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.
> 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.
In other words this law targets bystanders, i.e. concerned fellow citizens. It probably does this to avoid the trivial standing that recording as a bystander offers, meaning that the limitation there is more of "we think we can get away with this" and less "we think this is the right stopping point."
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.
1. About to smack you in the head to save their brother
2. Trying to make a nice video recording
Adrenaline is flowing, and you have 1.5 seconds to decide. Which way do you guess?
The law seems reasonable in concept. Lots of flaws in the language, as is being pointed out in this discussion (although sometimes incorrectly). What bugs me most is: "C. this section does not establish a right or authorize any person to make a video recording of law enforcement activity."
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.
Your bigger picture, though, is smack-on. By the time you hit the legal system -- criminal or civil -- you've already lost. A typical case will bankrupt most people in the US. Thing is, one can always come up with an excuse to sue / prosecute someone. There's a deeper problem there which this law doesn't change.
I'd rather address root causes.
What if a bystander records 10 feet away, but a second person stands in between and records 5 feet away? Has the area of law enforcement activity expanded to include the first bystander because of the second bystander is breaking a law?
I guess bystanders who didn’t bring their tape measure can just run the risk of recording and let the courts shake it out, right?
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.
This sounds awfully close to the bullshit line I've gotten from cops on several different occasions that I've been stopped and questioned, "If you haven't done anything wrong, you wouldn't be nervous."
I don't know if this law is a good one or not, but people (cop or otherwise) will always be uncomfortable when there's a serious imbalance of power.
That is, they should only feel “comfortable” in any situation and willing to carry out any action if they feel like they have the support of the local citizens (see also the Peelian principles [1]).
In that vein this seems like another regressive step.
Do you think a crowd of angry people are experts in proper police procedure? Is the mob ever objective about what they see? Is a crowd going to understand that when somebody is hopped up on meth/cocaine that maybe they’re going to be hella strong and hard to take down and it’s going to take some actual force to stop them?
You’ll have angry people screaming bloody murder regardless of whether or not the police are doing the wrong thing in some cases.
I agree, scrutiny on the police is good, but a mob of people screaming from a few feet away during an arrest isn’t the thing to bring about a safe outcome for anybody and I can easily see that happening and being something that needlessly escalates a situation.
If you see somebody getting arrested and are concerned about their safety, I’d totally say filming the encounter from a safe distance is justified and a good idea, I just don’t think a crowd of people going a few feet away is good.
Downvote me if you want, I don’t care. I’m just recommending what I think would likely be best for a safe police encounter
I hope people don't downvote you for expressing an incorrect opinion, but I do hope that you understand that the purpose of this law is 100% about preventing scrutiny. The angry mob scenario that you describe is fiction used by police officers to prevent you from looking into their job performance.
Having a crowd of people trying to scream a few feet away from the cops trying to apprehend a resisting person is a recipe for disaster.
the public doesn't know the full situation, they don't have police training, the video might be cut or not capture everything the police saw/heard.
police should be held accountable for sure, but we need to let them do their jobs without villainizing everything they do.
Yes, philosophically it's different because when the police say it (nothing to hide), they are trying to violate our civil rights through trickery or whatnot. In this context, it's the citizens making sure the government actors (police) are doing what they are legally required / allowed to do. The government run by the people shouldn't be hiding anything from the people, unless it's absolutely necessary. How can a country run democratically if the voters are in the dark and can't find out what's going on?
Maybe a bad example, but I don't expect non-programmers to be able to review my code. I don't know how we can expect non-police to properly review police behavior unless it's outrageously wrong.
We empower police to harass, detain, and use deadly force against the public.
This power has to be counterbalanced by accountability. If the way they use that power cannot stand up against public scrutiny, then they shouldn't have it.
> but we need to let them do their jobs without villainizing everything they do.
We wouldn't do that if they didn't so consistently fail at doing their jobs, or at being held accountable for those failures.
Scrutiny on police isn't the issue. I'd mandate for cops and cop cars to be equipped with a dozen+ cameras if I could and it should be legal to always record cops in public.
The issue is a loud crowd forming around an already tough situation and making it worse for everybody. Think about what happens if you have 30 people shouting loudly around a guy resisting arrest and jostling for position trying to get a video for their social media and it's a recipe for disaster. Cops can't communicate with each other and the guy being arrested can't hear commands. It makes an already bad situation more stressful and easier to go wrong.
I get wanting to monitor cops (I'm 100% supporting that) but you can't have a crowd forming 5 feet from a tussle shouting and expect things to be improved.
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. "
Sousveillance should be a right of every single citizen. This right should be established and authorized.
In case it’s new to anyone else:
But for an even less theoretical example, state laws have explicitly legalized marijuana, for instance. If you’ve been in a state before and after (I have, as have most Americans) you saw your freedoms increase (and restrictions decrease) as a result.
I understand what you're saying, but this doesn't establish some kind of right to be within 8' of an officer and probably doesn't change the evaluation of most situations substantially.
Officers have a whole lot of reasons to want to keep the public farther back- Tueller drills, if I were scuffling with some dude I'd not want a potentially-hostile observer 10' away, standard training about perimeters in static situations, etc. Those don't evaporate, and they generally can be argued for even if the real motivation is preventing filming.
> But for an even less theoretical example, state laws have explicitly legalized marijuana, for instance.
Yah, I'm not interested in arguing the philosophical question of whether all laws are in some sense prescriptive-- nor of whether removing past restrictions counts as adding a law. I just don't think the AZ public is better off or more able to film with this new law.
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.
So the law defining it as 8’ just gave everyone 17’ feet of freedom.
Also state laws can legalize something that was federally illegal, sort of. See marijuana legalization. (This is really technical and rests on the commerce clause and is debatable, but what’s not debatable is people can now open up a shop and sell weed without ending up in a federal prison whereas before they could not, so freedom has increased.)
A law, but not this law, which explicitly does not grant any right.
At nine feet away, this law has no bearing and the earlier precedent should still apply.
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?
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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.