcomes.
We already see this happening. IIRC Police unions are the only people allowed to review the evidence for the first 24 hours and are free from consequence were it to get "lost".
This is such a naive take from someone who had never had to face police officers blatantly violating your rights and physical well-being.
What on earth do you think you know about that?
Only a bystander can. The person who needs it the most, can't.
Meanwhile, the police's own body cam is on while they are within 8 feet of you. Assuming they didn't turn it off, assuming you get access to it later, in a timely manner, unedited...
There is an argument about interference and safety, but no valid argument in the end, since there is no way to allow the limitation without creating a tool for abuse that's worse.
Better to let actual cases of interference be tried as such. Make the officer have to invoke a process after the fact, and have to defend their claim of criminal or endagering interference in court.
In fact, if my impression of the news is correct, police body cams do more to protect the police from unjustified charges of abuse than they do to protect the victims of police abuse.
Perhaps that is an effect of police unions? Perhaps it is simply a good thing and we should have more of them?
People independent of the police filming it seems like a good idea to me. For all concerned.
This is how they're marketed to police departments, not as cameras that keep cops honest, but as cameras that keep the public from lying about police misconduct. It plays into the trope that is popular with law enforcement, that misconduct doesn't exist, it's just the whiny public and their lawyers who are victimizing cops.
That's why the cameras have buttons that allow cops to turn them off, and why they also often have buttons that require the cops to first turn them on themselves before interactions. Some of them even have buttons that, when pushed, turn the camera on for only 30 seconds.
If the cameras were meant to keep cops honest, those features wouldn't exist. Body cameras are not about documenting potential misconduct, they're about documenting evidence that can later be used against the public in court.
Instead, at least in some places, cops get away with turning their cams off or otherwise suffering mysterious glitches and data loss.
There used to be standards for certain things where the appearance of imporopriety was bad enough all by itself, exactly because some things can't really be proven, like how you can't prove a negative. That seems to be pretty much gone now. Judges don't recuse themselves from cases where they have a conflict of interest, and the other judges just let them, etc.
So, in the sweet naive child view of the world, a cop merely no being able to produce their body cam footage for some incident, no matter what they say or what the story is should be almost automatic grounds for dismissal of the whole case and maybe the cop too, or at least a huge stink and huge investigation. But I don't think we live in that world we tell gradeschool kids we live in.
This law is only about bystanders - if you’re directly involved you’re still allowed to film
You do need the right to film yourself, but there is no valid rationale for limiting it to yourself, making it so that your defense is entirely your responsibility and if you fail to film yourself for any of the imfinite reasons that can happen, you're out of luck.
It just doesn't hold water. All this does is gives cops something they can threaten bystanders with on the spot, which will work on most people most of the time.
When they go home and google about it later and figure out that actually they could have filmed, or it would just be a harmless fine they would have been willing to risk, the damage is already done. You can't go back and collect the evidense after the fact, and most people don't have repeated incidents with police that are bad enough they would even feel a need to film. That one incident was probably all they may ever have, and they didn't film that one.
So the technicalities don't excuse this. Police have a goal that they don't have the right to actually mandate (don't film me while I'm operating on behalf of the state), and this rule doesn't technically mandate it, yet still achieves that goal anyway.
Police: Stop recording me.
Journalist: I'm more than 8 feet away, I have the right to record.
Police: You're 7 feet away. Last warning.
Journalist: is still 9 feet away so keeps recording
Police: Arrests journalist, confiscates recording
District attorney: Reviews footage, sees that the journalist was more than 8 feet away, drops charges
Journalist: sues for wrongful arrest
Court: Being able to count distance accurately is not a job requirement for a police officer. Wrongful arrest claim denied
Journalist: files claim for return of recording
Police department: We are unable to find this recording. (Or, alternatively, they wipe the media before returning it.)
Or one of the other officers standing around in any of the other 359 degrees where your phone isn't pointing?
There is just no way to make any of their excuses actually hold water.
Until the officer deliberately approaches you to prevent you from recording?
https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/55leg/2R/summary/H.HB2319_0223...
Arrest willy nilly, on court day withdraw the charges.
You can sue for "wrongful arrest". That would be a tactically silly idea for almost everybody who has these sorts of encounters