Federal Judge Upholds Arizonans’ Right to Record the Police

Which will never happen as they are the “stick” the owning class uses to keep us workers in line. Only a general strike will create real change, but capitalism is designed to keep us tired and scared if losing the little we have. Band together and help your fellow workers, remember is workers vs owners. Not Left v Right that is a distraction to create infighting.

Generally just some boot licking BS.

"Cops have it hard enough as is and if people are recording them they might hesitate in shooting a rapist which could get a child murdered!" That sort of thing.

The law was passed with the argument that it's unsafe to record "within eight feet of officers", with exceptions for those that are "a person who is the subject of police contact". The intent was to not provoke officers trying to do their job, like a third party going up to them at a traffic stop and getting up in their face. But the law could have made general provisions about such disruptive behavior instead of adding stipulations specifically to recording the officers.

Here is an op-ed by the bill's sponsor.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2022/03/24/hb-...

It's a meandering argument to me as it makes a big deal about cops not knowing the intent of someone within 8 feet of the officer. If that's an issue I suppose anyone within 8 feet could possibly be a threat, but some magic 8 foot bubble would seem to be unrealistic to maintain anyway.

I will say that as a rando individual (not a cop) I get how I wouldn't want to be recorded as videos can be skewed and so on. But as far as police goes that's something that is just part of life and they should also be making their own recordings to counter some of that.

Side note: We've had several cases of various claims against cops in my area that were very quickly cleared up after there was a video captured by the cops. Without the video it would have been just he said he said type situation, but video cleared the cops (or at least showed the situation was far more complex) fairly quickly. There have been several "this is just like george floyd" situations where the rhetoric and outrage vanished fairly quickly after the video was released. They should be embracing that technology.

There's no reason to forbid recording at all, but police should be able to give any bystander (recording or not) a lawful order to remain at 20 feet or so in order to keep things safe. You might have the right to record, but you shouldn't have the right to get the perfect shot of the event.

The lawmakers are focusing on the wrong problem.