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>25 feet isn't very far. In the other states mentioned I believe it's 10 feet, which is reasonable

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.”"

> 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.

> If you really believe that, I recommend going outside and stepping off 25 feet and then trying some smartphone recordings.

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.

> 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.

I don't think that's what causes police killings unless you consider walking out of your friend's house with a cellphone in your hand making "10 of the worst decisions of your life in a row"[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Andre_Hill#Incident

Exceptions exist to every rule, and spending your life worried about getting struck by lightning is a terribly miserable existence.

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.

Maybe you should try having one friend stand 25 feet away while another steps on your neck to see if the camera can still make out your pleas for air while 3-8 others are screaming at you to stop resisting.

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's no justification for these anti-filming laws other than allowing police to abuse the public.

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.

> There is, and it’s been stated in simple terms multiple times in these comments

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.

But like all laws applying a heuristic to technology it will rapidly become outdated.

Clearly there's some distance where proximity becomes interfering with an arrest. However, I don't see why that should ever change based on if you are holding a camera or not.

I wonder what pre-existing law or case law says about police telling people too back away.

>I don't see why that should ever change based on if you are holding a camera or not.

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.

Why does it matter if they are a journalist or not in this context?

Journalists have explicit protection in the first amendment. Many people (including some police) believe you have to have credentials to be a journalist, but that's not so. Of course if the government can determine if someone is a journalist or not, it's not a freedom; so anyone can be a journalist. The whole credentials thing is for accessing secure areas like the White House, etc. Freedom of speech also protects filming police as does the right to petition government for redress of grievances.

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.

As far as I know, journalists don't have any special protections or rights for taking pictures that raise above the General Public.

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?

> New York

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.

[0]https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/S3253

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.

According to the Arizona law even if a police officer is beating you, you'd be committing a crime by recording them so long as the police can claim that you were also "INTERFERING WITH LAWFUL POLICE ACTIONS". As long as they scream "stop resisting" at you, you'll probably be a criminal.

Can you link an instance of this happening or is this entirely speculation on your part?

The text of law is pretty short, you can read it yourself https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/55leg/2R/bills/HB2319S.pdf

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’,”

Have the legal position of any other scotus-affirmed rights changed recently that would have people on their toes, do you think, maybe?

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.

>Have the legal position of any other scotus-affirmed rights changed recently that would have people on their toes, do you think, maybe?

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.

> First amendment is on a much stronger legal standing than Roe was based on and has much fewer contradicting laws.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glik_v._Cunniffe

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

>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.

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.

> 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.

For many service workers interacting with the public it's already a reality that they get filmed and posted on TikTok/Instagram - especially if an interaction goes wrong.

True. But if you ask them about being filmed, I doubt they love it. Just saying we can’t conclude malfeasance from cops desiring secrecy.

No for the police you should assume malfeasance by default and craft law & policy around that. They have demonstrated over and over that they consider discretionary violence their core role and oversight of it to be interference.

>because recording something, it could be argued, is not an expressive act.

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.

Freedom of the press of course. Filming is critical to journalism.

Recording in private is completely different.

> I think 10-25 feet is reasonable. I think 10 feet is more reasonable than 25.

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.

All we need is one cop whose religion forbids being filmed....

> Sounds like the articles objective is to peddle anger.

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.

>I really don't think this kind of echo-chambering is a good fit for HN

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.

> Filming police performing their duties is a constitutionally protected activity affirmed by the SCOTUS

For now.