New Arizona law makes it illegal to film within 8 feet of police
axios.com
axios.com
This particular law [4] could be abused in several ways.
1. 8ft is from where "law enforcement activity is occurring". Officers will act assuming that this covers large areas, not just 8ft from the officer themself. Only later will courts get a chance to push back against this.
2. Nothing prevents a police officer walking closer to the person who is recording, pushing away the recording (or forcing them to stop as its now within 8ft.
3. The law says recording is illegal if interfering with the police or unsafe. Again, police will apply this to very wide circumstances.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2022/04/18/cops-are-still-playing-c...
[2] https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/officers-across-minnesot...
[3] https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crime/article251249...
it honestly also seems like these writers have never picked up a nice smartphone; most have enough 4k zoom to film a nature documentary. even the zoom on a knockoff go pro is shockingly good.
its a feather in the ragged cap of tough on crime legislation at best.
There may be a big cultural difference at play here. Even before this law there were plenty of instances where a bystander recording police activity from a safe distance was approached, bullied and sometimes even arrested; with - of course - no later repercussions for the officers.
I feel like changing US policing culture would do much more than introducing or relaxing laws that the policemen will ignore and violate anyway.
That being said, I agree 100%. The police will abuse this badly with intent to discourage filming police interactions. Which I also agree should be filmed as much as possible.
This is terrible law, designed to invite broad and abusive interpretation by the police.
I just don't understand it. If you see the abuses and think "well, they deserved it" or "ah it's a few bad apples" I'm not trying to speak to you. I don't think we'd really ever find common ground. I'm really trying to ask such questions to those of you out there who still seem surprised when the police do something bad, or those who just claim to be unaware. Do you or do you not talk to people who claim police are abusive? If you do talk to them, do you just not believe them? How many of such people have you talked to, and after talking to this many people, how many more people would have to confirm such abuses before you believed them? When you hear such stories, how do you discount them, or otherwise minimize them to the degree that your beliefs are not swayed?
So you’ve made a definitive conclusion and will now approach information with this bias.
> At this point, you can turn on the news and the evidence is right there.
> If you see the abuses and think "well, they deserved it" or "ah it's a few bad apples" I'm not trying to speak to you. I don't think we'd really ever find common ground.
The media has a narrative. They push all anti-cop stories as part of their storyline.
Every single day there are cops putting their lives on the line to do good. And you will never hear a single story of their heroics. The coverage is nearly 100% negative on the national level.
I’ve personally dealt with horrible cops that should absolutely be fired and heroes that deserve community recognition for their bravery.
I agree with you on one thing: we’d likely never find common ground. I cannot respect people that fall for the news storylines hook, line and sinker.
You claim, without proof.
> They push all anti-cop stories as part of their storyline.
You claim without proof.
> Every single day there are cops putting their lives on the line to do good.
Every day there are cops killing Americans - at ten times the rate of any other country.
> And you will never hear a single story of their heroics.
This is provably false.
Go to any news site you like. Search for "hero cop". You will find endless stories.
Simple test: will it hurt more _overall_ to suddenly lose them or keep them?
> You can turn on the news and the evidence is right there.
Selection bias is huge - not making the news are the vast, vast, majority of daily interactions that are net positives for society.
I’m not saying everything is perfect, but talking about “the police” as if they are a monolith in a country of hundreds of millions spread across 50 states and innumerable local communities is never going to be a good starting point for analysis.
Suddenly is doing a lot of the work here. Can police be unbundled over the course of years and result in an overall net good? Emphatically yes. We should examine the forces that prevent such an unbundling from taking place and work toward rendering them impotent.
"Suddenly"'s inclusion or exclusion dramatically changes the answer so it needs a bit more justification than it currently has.
Do you have proof or some source to support this idea?
So everything or nothing? Sounds like a false dilemma.
Another problem with this decision-making approach is that anything can be un/justified simply by changing the unspoken timescale at which you measure outcomes.
On a short timescale, a knife stabbed into my gut should stay, because removing it will cause blood-loss.
However on a longer timescale where I'm in the hands of some doctors with bandages, it should absolutely be removed...
Someone suggests you'd be better in a house.
"Imagine where I would be without the tent! This is a thought experiment to test the statement of 'this tent being overall bad'. Therefore I won't move."
Police don't do everything right. But if you think that _everybody_ who had a bad interaction did nothing wrong, well, that's just foolish.
These are not equivalent. Police who do bad things not only cause extreme harm, but terrorize people whose protection is the whole reason we gave police the monopoly on violence in the first place. This is not a "two sides to a story" situation. This is a situation where one side has all of the power and far, far too much documented abuse of it.
Not only to people in their daily business as police but also in court
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/police-reports-lying-video...
https://www.rosenbergperry.com/blog/can-police-lie-to-you/
They literally have their own term for lying under oath because its so common: testilying
https://justice.gawker.com/ask-an-anonymous-cop-how-often-do...
The police kill roughly 1100 people every year.
The entire job of police departments is to interact with people who are breaking the law.
If 0.25% of police arrests turned violent, that means police have roughly 25,000 violent arrest incidents each year. This is a number I am coming up with on my own, but if you actually grew up in a bad neighborhood you will see this as a conservative estimate.
So, if you're looking at this from a raw numbers "how many people die" perspective -- it's actually low.
All that said: cops aren't perfect. I have had bad experiences with them. I think some changes need to be made.
But the idea that there is an epidemic of police killings is not supported by the numbers.
With how often the police lie, it is foolish to give them any benefit of the doubt.
American cops terrified me with their aggressive ineptitude and I'm a polite older white guy with an English accent with short hair and a jacket. They never fucked me up, but I certainly saw them fuck up loads of other people, accept bribes, refuse to investigate blatant drug houses for years, and the like.
It took me quite a while to understand that cops here, while they do make mistakes sometime, are professional people with a sense of humor who aren't interested in displays of power.
[0] usually it isn't terribly violent and the danger comes mostly from distraction; despite ACAB I do have some sympathy for the police in these situations
> 13-3732. Unlawful video recording of law enforcement activity; classification; definition
> > A. It is unlawful for a person to knowingly make a video recording of law enforcement activity if the person making the video recording is within eight feet of where the person knows or reasonably should know that law enforcement activity is occurring, either receives or has previously received a verbal warning from a law enforcement officer that the person is prohibited from making a video recording OF A LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY within eight feet of THE activity and CONTINUES TO MAKE A video recordING OF the law enforcement activity WITHIN EIGHT FEET OF THE ACTIVITY. If the law enforcement activity is occurring in an enclosed structure that is on private property, a person who is authorized to be on the private property may make a video recording of the activity from an adjacent room or area that is less than eight feet away from where the activity is occurring, unless a law enforcement officer determines that the person is INTERFERING in the law enforcement activity or that it is not safe to be in the area and orders the person to leave the area.
> > B. notwithstanding subsection A of this section, a person who is the subject of police contact may record the encounter if the person is not interfering with lawful police actions, including searching, handcuffing or administering a field sobriety test. The occupants of a vehicle that is the subject of a police stop may record the encounter if the occupants are not interfering with lawful police actions.
> > C. this section does not establish a right or authorize any person to make a video recording of law enforcement activity.
> > D. A violation of this section is a class 3 misdemeanor.
> > E. For the purposes of this section, "law enforcement activity" means any of the following:
> > > 1. Questioning a suspicious person.
> > > 2. Conducting an arrest, issuing a summons or enforcing the law.
> > > 3. Handling an emotionally disturbed or disorderly person who is exhibiting abnormal behavior.
What matters is that it'll cause people to think twice about filming the police.
What happens when you get arrested? Well, you might end up on the news, miss work because you can't make bail, lose your job because of either of those. Without a job you can't make rent (and finding a new job or housing with an arrest is much harder, even if you were found innocent/charges dropped), without rent you get evicted which nukes your credit and means you can only rent from utter slumlords...you get the picture. And that's assuming you don't have cops who do things like plant drugs to justify further charges.
Those most likely to be the victims of police brutality are the same people who are most likely to be living paycheck to paycheck and afraid of getting arrested. It creates a chilling effect, so regardless of the legality of the actions of the police, they won.
Edit: Also, consider a cop approaching you and saying "no filming within 8 feet". You're not within 8 feet of the scene of the crime but he's getting close, so you, being a law-abiding citizen, back up. He keeps coming towards you. Pretty soon, your camera can't zoom in far enough to record the original situation. You start to run around him since you can get close to the scene but 8 feet from him and it'll be legal to film...only to get tackled and charged with resisting arrest or other similarly vague statutes.
Now you're in even more trouble than before, and are way more likely to get convicted. Oh, and after you dropped your phone during the arrest, it was mysteriously smashed, so now it's your word against the cops...at that point, you might as well just take a plea.
Under this new law, the police are given additional and unreasonable cover for destroying evidence. After all, you’re interfering by recording them, and they can’t be blamed if they happen to curb stomp your phone while arresting you for interference.
But that should only happen if there's no 'reasonable doubt', right? And if not, that's a bigger more general problem.
Even the George Floyd videos were at least ten feet away and they seemed more than adequate.
"Productive" is not the relevant metric; "expedient" is. If I'm in a crowded subway car, I may not be able to move 10 feet away from the police officer who's harassing my fellow straphanger. Worse, if I were to move away, the commotion of the crowded car would likely drown out my cellphone's microphone.
Another example: during a protest, the police might decide to kettle[1] a group of protestors to control them. As a bystander, I can be caught in the kettle. I'm not the target of the police action, and yet this law suggests that my recording might be criminal.
and the vague "enforcing the law". The fear is that the bad actors will always claim they were enforcing the law.
====================== For the purposes of this section, "law enforcement activity" means any of the following:
1. Questioning a suspicious person.
2. Conducting an arrest, issuing a summons or enforcing the law.
3. Handling an emotionally disturbed or disorderly person who is exhibiting abnormal behavior.
Definitely not true here in King County Washington, but Arizona is probably very different.
EDIT: It sounds like recording any interaction you have with a police officer is now illegal, if they're within 8ft of you.
> > B. notwithstanding subsection A of this section, a person who is the subject of police contact may record the encounter if the person is not interfering with lawful police actions, including searching, handcuffing or administering a field sobriety test. The occupants of a vehicle that is the subject of a police stop may record the encounter if the occupants are not interfering with lawful police actions.
Just as a note, most people record with their phones out and pointed at the subject they're recording. From watching many of these videos, police routinely ask people recording to put their phones away, even though they aren't interfering. It seems likely that police will use the excuse that the mere act of recording in this way is interfering and can be used to stop recording or to arrest the person recording.
This is addressed:
> B. notwithstanding subsection A of this section, a person who is the subject of police contact may record the encounter if the person is not interfering with lawful police actions, including searching, handcuffing or administering a field sobriety test. The occupants of a vehicle that is the subject of a police stop may record the encounter if the occupants are not interfering with lawful police actions.
Now that a large majority of people have a high quality video camera in their pockets, we've learned 2 things: (1) alien abduction was not real (2) police very deliberately kill members of racial minorities. I think this law is a reaction to (2).
If you are party to the police interaction you can film closer than 8 ft. If you are in a car as a passenger you can film the interaction and the police cannot ask you to stop. If you are a non-party person simply watching the interaction the police can now ask you to maintain a distance of 8 ft.
Courts have already upheld routinely that police can ask people who are not party to the interaction to step away and they can create a reasonable area around them and the scene and keep people out of it. The definition of reasonable area varies based upon the situation. This that a reasonable area is a minimum of 8 ft. There are situations where that distance may be greater.
Regardless of what you think of the police they do need to be empowered to keep bystanders out of the middle of an interaction with their cameras in order to conduct their duties. 8 ft for a bystander is a very reasonable distance. At 8 ft your camera can see anything that a human-sized person is doing it to another human-sized person and it can record the audio of that interaction as well at 8 ft.
And as always the person who is party to the interaction can record the interaction and this is codified in this law as well. Laws like this do more to uphold a citizens ability to record the police then it does to take it away. Any reasonable person would understand that because without a law like this the police could argue that 50 ft is a reasonable distance. Now we have a law that says 8 ft is a reasonable distance in Arizona.
What if you have a line of cops holding hands and forming a 10ft radius around you? Can you film? What if they start rotating and stepping in and out?
The law is dumb and redundant (you can get in trouble for interfering just fine with the laws on the books today). This is plain and simple intimidation.
I was ready to comment something like "meh, you shouldn't be getting that close to them anyway." But you're right, it's already a law to not interfere. Whether you're recording or not shouldn't matter. Unless maybe they needed specific numbers because it is limiting a first amendment right.
Also, if you are part of the law enforcement activity, you are allowed to film. So yes, if a cop walks up to you yelling and you are at least 8ft from the law enforcement activity, you are legally allowed to film.
Yeah, good luck arguing with a cop.
The officer's approach to my person is the only the interaction I'm videoing at that moment. Anything else is incidental.
If you're barely scrapping by on an hourly job, and then get picked up or fined for this, oftentimes your only option is to accept the plea so you can get out of the courtroom and try to get back to work.
This law serves to provide a means for the police to place that burden on people who cannot bear it.
The law specifically singles out making video. It does not establish a general boundary for the definition of interference.
The law was obviously written in bad faith, and you are just rationalizing it.
This also means that a person who is directly the subject of a police encounter can be found to be violating the law for the simple act of recording the encounter.
There's no provision for this within the text of the law.
The law as it stands is a prima facie first amendment violation.
Can you cite said rulings? I can't find any on a cursory search.
>Now we have a law that says 8 ft is a reasonable distance in Arizona.
The law explicitly disclaims that it allows anyone to record police, so an officer is just as free as they were last year to claim that 50 feet is a reasonable distance for their safety.
Maybe there are different versions going around? The text pasted here suggests even if you are a party to the interaction, police can claim filming is interfering and ask you to stop it.
It's unfortunate that this thread is full of bootlickers doing mental gymnastics to justify what is clearly an unjust law, but this is HN after all
This is an inflammatory statement which demands some evidence. "Very deliberately" implies a knowledge of police state of mind. Do you have such knowledge?
AFAIK, studies of police shootings are pretty inconclusive in that respect. Do you have support for your statement?
Whether there's a racial motivation or basis behind that cannot usually be determined by selectively watching videos. And scholarly sources have published studies that show the answer is complicated:
see https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01846-z and https://www.manhattan-institute.org/verbruggen-fatal-police-...
for two different takes on ths.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/18/white-hou...
police action is in the top 10 leading causes of death for several demographics
Please tell me this is sarcasm.
https://apnews.com/article/us-news-ap-top-news-racial-injust...
I want this number as small as possible while not over correcting so much that we have other negative consequences (violent crime increases).
[0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/police-ki...
Though our per capita rate is still absurd compared to other developed countries. The next comparable country is Canada at 9.7, 1/3 as high.
deleted! And boy did I have this wrong!! (This comment has been edited to show the text, and where I was in error!)
Here's the text:
ARIZONA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Fifty-fifth Legislature Second Regular Session House: APPROP DPA 7-5-0-1 HB 2319: law enforcement activity; recording prohibition Sponsor: Representative Kavanagh, LD 23 House Engrossed Overview Outlines regulations for a person making a video recording (recording) of a law enforcement activity (activity). History Provisions
1. States that it is unlawful for a person to knowingly make a recording within eight feet of an activity and without the permission of a law enforcement officer (LEO). (Sec. 1)
2. Directs that for an activity occurring inside a closed structure on private property, a person authorized to be on the private property may make a video recording of the activity from an adjacent room that is less than eight feet away from the activity. (Sec. 1)
3. States a person may not make a video recording of an activity from within eight feet of an activity inside a closed structure on private property if the LEO determines the person is interfering with the activity or that is it not safe to be in the area. (Sec. 1)
4. Provides that a person who is the subject of the police contact may make a recording if doing so does not interfere with lawful police actions. (Sec. 1)
5. Asserts these provisions do not establish a right or authorize any person to make a video recording of an activity. (Sec. 1)
6. Classifies unlawfully recording an activity as a petty offense. (Sec. 1)
7. Classifies failing to comply with LEO verbal warnings regarding recording an activity or if the person has been previously convicted of unlawfully recording an activity as a class 3 misdemeanor (Sec. 1)
Statute prohibits a person from obstructing governmental operations. A person commits obstructing governmental operations when the person uses threats or violence to hinder a peace officer from enforcing the law or acting under official authority. This offense is classified as a class
1 misdemeanor (A.R.S. 13-2402).
8. Defines law enforcement activity. (Sec. 1)
Prop 105 (45 votes) Prop 108 (40 votes) Emergency (40 votes) Initials FK Page 1
Fiscal Note>and without the permission of a law enforcement officer (LEO). (Sec. 1)
That language is not in the stories talking about the bill, and said language is not in line with the First Amendment.
An explicit codification of the right to record and circumstances when it applies could be part of a decent compromise here, but this legislation isn't it.
I went to the original text, pasted here. That language is NOT OK. This law does NOT explicitly allow.
There's a new misdemeanor for 8' or less.
God I hope this is the stupidest thing I read today.
Edit: I put the text of it above. Here's where the ugly is: "and without the permission of a law enforcement officer (LEO). (Sec. 1)"
Yeah, that's not in line with the First Amendment at all.
>The National Press Photographers Association sent a letter to Mr. Kavanagh in February that said the bill violated constitutional free speech and press protections. The New York Times Company was one of more than 20 media organizations that signed the letter, which said that the law would be “unworkable” at protests and demonstrations.
I was thinking about the interactions I see sometimes on YT. Often, SCOTUS saying 10 feet is mentioned. The way I saw this was that often questioned bit of information was made explicit, and 8 feet.
The media appears to take it an entirely different way.
Just to be clear, I am an advocate of recording public officials, including the police of all kinds and perhaps didn't take the language of the bill in the same way many are.
Considering that police training routinely would keep people 20 to 25 ft away codifying this minimum distance at 8 ft is actually a big win and is probably closer than what courts would allow should it be challenged.
It's also important to keep in mind that this distance does not apply to people who are party to the police interaction nor does it apply to passengers in a vehicle that are. It also does not apply to people in a house or a confined private space who are not a party to the police interaction. There are a great many exceptions to this if you actually read the law. Basically the 8-ft distance only applies to people who are not a party to the police interaction.
" C. THIS SECTION DOES NOT ESTABLISH A RIGHT OR AUTHORIZE ANY PERSON TO MAKE A VIDEO RECORDING OF LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY."
So, police can still attempt to keep people 25' away, and use other laws, they just can't charge them with this new misdemeanor.
This says nothing of either the constitutionality or propriety of keeping people 25 feet away, instead using it to bootstrap other limitations. The police are trained to do all sorts of absurd and patently unconstitutional things; the fact of that matter isn’t strong support for a law that further enables them to do so.
Now if you want to use a pencil and sketch pad ...
The first amendment doesn't necessarily directly apply (our understanding of the word "press" has broadened with time), but it is rather certain that this law will push us to improve our understanding of precisely where the rights of citizens and media will begin and end in practice.
I enjoy yelling about abuse of power as much as the next guy, but from the looks of it, this law empowers the citizenry.
In other words: it was already the law. This is an attempt to limit civic participation and oversight, and to disempower citizens.
8ft seems a reasonable compromise; close enough to capture what is going on, far enough away to not interfere in an ongoing struggle, for instance.
The police have no such right not to be recorded. They are afforded legal recourses against interference, but simply recording them does not constitute interference in any reasonable sense.
Edit: yes, I meant bystanders.
That’s one of many reasons why the law is absurd: the police already have (more than) adequate legal cover to deal with interference in their activities. They don’t need a law that specifically carves recording out for punishment, unless the real goal is to stifle civic participation.
This sounds super-reasonable to me. 8 feet is close enough to capture what's going on, but far enough to not interfere or escalate in a situation.
In a tense situation, it's not always easy to tell who might or might not be a danger to the police officer. This seems to set a reasonable bound which avoids accidents or incidents. Arrests are tense situations.
Imagine you're a police officer arresting a dangerous criminal, and their friend comes within 3 feet. They're filming you. You don't know if they're an accomplice or not. What do you do?
Now, it's easy. 8 feet away is okay.
This is bad law: it takes a set of restrictions that already exist, and adds additional language to them in order to chill civic participation. The police already have a cornucopia of powers available to them; they don’t need a completely arbitrary carve-out for just the act of recording their actions.
But then it's your word against the police officer's word, and (1) police are willing to lie, and (2) the words of a police officer almost always carry more weight in a court proceeding.
This doesn't actually change anything because if you're intending to interfere with a police interaction, you're going to interfere with a police interaction. That's already illegal. Nothing changes.
If you're only intending to record the interaction, you now have this stupid law to worry about. More of our rights being restricted, with people applauding it under the guise of police safety.
Also, keep in mind that police in the US already have vast protections like qualified immunity, safety and weapons training, they're armed, and they have a legal right to violence. I don't understand what sorts of protections they're desperately in need of.
same thing that happens when you push a cop away for yelling at you 2 inches from your face: now you’re on the ground
a) The police don't give a shit about the law, nor are they required to know it
b) They'll just walk towards you, say you're breaking the law for filming, break your phone, beat the shit out of you and/or shoot you
c) It was always legal to do so. Now it isn't.
The potential problem for the police that I’ve seen is that when there’s an arrest from some resisting person and a sympathetic crowd gathers around to record and voice some words of protest, it’s a chaotic situation. You have people going crazy hooting and hollering and it’s a bad situation to be in even if the cops are 100% doing the right thing by the book. I don’t know what’s the right distance, but I get that cops want to maintain some distance from crowds so they’re not swarmed.
In the end, I don’t know what can be done other than mandating personal recording equipment that can’t physically be switched off.
Public scrutiny is only as issue for those who don't want to be publicly scrutinized. If they are doing the right thing, they should have not problem. They don't want to be scrutinized because they are 100% NOT doing the right thing by the book.
Fuck what they want.
but when the shoe is on the other foot suddenly it's a problem?
All laws are inherently restrictive.
There is no default. Court cases have upheld that it is legal for cops to establish a safety perimeter, even when that distance is undefined. Thus a cop could argue that the necessary safe distance is an arbitrary number like 25 feet or 50 feet.
This law defines it as 8, potentially giving you greater freedom.
The legal system as a whole is inherently restrictive, but individual laws within it may be otherwise.
No, this law establishes a new crime and penalty for being closer than 8 feet, without precluding enforcement under other laws:
" C. THIS SECTION DOES NOT ESTABLISH A RIGHT OR AUTHORIZE ANY PERSON TO MAKE A VIDEO RECORDING OF LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY. "
While the maxim "Everything which is not forbidden is allowed" generally holds true for individuals (but not organisations), it is not true that all laws are restrictive. See for example the first amendement of the US constitution which is restrictive towards the legislature and sanctifies rights for individuals or from a more international point of view the first article of the Declaration of Human Rights which states that all men are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Repeals, franchises, permits, etc may include restrictions, but you might be able to imagine circumstances when laws are not uniformly restrictive.
This isn't the case at all - law can be a precedent that something is permitted, for example.
Laws are inherently restrictive in the sense that things which aren’t prohibited by law, are permissible. So a law which codifies that something is permissible is useful for clarity, but it doesn’t really release citizens of restrictions.
I wouldn't be quick to trust this law if I lived in Arizona and tended to be harassed by police.
"Whelp now they're a part of this police interaction [as I intended] so I should respect their rights [which me approaching them was an attempt to interfere with]"
The current MO is:
- Cop approaches someone recording
- Proceed to apply psuedo-legal pressure because you're now "too close" to a cop (who approached you to begin).
And you actually think that a law that replaces a murky step two with "You can't film within 8ft of us" is an upgrade?
You actually think the cop informing you you can't film them will take the law they approached you to enforce as a reason to leave you alone?
-
There's something beautiful yet dangerously naive about the kind of people who have this much good faith in how police leverage the law.
Sorry but even the "good cops" are not about to use the law to expand your rights.
For Example: "A PERSON WHO IS THE SUBJECT OF POLICE CONTACT MAY RECORD THE ENCOUNTER IF THE PERSON IS NOT INTERFERING WITH LAWFUL POLICE ACTIONS"
So if a police officer determines that your recording of a traffic stop is "interfering" with their investigation, that it's causing you to cooperate too slowly, that your holding up the phone is limiting their ability to see into the vehicle, etc., they're well within the law to instruct and even force you to stop recording.
While a court may find that their determination of "interference" was insufficient, and that they were wrong to take your phone or arrest you for refusing to stop recording, it will be a determination made after you were arrested or fined or your phone was confiscated.
It produces a chilling effect on the ability of citizens to record the police, and gives police more law to throw at citizens to try and intimidate them into not recording their activity.
> The occupants of a vehicle that is the subject of a police stop may record the encounter if the occupants are not interfering with lawful police actions.
--
On a side note, I encourage everyone to carefully read the actual bill.
There's a lot of intelligent people here on HN but it seems that many of those commenting can't quite comprehend plain English (not as well as I would have expected, at least).
--
Not taking a view on it really, just saying it's not unprecedented or perhaps as necessarily crazy as it might first seem.
But then, the USA is different, the policing is at least in the eyes of many more/too militarised and unlawful itself, and there's a community around 'auditing' police work to review its lawfulness etc. (Which, afaik, doesn't really happen here.) So, when you have that, it is hard not to see this as taking away that liberty. Versus here, yeah, ok, worst case a bobby asks me to delete a great photo that he happened to walk into; if it might help combat terrorism that's probably fine.
Not to say it wasn't objected to - historically there's been a principle of police (and other emergency services) not having any more rights or different treatment than any other citizen, no harsher sentence for assaulting/murdering a police officer for example. But that ships sailed a few times to varying degrees anyway.
They have no right to prevent you from filming them and no right to delete photos.
They can view photos under prevention of terrorism powers but may not take your equipment or delete photos unless they are going to charge you too.
https://www.met.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/ph/p...
Am I misremembering (or misunderstood at the time) entirely, or has this changed/scope & guidance evolved, do you know?
https://www.statewatch.org/media/documents/analyses/no-105-u... ?
Many times people only read the top level comment without drilling into the thread.
Some will use the defense "but I was filming, surely you don't hate freedom of whatever". Which is where this particular law comes in.
Perhaps '8 feet' is meant to keep a filmer out of potential harm, and from interfering with a police officer and suspect potentially struggling.
There are precious few examples of people filming cops actually interfering. There are, however, a LOT of examples where video documentation of police misconduct led to departmental embarrassment, lawsuits, and even (though rarely) criminal charges.
The law exists to try to prevent THAT.
If that were the intent, there'd be no reason to focus on the act of filming. It would just say "8 feet for anyone besides police officers and those the police officers are dealing with."
But in its present form, it seems downright reasonable. Doesn't activate my outrage.
Because that would be insidious.
This broad inclusive language was seemingly added to protect the act of recording while being the subject of an investigation. It also makes it very clear when the officer can turn off the citizens camera. This law has potential to be abused to shroud dirty shit. Existing laws previously existed to enforce this same behaviour. This is an unnecessary expansion of power.
If you look at some of the video of police trying to do their jobs and having screeching bystanders yelling at them, I am absolutely fine with this law being invoked to maintain police sanity and prevent things from escalating.
Is your approach to solve for the 0.001% problem and care nothing about the rest of the 99.999% situations where the rule you put in place will have to be lived with by everyone else?
The only thing that stops the police from getting away with violence is the fact that people are recording them. And even then, the police can execute an innocent and unarmed individual and get acquitted by court.
I'm talking about reasonable restrictions to stop people from getting up in the police's face in everyday situations that dominate the daily work of policing, so that bystanders with less than honorable intentions don't provoke and escalate a situation.
By whatever principle you're operating under, you would assert that police have no right to put up police tape and cordon off a crime scene either?
please provide some data to back up this claim.
oh noe, what did they suffer hearing damage or something? Compared to how many innocent people were shot?
To even suggest that Noise pollution suffered by police is more important than even 1 person. getting shot is incredible.
To suggest that when 2500 people are shot annyally is simply breathtaking.
UK police kills 0 - 2 people a year, you have more people in prison than Russia and China combined, and you think you *Don't* have a problem?
There are legitimate reasons for the police to have bystanders stay a distance away from them while doing their job. Not having people purposely stand in the police's way and provoke conflict while filming is reasonable.
And let's not go down the hole of analyzing police shooting stats. We can do that endlessly. How many of those shootings were against armed suspects? How many were in the process of committing crimes? We can go on and on. Your numbers will drop fast.
Not saying we don't have a problem with guns in this country. But putting the outrage on having to stand reasonably far away from a police officer isn't where it's going to be solved.
laws like this one will encourage corruption and abuse of power, results in same problems Russia has - police can extorn local businesses and citizen without consequences" tale down political opponents, etc.
Probably the best way to think of AZ's population is purple, but more red than blue in tint.
But this is only because of Trump's lies and Fox news collusion with Trump. If they gave Biden and honest wrap and told their viewers how historic a Biden presidency would be and how Biden would fight like hell to bring the prices of kitchen table issues down then he would have won Arizona in a landslide.
Common sense tells me Kavanagh is a manipulative bullshitter. I am so tired of this governmental and corporate double-speak.
This should not require any new laws. If you are interfering with official police business, it's already illegal. If you are not interfering, then recording them should not be a problem.
The response itself is a classic manipulation technique. You add more words to a statement without changing its meaning, but confusing people about its purpose.
The purpose of this law is to protect the police state.
This was discussed prior - a police officer standing next to you isn’t included in the defined police activity.
Before this law: I as a citizen can record a police activity reasonably from anywhere. Even up close as long as I am not interfering for which I can already get arrested
After this law: I as a citizen am never sure if it is a good idea to record because the new law can have many interpretations. Do I want to risk filming and getting approached by a Bad Cop on a Power trip who will tell me it is illegal to record ?
Why did one of the officers at the George Floyd killing walk over to the camera man, and tell him to stop filming? If he has this law behind him, he wouldn't have covered for the murder by also interpreting it in a self-serving manner?
If you're in that situation, what exactly do you think you're going to win by getting into a legal debate with a cop?
The real yikes here is the presumption that the police will behave legally, honorably, and with the public's interests in mind. They don't. It's not in their culture to do it, it's not in our culture to enforce that they do.
Although if you then get arrested, you'd fall under the exception for persons subject to police contact. So it all works out in the end!
Unless they are enforcing the law. Which they will be, because they will be enforcing this law.
Yeah, people don't because they're afraid of the police and don't want to get involved.
One "solution" to that is to, as Kavanagh seems to favor, make people even more afraid... the opposite approach is to protect them and make them less afraid.
Since there's nothing inherently wrong with filming police, the government should do the latter. In fact, the government should be encouraging the filming of police because police time and again have abused their power and betrayed the people's trust and their own duty.
Instead, this bassackwards law makes people more afraid.
That’s already illegal.
> I don’t agree
You don’t disagree either (yet), because that statement doesn’t contradict the parent comment.
The parent comment is highlighting the poisonous way Kavanagh engages in politics discourse. You’re demonstrating it.
Yes, cops already have leeway to maintain a safe distance between themselves and spectators, but as others have said, this just puts an exact number on a fuzzy limit the courts have already supported.
6 A. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON TO KNOWINGLY MAKE A VIDEO RECORDING
7 OF LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY, INCLUDING THE HANDLING OF AN EMOTIONALLY
8 DISTURBED PERSON, IF THE PERSON MAKING THE VIDEO RECORDING DOES NOT HAVE
9 THE PERMISSION OF A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER AND IS WITHIN FIFTEEN FEET OF
10 WHERE THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY IS OCCURRING. IF THE LAW ENFORCEMENT
11 ACTIVITY IS OCCURRING IN AN ENCLOSED STRUCTURE THAT IS ON PRIVATE
12 PROPERTY, A PERSON WHO IS AUTHORIZED TO BE ON THE PRIVATE PROPERTY MAY
13 MAKE A VIDEO RECORDING OF THE ACTIVITY FROM AN ADJACENT ROOM OR AREA THAT
14 IS LESS THAN FIFTEEN FEET AWAY FROM WHERE THE ACTIVITY IS OCCURRING,
15 UNLESS A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER DETERMINES THAT THE PERSON IS INTERFERING
16 IN THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY OR THAT IT IS NOT SAFE TO BE IN THE AREA
17 AND ORDERS THE PERSON TO STOP RECORDING OR TO LEAVE THE AREA.
18 B. THIS SECTION DOES NOT ESTABLISH A RIGHT OR AUTHORIZE ANY PERSON
19 TO MAKE A VIDEO RECORDING OF LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY.
20 C. A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION IS A PETTY OFFENSE, EXCEPT THAT IF
21 THE PERSON FAILS TO COMPLY WITH A VERBAL WARNING OF A VIOLATION OF THIS
22 SECTION OR HAS PREVIOUSLY BEEN CONVICTED OF A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION,
23 IT IS A CLASS 3 MISDEMEANOR.
Given its text, I do not find the original statement reasonable at all. Simply recording police from 7 feet and not immediately stopping when a cop tells you to is a misdemeanor. This is crazy and has little to do with protecting reasonable police activity.
A. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON TO KNOWINGLY MAKE A VIDEO RECORDING OF LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY IF THE PERSON MAKING THE VIDEO RECORDING IS WITHIN EIGHT FEET OF WHERE THE PERSON KNOWS OR REASONABLY SHOULD KNOW THAT LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY IS OCCURRING, EITHER RECEIVES OR HAS PREVIOUSLY RECEIVED A VERBAL WARNING FROM A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER THAT THE PERSON IS PROHIBITED FROM MAKING A VIDEO RECORDING OF A LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY WITHIN EIGHT FEET OF THE ACTIVITY AND CONTINUES TO MAKE A VIDEO RECORDING OF THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY WITHIN EIGHT FEET OF THE ACTIVITY. IF THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY IS OCCURRING IN AN ENCLOSED STRUCTURE THAT IS ON PRIVATE PROPERTY, A PERSON WHO IS AUTHORIZED TO BE ON THE PRIVATE PROPERTY MAY MAKE A VIDEO RECORDING OF THE ACTIVITY FROM AN ADJACENT ROOM OR AREA THAT IS LESS THAN EIGHT FEET AWAY FROM WHERE THE ACTIVITY IS OCCURRING, UNLESS A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER DETERMINES THAT THE PERSON IS INTERFERING IN THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY OR THAT IT IS NOT SAFE TO BE IN THE AREA AND ORDERS THE PERSON TO LEAVE THE AREA.
B. NOTWITHSTANDING SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION, A PERSON WHO IS THE SUBJECT OF POLICE CONTACT MAY RECORD THE ENCOUNTER IF THE PERSON IS NOT INTERFERING WITH LAWFUL POLICE ACTIONS, INCLUDING SEARCHING, HANDCUFFING OR ADMINISTERING A FIELD SOBRIETY TEST. THE OCCUPANTS OF A VEHICLE THAT IS THE SUBJECT OF A POLICE STOP MAY RECORD THE ENCOUNTER IF THE OCCUPANTS ARE NOT INTERFERING WITH LAWFUL POLICE ACTIONS.
C. THIS SECTION DOES NOT ESTABLISH A RIGHT OR AUTHORIZE ANY PERSON TO MAKE A VIDEO RECORDING OF LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY.
D. A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION IS A CLASS 3 MISDEMEANOR.
E. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS SECTION, "LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITY" MEANS ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. QUESTIONING A SUSPICIOUS PERSON.
2. CONDUCTING AN ARREST, ISSUING A SUMMONS OR ENFORCING THE LAW.
3. HANDLING AN EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED OR DISORDERLY PERSON WHO IS EXHIBITING ABNORMAL BEHAVIOR.
I doubt that one would fly. If you have the video of them doing that then presumably a jury of your peers or any sane DA would throw out that case. And if you don’t, then you weren’t recording them right?
This law attempts to turn an innocent and passive civic action into a kind of interference, which is absurd on face value. If a person is actually interfering with the cops and just so happens to be recording while they do it, the law already allows the cops to arrest them.
The current interference law requires a witness to physically interfere.
Someone is recording a Cop 20 feet away. THe cop notices them, doesn't like it and starts walking towards that person thereby reducing the distance and once they hit less than 8 feet, boom it is illegal even though the person did not move. This is what will happen when someone is recording a Cop and the Cop is pissed at them. Now what ?
A cop walking toward them from 20ft away won't shift the locus of the law enforcement activity (unless he's dragging the prisoner, I suppose) and this should be ruled out as infringement - it would be a ridiculous stretch to say "the mere presence of a cop means law enforcement activity is occurring".
Sure, you might be found innocent (on the filming charge), but that's not the point - the cops wanted to stop you from filming, and they won. They might have even seized your phone and deleted the footage, and you have no recourse thanks to qualified immunity [1]. Just you getting thrown in jail and missing work could mean getting fired, being unable to make rent, getting evicted, etc. It creates a chilling effect, which is exactly what they want.
> It's also in violation of the 1st amendment, as many of these pro-policing laws tend to be.
It is, but sadly, SCOTUS will likely find some insane argument to uphold it.
Having lived in 5 states including NY and CA, I'd call those two shitholes before I called AZ a shithole.
I 100% support this law. Police should not live in fear of being recorded out of context when they're doing their duty to protect the citizenry.
https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house....
Then why should I? If being recorded is such a terrible fate, let's make it illegal to record anyone, right? No? thought so.
Shouldn't citizens be allowed and even encouraged to shine a bright light on their abuses?
I think the new concept here is that he doesn't NEED a reason for within 8 feet for bystanders. Just the proximity is justifiable grounds for him to tell bystanders they have to stop or back up beyond 8 ft.