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Comment by Thorentis | Hacker News Reader

If I was cop, I would certainly want to know that there is a physical boundary in law that bystanders cannot cross. For my own safety, and for theirs. I see nothing unreasonable about not allowing people to cross this boundary. The law does not prevent recording. It says you cannot record closer than 8ft. Why would somebody need to get closer than 8ft to an officer doing their job, when you have no involvement in the situation at hand? Adding more people to the situation simply increases the stress of all involved.

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Does this law contain a provision that prevents the cops from moving closer to civilians?

If I was a bystander, I'd certainly want to know that a cop wasn't allowed to take two steps towards me, declare that I am now within the 8 ft barrier, and am now subject to assault and arrest unless I delete the recording.

Don't make laws unless you've thoroughly thought about how they can be abused by bad actors.

> The new Arizona law requires any bystanders recording police activity in the state to stand at a minimum of 8 feet away from the action. If bystanders move closer after police have warned them to back off, they risk being charged with a misdemeanor and incurring fines of up to $500, jail time of up to 30 days, or probation of up to a year.

I have not read the law myself, but if the summary is accurate, it seems to suggest police moving towards the bystander does not count.

> it seems to suggest police moving towards the bystander does not count.

Except in cop "logic" it does. Because once they move on someone filming, that person is now within 8 feet and thereby a "criminal" - worrying about the exception to the law is for prosecutors to do later. The filmer is a threat, because cops are juiced up on paranoid delusions that everyone that doesn't fall into line and salute them is out to attack them. And therefore the cop justifies themselves preemptively attacking the filmer, smashing their camera, etc, to get the situation "under control".

When the incident actually sees court (persecution of the victim of course, cops themselves rarely end up as defendants for their own crimes), the cop will cry about how scared they were etc (with a manly facade) and how their job is so hard, and they have to make quick decisions in the heat of the moment, blah blah blah. Even if the victim does spend enough on attorneys to successfully defend themselves legally, they'll still suffer the injuries from being attacked, their broken phone, other possessions "lost" (stolen) by the police, time and money spend defending themselves, etc.

Like every other recent Republican legislative dog whistle, it's purporting to address a problem that simply does not commonly exist - as many others have pointed out, interfering with police officers is already illegal. This law does not create a clearer delineation, but rather is focused on the specific act of filming to add uncertainty and undermine that individual freedom despite the anticonstitutionality of doing so. The only reason the exceptions are even there is to make it sound like equity has been considered, but they're really just afterthoughts to the main goal of increasing the arbitrary and capricious power of the state.

I don't see anything that addresses the potential problem of the officer moving closer.

Read it, then:

https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/55leg/2R/bills/HB2319S.pdf

You can't record as a bystander within 8' of law enforcement activity, defined as "QUESTIONING A SUSPICIOUS PERSON. 33 2. CONDUCTING AN ARREST, ISSUING A SUMMONS OR ENFORCING THE LAW. 34 3. HANDLING AN EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED OR DISORDERLY PERSON WHO IS 35 EXHIBITING ABNORMAL BEHAVIOR. "

If you're the subject of activity, e.g. they deem you as a suspicious person and move towards you, you may record.

> If you're the subject of activity, e.g. they deem you as a suspicious person and move towards you, you may record.

You may record, but you will not be able to after they handcuff you. So, they'll claim they were establishing a perimeter for the initial activity, that you refused to move away or stop filming from that perimeter, making your recording up to that point illegal, and then they'll detain you for this offense, handcuffing you to prevent you from filming.

Or they'll just take your phone under civil asset forfeiture laws, as it was involved in illegal activity (filming a police officer from too close by).

That would be a pretty extreme escalation of civil asset forfeiture. I understand that you distrust the police. You have reason to. But resorting to hyperbole diminishes your argument.

It's not hyperbole when it's based on historical abuses of power.

Are there lots of examples of cops using asset forfeiture laws to confiscate individual phones to cover up police malfeasance?

Arizona has somewhat decent civil forfeiture protections: civil forfeiture laws require a crime to take place for permanent forfeiture.

So this law puts the wheels in motion for lawful seizure of these phones.

You won't find much recent prior seizures in Arizona because Arizona cops can't fulfill a lawful seizure without a crime, and prior to now recording a public official performing their duty was basically never a criminal act.

Yes, I'm aware that it protects the subject of the investigation -- they can still record when the officer moves closer than 8', but it does not protect bystanders. This is a clear, and obviously intentional, loophole that allows police to criminalize something they don't like.

If this was actually about the safety of officers, there would be no need to mention recording -- they would simply limit all bystanders from being within 8' of such activity whether they're recording or not. Since it is about recording, we know it is just about recording, and not actual officer safety.

I don't see how it would be legal for the police to ask you to delete the recording. Asking you to stop recording or move back could be based on you potentially interfering. Asking you to delete a recording? Doesn't make sense.

Nothing makes sense when it comes to the police. Did you know that they can legally, knowingly, lie to you?

Have you not seen any "police encounter" videos?

Here is one example: police will lie to you about what is legal or illegal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UQKkYWDUQ4

Never trust a police officer, local, state, or federal law enforcement agent. Never volunteer any information to a police officer. Just say these magic words, "I want a lawyer." Do not say anything else.

Well we might need to identify ourselves with the police? I am not a lawyer.

you specifically have to say both that you're invoking your right to remain silent, and that you want a lawyer, and then actually shut up.

there's an excellent description of this in the Illustrated Guide to Criminal Procedure about Miranda, that explains exactly why you need both, and what that means.

What's kind of ironic is that the attorney in that video tells the cops a bunch of stuff. He tells them how long he's driven for Uber, how long he's worked in the courthouse, where he picked the passenger up and where he was taking him, and other stuff.

The law (it's in the article) says 8 feet from police activity and then lists out activities such as: arrest, questioning, handling an emotionally disturbed person.

A police officer is standing there doing crowd control, that's not included.

"enforcing the law" is also in that list, which likely gives rather broad latitude.

Hilariously it appears there is no law enforcement carve out for this, so the way it is written it appears to be a crime for another officer with a body cam to walk near his fellow officer enforcing the law.

It's not 8 feet from the nearest cop. It's 8 feet from where the arrest is happening.

If this law is purely about the safety concerns raised by bystanders being within 8 feet, then why does it explicitly only apply to RECORDING within 8 feet? It does absolutely nothing to prevent bystanders from coming within 8 feet. It only becomes a crime if they pull out a phone and start recording. The "safety" argument is a blatant red herring.

Then it would apply to a lot more situations. The problem is that the only reason people are that close is that they are recording. If they try to say "no one can be closer than 8 feet" that complicates things considerably.... I mean, I've walked by such situations on the sidewalk and gotten closer than 8 feet, because it was unavoidable without crossing the street. (these situations weren't ones likely to be filmed, though, just typical city stuff like with homeless and/or mentally ill people) But I wasn't just hanging out really closely, as I'd be if recording.

I think they were just trying to address a relatively new situation that was causing them problems.

I don't really agree with this law, but I also don't think your cynicism on that particular thing is entirely warranted.

I'd prefer to be recording when I walk past in that situation to make sure they don't mess with ME without being recorded.

It's not a hypothetical situation. I've been there.

This is my home state Arizona and from time to time I think about moving back and this makes me not want to.

Geez I'd just cross the street to avoid the situation rather than go to that kind of effort.

Yeah most of the time I do that but it's not always practical. For one thing what about if there are police on both sides? Yes that happens.

The last time this was discussed on HN, I pointed out that there are a wide variety of situations in which bystanders cannot safely leave the immediate vicinity of law enforcement. Crowds on the street, a packed bus or subway, a hostage situation, and so forth.

This law takes a powerful tool for civilian oversight and puts it at the mercy of both happenstance and the mercurial attitudes of individual cops. It takes a situation that everybody agrees is stressful and turns it additionally into one where civilians are punished chiefly for their misfortune.

Isn’t there already a law for interfering with a police investigation? Why do we need new, redundant laws?

Because the point of this law is to get run up to the supreme court and reverse their ruling that recording the police is constitutionally protected.

I suspect it's also to stop passengers from recording a traffic stop.

Bingo. This has been the game plan for numerous things like contraceptives and gay marriage

Just call it "hate interference" and it's totally inline with other extra-punitive laws.

As I understand it hate laws specifically require the motivation of the crime to be different, which is something already in place for things like degrees of murder.

So they are not redundant and you have made a bad comparison .

> Why would somebody need to get closer than 8ft to an officer doing their job, when you have no involvement in the situation at hand?

Why do you need a law designed to prevent people from interfering with an officer doing their job, when you already have plenty of laws that make it illegal to interfere with an officer doing their job?

> Why do you need a law designed to [...]

He tried it before in 2016 (20ft). Also "Kavanagh sponsored legislation that would prohibit oversight boards of police departments".

Cynically, you might say, since he's an ex-cop, he's pandering to the police vote and/or funds for votes and election monies.

(But given some of the other stuff he's promoted, he might just be a dick.)

I'm wondering if we would still have the incredibly powerful "I can't breathe" recording if this law was in effect.

It was far more than 8 feet away. And if it wasn't, they could easily step back and keep filming.

And then potentially be filming at a distance and/or angle at which specific details can no longer be seen - like a knee on the suspect's neck, amidst a melee of officers piled on top of the suspect.

>If I was cop, I would certainly want to know that there is a physical boundary in law that bystanders cannot cross.

The bill doesn't say you can't come within 8 feet of a police officer. It says you can't FILM within 8 feet. The bill specifically punishes filming the police.

"Officer Smith, go walk over to anybody recording us and confiscate their equipment for recording you walking over to them"

Before this law took effect, were police often interfered with during their jobs from members of the public with cameras?

If by their jobs you mean enforcing the law fairly, no. Cameras don’t interfere with that. If by their jobs you mean enforcing the law arbitrarily, using unnecessary force, and harassing citizens without cause - yes, cameras interfered a lot.

Yes. Go watch a dozen or two of these videos, it's quite common for bystanders to interfere with police, endangering police, endangering themselves, and endangering other civilians in the area.

WARNING videos on this channel frequently include violence either in aggression or in self defense, some resulting in the loss of life.

https://www.youtube.com/c/DonutOperatorOfficial/videos

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw3F91w6D78 here is a video of onlookers recording agitating one another, several of which are standing in the street and blocking police vehicles.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71wdrhKzuys here a man that had been harassing local businesses and patrons all day charges a guardsman (who's an off-duty police officer) and the crowd starts surrounding him, recording, shouting things, agitating, when another bystander jumps to the guardsman's defense and now you've got multiple hostile people getting more and more agitated while the guardsman waits for uniformed police to come take the guy that tried to assault him, tried to damage his car, was harassing others, etc.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H40vEOOs5z0 here are protestors, standing around filming each other, assaulting a motorcycle officer on his motorcycle as he tries to drive away from them

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvDwWSl-sVE here officers try to restrain a felon, in felony possession of a firearm, that had tried to assault officers while a felon unlawfully possessing a firearm, as people surrounded them to hold their phones as close to them as possible to take footage, then as 3 of them try to subdue the suspect that continued, while armed, to try and resist then has to escalate to non-lethal violence of gasp punching the guy to try to get him to submit. At 3:42 an onlooker throws a full trash can at the officers that are actively trying to handcuff an ARMED FELON that is fighting tooth and nail to escape.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdFsumyHLXo guy on a roof of a business hops down, then retrieves a handgun and aims it at officers, the officers start issuing commands while a bystander walks into the officer's line of fire filming and occasionally shouting things (go to 4:20 and you can see them just right of 12 o'clock.)

Etc.

Individual cases notwithstanding (I think I could find ones where civilians used their cameras to save their lives), I think there’s a hefty dose of irony involved in citing video evidence of misbehavior to defend a law that would, in effect, prevent us from evaluating said behavior.

In other words: you can link these because people recorded them. We then get to have a discussion about it. The application of this law would eliminate that, in many cases.

Edit: I noticed that all of these videos are collections by the same guy. He’s a former cop and seems to relish in videos of the police cracking down on protestors, which makes me think that he’s unlikely to present a balanced view of how disruptive recording actually is, on average.

Self defense isn't "misbehavior", I assume you mean the punching one. An armed felon, that had threatened police, was actively resisting 3 police officers trying to put him in cuffs... are you saying you wouldn't have punched someone with a gun actively trying to fight you and several other armed officers?

“Misbehavior” was directed at the ostensible criminals here, not the cops. Although I suspect that the police made vanishingly little effort to de-escalate any of these situations.

But it was already illegal to interfere with police.... They don't need this law...

I agree. As long as this isn't the thin end of the wedge≥

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