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Comment by elmerfud | Hacker News Reader

If the police begin to charge at you because you are recording you now become party to the police interaction and you can record under the 8-ft distance. I know on emotional issues like police interactions logic is hard to follow but logic is still a thing.

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Logic didn't seem to have been a thing in the Daniel Shaver shooting, which happened in this state. I thought the bodycam footage was a pretty clear illustration of a terrified and confused unarmed victim doing his best to follow unclear instructions being shot by a cop who, in the end, clearly had some facts wrong. And the cop was then acquitted, got re-hired and given a pension because he had a disabling case of PTSD from the incident. Imagine what a state like that could get away with if video wasn't even public, or how easily a cop could get away with intimidating people who are even 8+ feet away.

I wouldn't be quick to trust this law if I lived in Arizona and tended to be harassed by police.

All they need to do is claim you are interfering with their law enforcement activity and they can say you can't record your own interaction.

I would consider it barely logical to think the cop approaching you specifically so they can claim you're in the way of their operations and gain an excuse to stop your filming (https://youtu.be/VWHOz5sLk-c https://youtu.be/L7lHeRBgs9U https://youtu.be/HEL8CdV9HUQ) would suddenly stop because:

"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.

The idea that the police will follow the letter of the law during an interaction seems naive given what we've seen of police behavior.

Except when you were recording you weren't party to the police interaction. So you were breaking the law. Can you follow that logic?

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