New laws trying to criminalize filming cops
slate.com
slate.com
Wow... this is just... The police have a monopoly on the legalized use of violence. Police carry at minimum one deadly weapon (a handgun), but usually have multiple so-called less-than-lethal weapons such as tasters and batons. And often more lethal weapons such as a shotgun or assault rifle in their car. But they are so fragile that a smirk can intimidate them?
I'm not sure how someone wearing body armor and carrying multiple weapons that can incapacitate or kill someone can be intimidated by a smile.
They're wannabe military tough-guys with laughably worse training and culture, much of which tells them they should be pee-pants scared all the time (seriously—folks very-successfully sell some wacko training courses to cops; or, just look at the disconnected-from-reality-and-common-sense mythology they've built up, within their ranks, around fentanyl). That's the best-case explanation for that behavior. Sometimes they're literal machismo-fueled gangsters (yes, literally, as in, "involved in organized crime") and will punch down all day long to make sure they're feared.
[EDIT] Actually, school districts suffer from some similar problems, as far as being sold all kinds of ineffective and wrong-headed wacko programs and training, and too-frequently ending up corrupt little petty empires (OMG, the amount of money superintendents siphon off to pals...)—I think in both cases we may have opted for a level of devolution that's tipped at least a bit too far toward local autonomy, and could perhaps benefit from something like a professional management/officer corp that gets re-assigned every few years, like officers in the military, to prevent empire-building and make corruption and deviation into wacko-land much less likely. Though, I think that kind of thing's on exactly nobody's radar, so don't expect it to ever happen.
[EDIT EDIT] I mean obviously the problem's more severe and grave with cops, it just occurred to me that a lot of the problems in both spheres might be for organizationally-similar reasons.
I often hear stories where they're checking out a house that has supposed drug use (or similar) and they play it up like they're a marine in a war zone, going to have a man-down shoot out. In reality, they knock on the door, a very high college student answers, they provide the warrant, search through a house of strung out people, and they do their thing.
That being said, our area has a lot of rural patrols and we have had a few incidents where people fire back at the cops on their acreage and it turns into an incident. However, even when dealing with "crazy Billy with a shotgun", they're 2 people, who then call in backup, also have a shotgun, and are otherwise armed. The power dynamic still favours the cops even in that extreme situation.
I feel like there are a lot of rare incidents that get repeated over and over within the police force that keep the cops on edge and further the belief of a need for more and more budget increases for more and more military-style equipment.
For instance, our local city police force just bragged on twitter that they bought a modified troop carrier and a ramming tank for SWAT-like break and enter operations. I'm not sure I want my police owning a literal tank when they already have me outgunned with assault rifles, shot guns, sidearms, and sheer numbers.
By the way, this is in Canada. I'm not even talking about the more extreme stuff going on South of the border.
Our neighbor pushed for an investigation repeatedly (which would have taken her off the job until complete, since she was the commanding officer on the scene), but it was denied. She was fired shortly after. She is filing a lawsuit to get her job back and the family of the police brutality victim is also suing. I hope they both win, but I do worry about our neighbor's life expectancy if she gets her job back.
The tech industry has strong incentives to invade privacy, push inflammatory content, and for otherwise good people to look the other way. Nevertheless, I am opposed to broad brush denigration of employees in the sector, many of which do push back in quiet ways against dark patterns, even if not enough. I feel the same way about law enforcement. The biggest difference between tech and law enforcement is that police work involves stakes that are higher in the short-term and more visible, but tech is far more dangerous in the long-term through, e.g., inflammatory social media, persistent surveillance, etc.
I have a family member in law enforcement. I asked them this very question. What do you need this monster vehicle for?
Their answer was they can approach a target house and communicate with the occupant without putting officers in harms way (as much as a bullet-proof ramming armored vehicle keeps its passengers safe ). The alternative is officers are much closer to the threat/danger, which makes for a situation which can escalate very quickly to deadly force.
Every time they shoot someone after serving a warrant when the subject of the warrant isn't there, it just blows my mind. Do they really just get warrant signed, then roll up and break in? No surveillance?
Who the hell wants to go into a closed room if you could just wait for them to walk outside and swoop in on them when they are in view.
But I guess if you have the gear, you must use it.
The fun is to be had in the kicking in of doors, yelling at terrified residents, and so on.
Not to step out and defend cops too much but this narrative is unfair...I believe the right to bear arms includes guns and we pay for that as a society. The ones who pay the most are LE. They primarily have to deal with the worst elements of society and the most volatile of individuals. I don't envy the job. I would be scared all the time too.
Chances of me being shot at work are near zero. Chances that a street cop is shot are relatively high. However, they don't take too kindly to allowing threats to themselves or other officers to go unchallenged and are primarily interested with maintaining a sense of being in control of any situation they step into, as a matter of human psychology. People tend not to fuck with the people in charge, even if they don't see weapons. This is how the safety element is framed and it's not intrinsically foolish.
This naturally conflicts with various Constitutional rights, even in theory, so we get these crazy cases where it's a matter of reputation. You mess with the cops, it can come back at you. Americans expect, that almost everywhere, this holds true. This sounds like a lot of power structures in modern society, does it not? as bamfly pointed out.
This is simply not true. Cops die via gunfire in sub-100 numbers annually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_office...
Might want to look at gunfire injuries that are not deaths. There is also the issue of how this happens despite training, their own weapons, armor, etc that are daily requirements. The general populace would probably see better survival rates with these things as well, right?
It's more than a little biased to just point at deaths.
It's less biased than your argument, which pointed at no evidence.
The 50,000 dead annually via firearms would appear to be paying more. (Even when you adjust for relative populations; 800k cops with 50 deaths, 300M Americans with 50,000).
> Might want to look at gunfire injuries that are not deaths.
I went looking and was unable to find any particularly reliable sources on police-specific firearm injuries. I did find that cops are at higher risk of firearm death via suicide than via suspects as an additional data point.
Perhaps they could do with some therapy and anger management in addition to all the armor and weaponry?
It's extremely clear that in an average encounter a civilian is much more likely to be shot and kileld or injured by police than the other way around. Gun violence against police is extremely rare.
Now, police officers are obviously going to be involved in a lot more of these encounters than the average person, and there are fewer of them, which I think is what you're getting at, but this is valid from an "in a given encounter, which party is more-justified in fearing for their physical safety?" sort of way.
uh no, school-age children (including elementary school children) are the ones who pay the most for our gun-happy culture.
Another question would be, of those 61 deaths to gun violence, how many were because somebody was further instigated into a shootout BECAUSE of the confrontations with police? What about friendly fire?
If police are quick to resort to violence, why should the people not be?
[0] - https://nleomf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2021-EOY-Fatal...
Cab drivers are #1 last time I looked. Pizza delivery close. Cops didn't even make the top 10.
Roughly 100k Americans per year die from drug overdoses, 30k from car accidents, while only 1k are killed by police.
And while everyone knows cancer and heart disease are the leading causes of death, few people realize they kill significant numbers of young Americans, more than 10k per year.
Even if you limit the discussion to violent crime, you're far more likely to be killed by someone you know than by an officer.
Although this is quite concerning:
> about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police [1]
Also:
> Black people more than three times as likely as white people to be killed during a police encounter [2]
Also interesting to note:
> The average lifetime odds of being killed by police are about 1 in 2,000 for men and about 1 in 33,000 for women. [1]
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1821204116
[2] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/blacks-wh...
> For law enforcement, that rate was about 13 deaths per 100,000 officers. [1]
> overall maternal mortality rate of 32.9 per 100,000 live births in 2021 > 23.8 in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019. [2]
> The maternal mortality rate for 2021 was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with a rate of 23.8 in 2020 and 20.1 in 2019 (Table). [3]
Who knew fishing and hunter is so dangerous? > Fishing and hunting workers had the highest fatality rate at 132 deaths per 100,000 workers. [1]
[1] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-police-officers-die-i...
[2] https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/maternal-mortality-on-the-...
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2021...
A lot of them are ex-military which is why every incident is treated like a mini-fallujah. There should be better psychological evaluation of police. It's harder to get a gun as a citizen anywhere in the US than it is to become a cop.The very least we can do is treat them to a far higher standard than we do citizens given that they have a monopoly on violence and qualified immunity. But that would run contrary to their purpose. Cops aren't there to protect you and me. They are the HR of the local, state, and national Government. They're there to protect the interests of the state.
I'm normally the last one to be licking boots when it comes to discussions of the role of law enforcement in our society. With that said, this is hyperbole and obviously falsifiable. There are lots of places in the US where it is very easy to get a gun and at least somewhat difficult to become a cop.
Some cops have bloodlust and/or are in cop-gangs that have initiation-rituals that demand commiting murder before you can join.
1. Grand-jury-style civilian oversight of cop malpractice.
2. Make sure bad cops can't get reemployed as cops in the city 15 miles away.
3. Require cops get malpractice insurance as a condition of employment. Instead of paying out of the city's treasury, insurance will payout if the cop gets sued successfully
As a gun owner, I can tell you this is laughably false. I can't go into a police station and walk out as a cop 30 minutes later.
The impression I get of the impression other ex-military folks have of veteran-cops, from the veterans I know, is that other veterans tend to regard cop veterans as very-likely to be a two-years-and-out sort (or similar) who jockeyed a desk state-side—and probably poorly at that—or maybe did go to a warzone but never fired a shot in anger, but act like they were In The Shit and can't wait to tell everyone they meet they're a veteran. I.e. not especially good soldiers, the kind who are in for the wrong reasons and had the wrong temperament & attitude for military service.
I'll never forget when Trump called in the military (reservists, I wanna say?) to guard DC during the protests. I stayed up that evening watching various live feeds. They looked so very chill. Relaxed stance with the rifles, not seeming at all tense even when totally surrounded by protesters. Didn't start no shit, and there wasn't no shit. Didn't "kettle" people, didn't act threatening, didn't posture and project an attitude like they thought were the Spartans from 300, and everything was fine. Armed like SWAT (rather, SWAT arms like them, but you get what I mean), humvees and shit, but it was such a different vibe. They projected an aura of authority without acting threatening. That's what confident power & professionalism look like. Go figure.
They do a hard job, protecting the public, for little pay. Every day they leave their home not knowing if some nut-job is going to try to kill them that day.
This is the truest view I know of.
I'm sad for root cause, but society seems to be increasingly paying for symptoms that the powers that be refuse to admit are even present.
It's part of a wider pattern of institutional breakdown and the loss of trust in institutions.
Right or wrong, call it what it is. Don't drop info off the event, and focus on one part of it.
And if someone has a right not to be harassed, when doing their job in an office, why doesn't a cop, when doing their job on the street?
Note, I said "doing their job", not "doing it wrong".
For damned sure there are bad cops. But by god, there are a load of good ones, and some of them spend all day, dealing with people at their absolute worst, taking crap you or I wouldn't be able to handle for 5 minutes.
Please show precedent for anyone being prosecuted for rendering an “intimidating smirk” in any other context. Or filming someone working in public.
Hate crime is a fucking stupid term; a crime is a crime is a crime. That said, if targeting one group deserves special treatment, then targeting any group should get the same. Equal application of the law, y'know?
Edit: It also looks like they were NOT charged with a hate crime for vandalizing a pride crosswalk.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/04/14/fac...
This thread is a menagerie of legal misunderstanding and buzzword abuse.
You don’t think general vandalism and targeted vandalism should be handled differently?
Also, citation needed!
Is a crime a crime? Why are there first degree murder, second degree murder, and voluntary manslaughter? They are all the act of killing someone intentionally, with the only difference being the person's thought process and motivation. Most crimes involve taking into consideration the reasons for the act as part of what makes a crime a crime. So, hate crimes are not some outlier in how crimes are defined and differentiated.
> if targeting one group deserves special treatment, then targeting any group should get the same. Equal application of the law, y'know?
Hate crimes (and protected classes in general) are not “one group” nor are they randomly picked. At the federal level, they are race, religion, ethnicity, disability, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity, which basically fall into two different categories; what you are and what you believe. None of them are for what job you happen to choose to do. The “special treatment” statements is particularly fallacious, since most hate crime laws came in response systematic violence committed against these groups and them not receiving equal protection under the law. We don’t have anti lynching laws to give black people special treatment.
Put another way, why is it better if I murder someone because I hate vegans, or meat eaters, or poor people, or rich people, or car drivers or pedestrians than someone of a protected group?
Adding new laws doesn't make them be enforced any better, so I don't buy the "systemic" argument. Either someone is tried and found guilty or not.
If people started attacking other people for being Gluten-free, and the government saw that there was a large amount of cases, they would create regulations trying to curtail the amount of crime targeting those people. They are creating regulation with the intention of lowering crime targeting a small group because it is atypical.
Fortunately lawyers can not win trials with that argument in particular.
> Equal application of the law, y'know?
The context here is that we have a group (the Police) already enjoys special privileges (like monopoly on the use of force legally) and want to expand those privileges even further. I don't think your argument works the way you seem to think it works.
Without hate crime legislation, it would be easy for bigots to harass people via what the law would see as minor crimes.
So I'm not necessarily opposed to getting rid of hate crime legislation. However, we would need some other way to protect people.
The concept of mens rea is not new, it’s a vital factor in the defining, charging, convicting (and dismissing and acquitting) of crimes.
Of course mindset matters. You don't murder out of love, generally. I'm sure a few have. Putting these artificial rails on it, saying that it only matters for race or whatnot, that's the silly part and it was bound to be broken through. And so it has.
Prejudice, to be dangerous, requires power. Prejudice + Power = Danger. In a world of of 95% Martians and 5% Venusians, if a Martian calls all Venusians corrupt and evil, it's a danger - the Venusians may be at risk; their future - career, safety, status, etc. - depends on the goodwill of the Martians. If a Venusian does the same about Martians, it's easily dismissed because the Martians can continue to live and study safely.
IOW, punching up and punching down are entirely different things. Criticizing the government is punching up; criticizing (e.g.) homeless people is punching down.
Office workers don't have a monopoly on violence. Unfortuntely there are quite a few examples of cops treating anything other than obsequience as harassment.
The problem with good police officers is that if you actually try and stand up to the institution of policing, your buddies will throw you in the psych ward on false premises and make a challenge coin to commemorate doing it.
I disagree with your "some bad apples" analogy though. That would be easy to fix relative to the problem we have which is systemic. "Good" cops are in the exact same situation as the bad ones. Policing is required yet fundamentally causing the problems at the same time.
>> And if someone has a right not to be harassed, when doing their job in an office, why doesn't a cop, when doing their job on the street?
As stated in the article all 50 states already have laws on the books that prevent interference with police while doing their job. If you are in a public facing role like a police officer you most certainly do not have the right to being shielded from observation and interaction - that's a huge part of the job and probably part of the solution too.
Is it not dangerous enough to give officers pretty much unlimited authority, and expect the people around them to forfeit their first amendment right?
Police officers, being enforcers of the law, cannot reasonably be protected from people exercising their rights.
There are plenty of other professions that have tough jobs that I absolutely wouldn't want to do. But that doesn't mean I'm going to start letting garbage collectors get away with murder
For sure there's bad people, but most people are good. Those people that give cops crap are just some bad apples.
Remember that this is the age wherein people are getting arrested for destroying LGBT, BLM, etc signs and art. To think that police won't get away with using a standard that approaches that isn't realistic.
Do you mean vandalizing and/or destroying other people's property or pulling a sign away from someone else and destroying it, or do you mean being charged with assault for destroying their own LGBT sign? Because those are night and day different things. I would love to see a source if it is the latter, since you can legally burn the American flag, but you can't burn someone else's American flag.
Also, to clarify, it should be difficult or impossible to charge someone for assault simply for destroying property. But according to how I understand assault laws, and leaving room for jurisdictional interpretation, if you do it while doing something else that can be read as intimidation then you could be vulnerable to an assault charge.
Whether or not the other person is actually intimidated won't ever be considered. Cop or civilian. The intention is what will be charged.
This is a inaccurate comparison. She didn't destroy any else's property
[1] https://www.opb.org/article/2022/10/30/eugene-drag-queen-sto...
It's pretty sad that a civilian goes to jail for not knowing the law but a cop can make up laws that don't exist, arrest you for those laws and nothing can be done about it. Sure you can sue the city but that just means the residents pay for the cops ignorance and life goes on as usual for the cop.
That's why you often hear"assault & battery." "Assault" is causing someone to (reasonably) feel in danger; while "battery" is the actual act.
The event in question was not someone telling a cop to F off. There are plenty of chargeable variations within the gamut of your polar examples.
Black people and LGBT people are protected classes. Law enforcement is a job. People are getting arrested for hate crimes, the definition of which is a crime motivated by desire to cause harm to a protected class or members of a protected class.
You're saying it's unrealistic to think police won't get away with trying to apply protected class protections to an occupation. That's an extraordinary claim whether it's true or false.
If it's true, police can defacto make up laws. If it's false, it's reasonable to expect that police should have some oversight that prevents overreach.
This thread, more than others on HN, fatally suffers from abuse of jargon.
Your last two sentences are word salad. Between the double negative and hyperbole I have zero idea what you are trying to say.
You're describing hate crimes and saying police are trying to treat actions against them the same way they treat hate crimes. It's not hyperbole to say that amounts to them making up laws.
It's audacious of you to defend unreadable grammar. An indecipherable double negative is word salad, as is the referential sentence that follows it. Again, because the sentence that it references is indecipherable. I'm not a pedant. I virtually never correct on grammar. I never use correction as a rhetorical device. I legitimately can't interpret your writing. Fix your sentence, if you choose to.
As long as laws have existed, their scope has been argued in court. To wit, we have strong equal protections law in this Nation.
As anti-protected-classes law and constitutional law activists have long argued, laws of this type will be used beyond their intended narrow scope and across the political isle. Also, see speech censorship efforts.
None of that means that law enforcement is conjuring laws. The part of this that you dislike was always inherent in the creation of hate crime enhancements. And, in part, this potential is why many have always seen the notion of protected classes as a terrible idea.
You're complaining now. Wait until they fully reverse the law to only apply to them. At that point, it will still be the fault of those who advocated for this unconstitutional nonsense to begin with.
Is this true? I thought killing for self defense is legal.
> For the same reasons, "monopoly" does not mean that only the government may use physical force, but that the state is that human community that successfully claims for itself to be the only source of legitimacy for all physical coercion or adjudication of coercion. For example, the law might permit individuals to use force in defense of one's self or property, but this right derives from the state's authority.
First let me say I'm not on the side of these kinds of laws. We can't be passing laws giving special privileges to (or removing privileges from) a particular group of people.
"Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law." Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) [1]
It seems that more and more Americans feel intimidated by just about anything nowadays (microagressions, etc.). So much so that Hate Crimes and Safe Spaces are now a thing. People have lost jobs due to Cancel Culture fueled hate-mobs.
I don't buy into class warfare, in my worldview police are just as fragile (no more, no less) as any other human. Holding a gun in your hand doesn't make you any less fragile, just more hazardous/dangerous. I'm sure there are plenty of people that regularly carry guns, people that (based on class/race/etc) would be considered extremely fragile. The gun doesn't change that distinction.
Why wouldn't police officers be afforded the same kinds of protections from microagressions that are given to other people in this country? Doesn't a police officer have a right to a safe working environment, and aggression free interactions with 'customers' (citizens), and laws saying as much? If the answer is patriarchy or 'whiteness' (whatever that means) etc. then this is just more of the same toxic in group / out group stuff used to justify holding power over others.
Is a hard working police officer allowed to be offended by songs such as "Fuck The Police"? Is that "hate speech"? Should the creators of that song be cancelled for being filled with hate directed at a particular "out group"?
More and more I am bothered by the kinds of "distinctions" between people we're making in this country. You know, the kind based on race, class, education, wealth, etc. that just separates people into "this kind" and "that kind". This "this kind" gets special treatment, while "that kind" is afforded no protections, and is persecuted (don't get me started on the people who say "its OK they deserve it").
Laws like this are profoundly anti-American, going against the kinds of values we've collectively upheld for over 200 years.
"Fuck the police" indeed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_colorblindness
These are special protections afforded only to police officers. Normal people are protected from hate speech about their race or gender but cops are protected from "hate speech" about their race, gender, or profession. It's not hate speech to say "Fuck Lawyers" but it is to say "Fuck the Police".
I agree, I'm against these kinds of laws (see previous post).
I agree with you, there are special protections given police offers, these are related to the power they are authorized by the state to wield that regular citizens cannot. I can sue you if you break down my door. But a kidnapper can't sue the SWAT team that broke down their door in the course of saving the kidnapped person inside.
Meanwhile, related to civil-rights issues, and workplace related issues, "Police Officers" are still just "normal people" and should have the same basic rights as normal people. Are you suggesting they shouldn't?
A person cannot choose their race, sex, sexuality, gender identity, able-bodiedness, etc, that is why discriminating against them based on those grounds is inherently unfair and thus not allowed.
No one is born a cop. Someone chooses to join the police, with an understanding of what the job represents and entails. If they choose to join the police when the police are widely considered corrupt and looked down upon by society (or at least some parts of it), that's on them.
Anti-discrimination and hate speech laws are about ensuring the people are not mistreated for a fundamental characteristic of who they are. No one has cop DNA.
What? There are no such things as criminal hate speech or am I misunderstanding 1A?
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1016431004/a-woman-is-facing-...
In both cases, it seems the justice system is being weaponized to punish those via a lengthy judicial process. Hopefully the defendants will sue for civil rights violations.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/what-does-in-minec...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States (Note: this case has been overturned, but it took 50 years)
Look, what you reactionaries call "woke" and are so afraid of is the mere pointing out of structural racist shit. There is literally no legal force behind any woke policies. Governments everywhere are more conservative than ever and the supreme court is absolutely locked tight against these policies.
"going against the kinds of values we've collectively upheld for over 200 years." This is one of the most positively blinkered ass sentences. We had literal chattel slavery for nearly 100 years of that history and in that time displaced by force huge parts of the native population. Half the country didn't want to end slavery so badly that they went to war over it and after they lost they did almost everything they could get away with to continue to enforce racial segregation and hierarchy.
Look, I'm find if you want to hold the absurd belief that there isn't ant structural racism contemporaneously, although this is obviously wrong, but to suggest that the US has "always held" anything remotely like contemporary racial egalitarian ideals is absolutely wrong.
"There is literally no legal force behind any woke policies" - Politicians in Michigan have been attempting to pass a law to make harassing someone by misgendering them a felony.
There are plenty of laws and policies protecting groups of people that have nothing to do with "structural racist shit". If you're looking for racism everywhere and in everything, you're probably going to find it. I find that people who focus on race and class constantly, also end up exhibiting the most racist and classist views and behaviors.
Look at how doctors handle unreasonable patients, or how people working in service handle angry customers. Even when people are provocative or rude, the expectation is to use your skills and intelligence to navigate the situation with grace.
In the case of (American) police, not only do they fail to de-escalate tense situations, they routinely escalate those situations into far more dangerous and violent ones, and are allowed to shoot and kill anyone they deem scary.
Yes it would be nice if Americans at large could be taught to act with grace and humility to those serving them, but no amount of microaggressions justifies murdering someone.
It is not "cancel culture", just good old fashioned "consequences".
I can't tell when it's "cancel culture" or "consequences" anymore. Word seems interchangeable nowadays in the media.
Seems like when it happens to the in-group it's called cancel culture, but when it's experienced by the out-group it's just shrugged away as consequences.
The point I'm making is I'm tired of this kind of separation of people into groups. Bad behavior leading to "consequences" for one group should also be considered bad behavior for the other group, which doesn't get to complain about the same "consequences" as well.
And it does.
This whole "cancel culture" debate is and always has been just a poor attempt at propaganda.
There is no such thing as "cancel culture", just this generational trend of using the word "cancel" interchangeably with "boycott". Boycotts have existed since the dawn of time, but there is no good way of personalizing a rival group as "boycotters", and that is the reason why we have this stupid "cancel culture" term.
Now, there are a myriad of reasons why a cop should not be treated like any other individual, first of all being that they are legally and factually protected from facing many of the consequences of the same bad behaviour that would put most other people behind bars.
But specifically and putting it into context, isn't having a government sponsored, paramilitary law enforcement group, that is immune to many law precepts by design, dangerous enough already?
In a world where cops have all their current privileges and conserve all their rights as individuals, there is no room for first amendment rights. There cannot be.
You're so close to understanding.
This has always happened. When you have opinions people find objectionable it tends to make you less popular with those people. For some reason a few years ago we decided that if these ideas are coming from a particular group it's now a special thing deserving of a new term.
It's a dumb term. If you want to have soft power you need to not say all your vile opinions out loud, that's how the human animal has worked for millions of years.
Because I could disagree with someone about something dull and say something like "hotdogs are crap", and I think my job would be pretty safe.
And where is that fabled "mob" here?
When I would go to bars, I'd go to gay bars. Because I could just be myself and not worry about running into the violence in the clubs that catered to teens.
A safe space is about finding a place where you find yourself comfortable to be your authentic self. They've always existed, even if they weren't called safe spaces -- or castigated as part of a culture war.
As an aside, I probably wouldn't use dicta from Plessy v. Ferguson, one of the worst decisions in US history, to buttress any argument. The constitution was never color-blind. It didn't explicitly reference color, but it didn't have to--everyone knew what it was talking about.
> Why wouldn't police officers be afforded the same kinds of protections from microagressions that are given to other people in this country.
Microaggressions are one thing. Criminalizing microaggressions is quite another.
> Doesn't a police officer have a right to a safe working environment, and aggression free interactions with 'customers' (citizens), and laws saying as much?
No. No cop goes into the profession expecting puppies and rainbows. Going into potentially unsafe environments with potentially aggressive people is what they signed up for.
As a retail employee, you have to put up with microaggressions from customers. It's just part of dealing with the public. And those microaggressions aren't criminalized. Why do cops get to criminalize their feelings getting hurt?
That's not how law enforcement works at all. What you are suggesting is that cops have less protections than civilians. Putting on a badge doesn't remove assault legal protections.
Being a cop enhances your chances of being in a volatile situation. But you also have more leeway in how you address that violence, and have the backing of legislative branches (via legal enhancements such as assault on a peace officer) and the judiciary (via qualified immunity, among other things).
Wyoming 69.9% West Virginia 68.6% Oklahoma 65.4% North Dakota 65.1% Idaho 63.8% Arkansas 62.4% Kentucky 62.1% Alabama 62% South Dakota 61.8% Tennessee
It's not in the top 10
In slums, drug cartels found enough of people willing to throw the life away. And as much as they are able to deal drugs, there is no symmetry between them and state. The Dead bodies just pile up.
Armed population does absolutely nothing except lynching here and there. And even those lynching happened with approval from state.
If the gangs wanted to make a stand against the state, they could. They would need to take and defend their territory while increasing their numbers, likely via kidnapping and child recruitment.
That is a pure fantasy. You know how I know? Because gangs historically and worldwide occasionally tried. This fails all the time.
My original point was that there is utility in having an armed populace because it requires government agents to evaluate the risk of infringing actions more heavily. Even if the citizens lose, nobody wants to be a casualty in they're resistance.
It succeeds plenty. The list of successful coups by paramilitary groups is loooooong.
Hell, the Nazis started essentially as a gang.
In the long run? Nah. Eventually the APCs roll in.
It's a fantasy. And it's destructive for the community to replace rule of law with rule of whoever-has-more-guns.
Give me a break, them having guns in no way prevented LE from doing what they wanted.
There is actually nothing contradictory about either set of positions though. Guns don't protect you from cops. Guns are power and violence, and who we consider to have rightful access to it. So are police.
And no, "we" don't get to consider who has lawful or rightful access to firearms - unless you got to vote for the last class of police cadets at your local precinct.
There is a clear development for at least 20 years in the US of more policing, more police surveillance, more sense of a right or prerogative of police to make their own decisions about violence without oversight or consequence.
These changes are for the most part supported by the people who self-identify as enthusiastic gun owners, or people who value their right to own and carry guns. I don't want to try to guess what constraints you may have on the definition of tyrannical here, but this confluence of forces is a negative for the material expression of rights.
What you can do on paper isn't very important when someone can shoot you for doing it and get away with that. That someone may be a cop in some cirumstances and they may be a lawful gun owner in others. This makes them natural allies in many political contexts because of that simple fact.
Without defining sensible gun control and pragmatic measures, I'm not sure that statement is agreeable.
We’ve normalized the idea that words and subtle actions can be micro-aggressive and thus are violent. That’s literally the logic these days and instead of fighting it most people happily jumped onboard entertaining idiotic rhetoric in the name of social justice. So I’m not surprised at all to see this stuff try to make it’s way into laws.
Your responsibility as a citizen is to maintain a fair and just playing field. You don't get to cancel others for their word-violence and then turn around and complain when your peers try to put a stop yours. Time to grow up.
> You don't get to cancel others for their word-violence and then turn around and complain when your peers try to put a stop yours. Time to grow up.
Hoo boy. This shouldn't need to be said, but there is absolutely no equivalence whatsoever between an individuals right to refuse to associate with "Stop the Steal" people, and LEOs being entitled to murder whoever they feel like without repercussion.
Is this sarcasm? The mental gymnastics here are so insane I have to question your sincerity in posting this.
> words and subtle actions can be micro-aggressive and thus are violent
This is not what the term microaggression means. Microagressions do not imply violence.
> hostile or violent behavior or attitudes toward another; readiness to attack or confront.
I don't think they were suggesting police brutality is caused by cancel culture - I think that was you reaching. I think they were suggesting that laws being passed to protect police from being made fun of, are the result of people being overly sensitive and allowing the words of others to hurt them personally.
It appears that if anyone was doing mental gymnastics here, it was you.
What’s actually happening is that cops are being filmed and because of that people are losing respect for them faster than ever and the cops hate it and want to do anything they can to prevent people from disrespecting them.
I think the growing discontent against cops due to their being filmed is a much more reasonable explanation for these kinds of laws. That’s why we are also seeing attempts to restrict people’s ability to film police.
And it's impressive to see how quickly one gets shouted down on "progressive" forums when one objects to this inherently-illiberal state of affairs.
>On July 1, an Indiana law went into effect making it a crime to come within 25 feet of an on-duty police officer if ordered to stay back. Legislators in Florida, Louisiana, and New York have produced similar laws.
25 feet isn't very far. In the other states mentioned I believe it's 10 feet, which is reasonable. It's been this way for a long time. Sounds like the articles objective is to peddle anger.
>What stops an officer from walking up to someone filming them and then arresting them for being "too close" since they're now <10 feet from officer in question?
It's the incident, not the officer. I'm sure one will try, but it the charges would hopefully be dropped. The government machine does protect itself though.
>Does the 10 foot rule apply if you are the one being spoken to by the police? E.g. if you are recording a traffic stop.
It would not, but one will probably try to say it does. The law is for people who have nothing directly to do with the stop.
I've seen first hand police use the justification of stopping filming them to use violence on and arrest people filming them. For however long it takes to get this in front of the supreme court, assuming they choose to hear it, assuming they choose to endorse our rights, it will be used that way. They don't let you out of prison when the law used to justify your arrest is affirmed unconstitutional. It doesn't put your teeth back in your head or undo the TBI you got during the arrest.
The article's objective seems to be to prevent the spread of these laws. The spread of these laws is something you should be angry about, and understanding and applying that to the goal is not malicious.
Having read the reasoning of overturning Roe (I assume that's what you are alluding to), no, I'm not concerned. First amendment is on a much stronger legal standing than Roe was based on and has much fewer contradicting laws.
>They don't let you out of prison when the law used to justify your arrest is affirmed unconstitutional.
Obstructing is usually the charge used. It's not a prison-length offense (> 1 year). But yes, it depends. If your lawyer brought up the constitutionality of the law (as they should have), you can get released, but it does take time unfortunately.
>It doesn't put your teeth back in your head or undo the TBI you got during the arrest.
It does not. Fortunately here have been more and more police convicted of criminal activity doing things like this, so I'm hopeful for the future. I'd like to also add that the proliferation of camera phones is probably the single most helpful thing it reigning in bad behavior. Police body cams as well. It makes misbehavior much more difficult to cover up and justify.
Either way, you're arguing about police brutality, not the fact that journalists need to be 10-25 feet away from an incident to film. I think 10-25 feet is reasonable. I think 10 feet is more reasonable than 25.
I wonder what precedent links filming something to the 1st amendment. If I wanted to undermine the ability to film police, this is where I would look - because recording something, it could be argued, is not an expressive act. Consider states with "2 party consent" laws for recording phone conversations. These have not been ruled unconstitutional even though it's a similar activity to filming the police.
I linked this on an earlier reply, but I believe it answers your question.
https://canons.sog.unc.edu/2022/11/responding-to-first-amend...
>Consider states with "2 party consent" laws for recording phone conversations. These have not been ruled unconstitutional even though it's a similar activity to filming the police.
Police have tried using this as an exception but I believe it was shot down because it's in public. The fact that some of them disliked being filmed so much just bolsters the case that they need to be filed, IMO.
>Most of us would be furious about being filmed on the job. We just don’t render deadly force.
If you're in public, you're always being filmed. Look up at most light poles, there's cameras everywhere.
Most of us would be furious about being filmed on the job. We just don’t render deadly force.
Recording in private is completely different.
the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held that a private citizen has the right to record video and audio of police carrying out their duties in a public place
Not easily - writing is clearly an expressive act, as is painting. This is true even if you don't publish your writing/painting.
Photography is just as much an art as painting, with camera angle, framing, filters etc all being relevant to the final piece.
Recording someone is filming, which is basically just extended photography.
Sometimes I wonder how far people think 10 feet really is. That's like standing across a small bedroom from someone. If you're that close to a cop arresting someone, you're basically participating. 25 feet is more reasonable, but if things go pear shaped you're still close enough to get injured before you even realize something is wrong.
I wonder what pre-existing law or case law says about police telling people too back away.
It should not, but I believe that holding a camera is a strong signal that a person is operating as a journalist. It could be argued that a person watching an incident can easily be operating in the same capacity.
I was wrong, the SCOTUS hasn't directly addressed filming of police, but that seems like it never got a chance to make it there because it's been affirmed in many circuit courts. They have alluded several times on how they feel about filming government officials (strongly support), but no case has directly made it in regards to explicitly filming police.
https://canons.sog.unc.edu/2022/11/responding-to-first-amend...
To date, there is no U.S. Supreme Court case establishing a right to film public officials engaged in carrying out their official duties or a right to film inside of public buildings generally. However, the Supreme Court has recognized a “paramount public interest in a free flow of information to the people concerning public officials.” Moreover, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that “the First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw.” Filming public officials engaged in public duties may fall within this broadly defined “newsgathering” or “information gathering” right that courts have recognized in prior First Amendment cases.
>Except, you know, in the Supreme Court.
Yes, that is a strange exception.
Also, let me just say our first amendment gives us very strong protections from tyranny, as it is with our current state of rogue police departments and officers. If it weren't for the first amendment protections, we would be making very little progress here and probably regress. For people who want to chip away at first amendment protections for political points, you do so at your own and all our peril.
Make no mistake, Derek Chauvin is in prison and that is progress. Progress partially made possible by the right of the people who filmed his murder of George Floyd.
For now.
It was only put in place a year ago, and it was very quickly contested as unconstitutional, which it is, and a judge stopped it from being enforced. The Republican who drafted and sponsored the law has vowed to try again. ”If if the judge says, you know, this is bad because of ‘x’, next year, though, the bill will come in bill minus ‘x’,”
Really? Who was it introduced by? NY has actually passed a 'right to record' bill that did the exact opposite[0], so I'd be shocked if anything like this had a snowball's chance in hell of passing there.
The 25 ft buffer means that while people aren't prevented from recording an arrest, they are prevented from making a recording that would actually show anything. Like the article says "They create a visual and auditory buffer likely to produce reasonable doubt in the courtroom. Is the officer’s knee on the suspect’s shoulder, or on his windpipe? Is the suspect fighting, or flailing? From 25 feet, with officers blocking visibility, phone cameras can’t capture crucial details. From 25 feet, they can’t capture choking sounds or someone crying “I can’t breathe.”"
If you really believe that, I recommend going outside and stepping off 25 feet and then trying some smartphone recordings. 25 feet is actually very close. I wouldn't be surprised if cops find it very uncomfortable to have bystanders that close when any kind of violent encounter is in progress. Most people can run that distance in under 2 seconds.
I recommend you trying that in a high stress situation involving an number of people in close proximity and lots of environmental noise. And then trying to see how that footage would be interpreted by a hostile lawyer in court
> I wouldn't be surprised if cops find it very uncomfortable to have bystanders that close when any kind of violent encounter is in progress
These are not violent encounters, the only violence that is going on is from the police. While I do care about the comfort of the police while arresting people, I am more concerned about not being assaulted or killed.
Don’t be — you’re safe unless you decide to make 10 of the worst decisions of your life in a row.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Andre_Hill#Incident
Besides, I could probably go over the incident you’ve linked and point out all the bad decisions the person in question had made up until that point, but frankly I’m too lazy to even open the link to hold your hand through this process of critical thinking.
There are already laws to deal with people who interfere with the work of police. These anti-filming laws don't make interfering with police illegal. They only make recording crimes committed by police illegal.
There's no justification for these anti-filming laws other than allowing police to abuse the public. They can even make it a crime for the person actively being beat by police to record the event.
There is, and it’s been stated in simple terms multiple times in these comments, as well as the justification for the law. You saying otherwise doesn’t make it untrue that filming police from too close is dangerous and obstructing.
You’re simply talking about a subject you know nothing about either great confidence and guts.
Yet not in yours. What makes "these comments" a better source on what these laws are for than the laws themselves?
The laws are explicitly about stopping people from filming police. They don't make it illegal to obstruct the police. Laws preventing obstruction of police already exited before these new laws. Police already had, and continue to have, the power to order people to move back or disperse due to concerns over officer or public safety.
These new laws don't change those existing laws. All these new laws do is criminalize filming police.
Just my opinion, but Slate is heavily left-slanted, moreso than Vox. That's not a crime, of course, but I really don't think this kind of echo-chambering is a good fit for HN, even when recognizing HN is quite off-topic-tolerant.
Of course people are gonna do what people do anyhow.
The nice thing about HN is there is a lot of discussion poking holes in any particular narrative. At least we get to hear and consider both sides of an issue rather than the single side most media portrays. I think that's healthy as long as it remains civil, and it mostly is.
Yes. It should be an aggravating circumstance in charging/sentencing akin to hate crime enhancements.
If you knew any police, you would know it sure doesn't look like a privilege. It is often an unpleasant job. Policing is much more dangerous than the average job, often involves dealing with the mentally ill, intoxicated, people in some form of crisis, people who are just antisocial criminal jerks, etc. It is not very well compensated profession. Society cannot function without laws and enforcement of laws. Police deserve the basic respect we accord to teachers, firefighters, and other vital civil servants.
If you want to solve a problem, it is first useful to gain an accurate understanding of the current state.
Thus I find it alarming that on average, US officers spend around 21 weeks training before they are qualified to go on patrol [1] while a teacher needs at least a bachelor degree so 4 to 5 years of training [2].
I find compensation for both professions laughably low in the US (teacher: $57,220[2], officer: $62,600[3]) however police equipment budget [4] is orders of magnitude higher than that of teachers that need to spend their own money on school supplies [5]. So there is an argument to be had about the difference of quality of life of these two very important professions. The LAPD gets a $2 billion budget [6] which is equivalent to the total military spending of nations like Lithuania [7]. Maybe a lower barrier of entry to the force and bigger crime and arrest statistics with everything that it entails and it implies on the ground to create such numbers in the books is what it takes to maintain this kind of budget?
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733 [2] https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-... [3] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/alternate/police-offi... [4] https://www.investopedia.com/how-are-police-departments-fund... [5] https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/out-p... [6] https://knock-la.com/lapd-budget-2023-increase/ [7] https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/military-spending-by-...
In the same way I fought for my country in the military with pride, I hope our police forces can exert pride about their job, instead of cowering and complaining about how dangerous it is. If you don't have the propensity to be a cop, then get the hell out.
You can project this lack of understanding on others if you want, but the power cops possess vs civilians is easily observable. Just because being a cop is often unpleasant, doesn't mean they should only get a slap on the wrist for abusing their power. There are many benefits to being a cop, don't act like they're poor little puppy dogs.
It's wishful thinking to believe all people will respect police because they are by definition authoritarians. There are tons of people who don't respect veterans but do I let it bother me? No, because I'm not a fucking cry baby.
You could say the same thing about convenience store workers, yet somehow they do it without infringing on people’s constitutional rights, shooting unarmed people, and murdering 25 pets a day[0] . Over 600 convenience store workers are murdered on the job per year [1] compared to about 60 per year for police [2]. Convenience store workers are murdered at about 7 per 100k, while police are about 7-8 per 100k [3]. Many jobs deal with intoxicated or the mentally ill or other potentially dangerous situations, yet they don’t carry guns and body armor and know how to deescalate situations.
[0] https://scholars.unh.edu/unh_lr/vol17/iss1/18/
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/assaults-and-violent-acts-i...
[2] https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-release...
Not on paper, perhaps. Retiring at 50 with full pension changes the math quite a bit. Especially if they pad that pension...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-newyork-pension/public-wo...
"For example, a police officer with a history of zero overtime worked more than 800 hours of overtime in his last years on the job, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate said in a report. The pension benefits that state and local employees qualify for often are partly determined by how much they earn in the last few years at work."
> Police deserve the basic respect we accord to teachers, firefighters, and other vital civil servants.
Citizens deserve the same basic respect from the cops.
Do you like the perp?
No: Hate crime
Yes: The brain isn't fully formed yet
I worked on the low end of a giant corporation and they would always add new rules, seemingly targeting people they we trying to fire. Stupid rules like you can't wear white shoes or you have to shave everyday. Each rule targeting a certain employee they didn't like.
You commit a crime because of a protected characteristic if you act “wholly or partially” because of that characteristic. This may be demonstrated by showing that you were biased against the victim.
Think of it this way: 1) what did you do 2) what were you trying to do 3) why did you want to do that 4) what led you to want that.
Bias plays into the last two while intent is more about the second.
There are some overlaps, but I would consider what intent to be different. Intent is what outcome you are trying to achieve. Motivation is Why you want to achieve that outcome.
Hate crimes are crimes where the motivation and thought process are against a class of people. They didn’t commit the crime because they were mad at their wife for cheating or mad at the person that the person that cut them off and then swore at them. They were motivated to commit the crime because the victim existed.
Finally, hate crimes are typically put in place because the justice system itself fails to provide equal protection, and because hate crime perpetrators are often protected from justice. There is a reason anti-lynching laws are named after Emmett Till. I can't believe that you could look at the history of any group now protected under hate crime laws and say "yes, these are definitely laws to target the poor marginalized perpetrators".
But really what it is, another tax law onto the rats nest.
You have more than enough laws to render reasonable justice. The people that hate crime laws try to protect would be served with better lawyers to advocate for the people caught between and around the criminal justice system.
I want tons of cops, but I don't want to interact with them ever. They are very often just thugs operating within a structured organization to stop thugs operating with no guiding principals.
As someone who has lived and worked in many rural areas, this advice doesn't work if you're a minority.
89% of Americans think that changes need to made to make policing better and 50% of Americans think that major changes need to be made [1].
> People whining about cops being mean to them, and their general dispositions, tends to think that their police interaction is a super special customer service experience and that the system is faulty when it falls short of their expectations.
If those expectations are the cops not shooting or assaulting innocent people I think those are pretty reasonable expectation and if the system is falling short of them it is absolutely faulty.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/393119/americans-remain-steadfa...
Many citizens in the abstract, "support" police. But police are pretty indiscriminate with their power tripping. So people with actual experience dealing with them tend to form negative opinions when they realize this might be a Leopard Ate Your Face moment.
I've heard an actual person say, "I though police were only like that to <...> people".
>I've heard an actual person say, "I though police were only like that to <...> people".
I saw a video of a lady getting a ticket for something and kept saying, "But I'm a Republican!" As if that would make the officer change his mind.
Your POV is equivalent to shouting in someone's face about surgical malpractice when the discussion is about the benefit of doctors in spite of the fact that some don't live up to expectations when providing GP service. Give us all a break for once, from your warped corner.
If you want statistically inevitable bad-cop events to stop happening, the only way to do that is to reduce the events that cause violent cop interactions. That is, crime has to reduced at the community level without law enforcement.
See the first three:
Require officers to have good relations with the community
Change management practices, so officer abuses are punished
Change management practices, so officers with multiple incidents of abuse of power are not allowed to serve
These policies aren't enforced
> Change management practices, so officer abuses are punished
"Less than 10% of officers in most police forces get investigated for misconduct. Yet some officers are consistently under investigation. Nearly 2,500 have been investigated on 10 or more charges. Twenty faced 100 or more allegations yet kept their badge for years." [1]
> Change management practices, so officers with multiple incidents of abuse of power are not allowed to serve
"Officers like Wiley Willis, who was caught on video manhandling a handcuffed woman in an interview room until she lay injured in a pool of blood. He got his firing reversed because an expert didn’t record a polygraph ... Among the officers who benefited from it: a Shreveport officer accused of raping a woman at police headquarters; a Baton Rouge officer who shot at a fleeing motorist and was fired for dishonesty; a Eunice officer disciplined for choking and tackling a motorist; and a Hammond officer who took part in a beating that a policing expert hired by the city said was one of the “most abusive uses of force” he ever reviewed." [2] all of these cops got their jobs back
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/0... [2] https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/louisiana-shields-pol...
But enough people do, by the police, that wanting to be able to hold the police accountable for their actions by recording them seems a reasonable position IMO.
If they have nothing to hide they have nothing to fear, right?
> "People whining about cops being mean to them ... tend to
> think that their police interaction is a super special
> customer service experience"
You're making a classic Bayesian error.
[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/report-black-people-are-...
I'm a white person, probably considered upper-middle class. I have no criminal record, I don't even have a driving record. Yet, I've been felony stopped and harassed repeatedly - never arrested or even given a citation. I filed citizens complaints, and cops investigate their coworkers and find nothing wrong. The bruises on my body were plenty proof of something wrong, there is documentation. Qualified Immunity means the cops can do whatever they want and get away with it. It takes undeniable citizen evidence to fight back, exactly the kind of evidence that these new laws would like to limit. Cops are never above the law. If the cops can film me in public then I can film them in public too. Frankly, I'm willing to die over the right to film the police - they'll have to kill me to stop me.
You should really be considering what "being close to police officers means you risk getting harmed" being statistically-common enough that you bring it up actually says about what's going on.
The problem is when you have a police line established that is 25' from the action and then have to move back another 25'.
I'm not sure exactly why bodycam footage is so much worse. I think part of it might have to do with the odd height it's placed at.
In practice, it's often used less... wholesomely, as you'd expect.
Its the lack of any stabilization. If you twist your body a tiny bit then the focus of the camera moves drastically; this differs from when you're holding a camera far from our body using your arms. When you move your body your arms will counter-act that and the video won't jump as much.
Part of the problem isn't actually refusal to cooperate on the part of police orgs, though. I happen to know second-hand that the companies operating the cameras provide abysmal and overcomplex, failure-prone software and hardware, and storing all that camera footage in a way that is quickly accessible to the public would approach Youtube levels of footprint/operational costs... It's complex, and police orgs, in addition to being resistant to change, are also not exactly known for their technical acumen.
For example, from California at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....
> 148. (a) (1) Every person who willfully resists, delays, or obstructs any public officer, peace officer, or an emergency medical technician, as defined in Division 2.5 (commencing with Section 1797) of the Health and Safety Code, in the discharge or attempt to discharge any duty of his or her office or employment, when no other punishment is prescribed, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by imprisonment in a county jail not to exceed one year, or by both that fine and imprisonment.
The argument, plainly stated in the article, is that the police don't want to be filmed by people who don't like police:
> These laws take their cue not only from the anti-protest and police protection laws but from a 2022 Arizona law making it a crime to film the police from 8 feet or closer. That law’s sponsor, then–state Rep. John Kavanagh (a former police officer), was frank about his intentions. “There are groups hostile to the police that follow them around to videotape police incidents,” he declared. The new law would put a stop to this nuisance.
and simple filming is not obstruction. Again, from the article:
> “Cops have long tried claiming that [filming them] obstructs their ability to do their job,” observes First Amendment lawyer Ari Cohn. “Now that this argument failed, they are … transparently trying to create a safe space from observation.” The new laws are nothing but “a targeted assault on First Amendment activity.”
One way to look at this is that it clarifies how far you need to stand back. 25 feet is slightly far, maybe it should be 15 feet instead?
During the height of the BLM protests, local police told protesters to get off of the sidewalks and then arrested/assaulted them for being in the street.
That's just unchecked power waiting to be abused and there's simply no reason cops have given the public to believe they won't abuse power frequently, if given the opportunity.
As others have pointed out the issue likely isn't the distance. It's that police can enforce their own measures here without accountability.
These laws don't make interfering with police a crime, it only makes filming them illegal.
Has that actually been interpreted by a court in that way or are you proposing a hypothetical? Your interpretation makes all dashcams illegal, which makes many Tesla and Toyota cars illegal.
The way I interpreted it was that people who are not part of a scene need to maintain some distance for safety.
---
The legality of filming police is thorny. For instance, a number of states passed laws after LivePD became a thing that barred the filming of traffic stops. That, however, contradicts the abilities of citizen journalists to document traffic stops and interactions.
Personally speaking, I don't want to be filmed during a traffic stop unless its my own footage. When I was arrested and went to jail the police posted my mug shot to every local paper and crime reporting website. It took quite a long time to scrub the internet of all of that once charges were dropped. Footage would be much worse because at one point after my head was driven into the ground I was sobbing. My instance also involved the police roughing me up because they perceived me to be "strong".
Note the words "IF THE PERSON IS NOT INTERFERING WITH LAWFUL POLICE ACTIONS"
We've seen example after example of police screaming "stop resisting" while they beat someone who is handcuffed and/or unconscious. By "resisting", those people were "interfering with lawful police actions". They might not have been guilty of anything before the police started beating them, but under this law if they were recording any of it they'd be criminals.