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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can watch a thousand videos if you care to and it’s eye opening. I made it a habit of watching the body cam footage of shootings in the news and it’s almost always clearly justified, though I do understand that there is a minority viewpoint that doesn’t consider any deadly shooting justified, even if it’s of an armed individual engaged in a crime.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/18/white-hou...
Please tell me this is sarcasm.
https://apnews.com/article/us-news-ap-top-news-racial-injust...
The GGP explicitly mentioned it's not an issue right now, and linked to a news story that was published in 2022.
Of course if people were operating purely on the numbers, the thought of death by cop or school shooter would barely even register compared to the time thinking about by death from poor diet and exercise or from traffic accidents or consumption of tobacco/alcohol/drugs.
Personally I worry about police violence in part because it's one of the things the individual has the least control over. I can fire back at a robber, I can choose a better diet, I can send my kid to a school with better security policies, I can shoot someone trying to set fire to my house, I can choose not to drink/smoke. I can pick family and friends to hold close that I've personally screened before exposing them to my wife and child.
What I can't do is pick what police officer shows up or hassles me, and then If I'm forced to defend myself from a bad officer it's a near certainty I'll be executed or imprisoned assuming I survive the encounter. My only real recourse is to raise societal concerns to reform the police. Because I have very little individualized recourse unlike the much more common dangers (I can choose not to smoke for instance), it becomes a big concern over something that should appear rather little.
If you have any doubts about some of these issues in Arizona, by all means feel free to witness the anecdotal data point of the execution of Daniel Shaver in what can only be described as a psychotic version of Simon Says. The system even saw fit to rehire the officer that killed him just to give him a pension for "PTSD" from shooting an innocent man.
police action is in the top 10 leading causes of death for several demographics
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.
There's a new misdemeanor for 8' or less.
I went to the original text, pasted here. That language is NOT OK. This law does NOT explicitly allow.
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.