Phone conversations with law enforcement can be recorded without their consent
orlandoweekly.com
orlandoweekly.com
> One new law makes it illegal after a person has been warned to approach first responders or remain within 25 feet while they are performing a legal duty if the intent is to interfere, threaten or harass them. The new law doesn’t prevent people from recording law enforcement but can require them to move 25 feet back, which can make it more difficult.
> The other requires that citizen review boards in Florida – intended to provide independent oversight of law enforcement actions – be re-established so that members are appointed by a sheriff or police chief and that at least one member be a retired law enforcement officer.
I wonder if the first will stand up to Constitutional review. I imagine there are many First Amendment protected purposes for recording that may require the recorder to be within 25 feet of the officer. For example, if they're recording during windy conditions and need to hear what the officer says. I also wonder how the "intent" will be interpreted by courts. Probably in a way that is most favorable to LEOs.
The second law is just a straightforward neutering of citizen review boards.
If regular people are hearing what an officer is doing and need to be explained by a former cop, "yeah, <horrific behavior> is just part of the job" then what is even the point of having a citizen review? Isn't that the very class of behavior the board exists to stop?
I don’t know, but I know what the point of the law was.
Having a retired cop in the room who understands police work sounds pretty sensible to me.
Police already have power to ruin lives or at least make them seriously inconvenient. A retired cop generally still has friends and/or family that are active cops, and therefore has some influence.
Which means folks aren't nearly as free to speak or do their jobs freely. This is true even if you personally don't feel this way around any sort of law enforcement - you know others do.
It seems obvious to me that that's important knowledge for a team tasked with regulating police work.
There are plenty of standards. and all cops go through a ~6 month Police Academy before they get the badge.
And if you think you know as much about police work as someone who has done it for decades, I don't think we can get much further in this discussion.
People generally have no idea what it like to be a cop and what is and isn't legal. For instance, just about every single person who resists arrest now also yells that they cannot breath. Then the cops ask if they need medical, which of course they say yes, simply to make things more difficult for the police (and waste taxpayer money to have an ambulance come out).
In a vacuum it looks bad. But in the context of every single criminal doing the same extreme heel dragging, you start to see what is going on.
Neither do the cops, in their defense. And at least the not-cops in this situation aren't paid a salary and empowered by the state to do violence to people in the course of enforcing that law.
> Then the cops ask if they need medical, which of course they say yes, simply to make things more difficult for the police
Those bastards, asking... public servants to... serve... the public. Gosh we beat the shit out of this guy and he has the audacity to ask for a doctor afterwards, so entitled.
> In a vacuum it looks bad. But in the context of every single criminal doing the same extreme heel dragging, you start to see what is going on.
The word "criminal" is incredibly load-bearing in this sentence.
The overwhelming majority of people doing blatantly dumb illegal shit don't just put their hands behind their back and say "you got me!" when the cops show up.
They really genuinely believe they can convince the cops that the hammer they threw in the bushes wasn't being used to smash car windows, and all the shit in their pocket wasn't stolen from the cars with smashed windows all around them. And then they physically fight the cops, lose, and say they are suffocating and need to go to the hospital.
I totally get that there are videos of cops being evil. I wager I have seen more of them than you, since they get tons of views and attention on body cam channels. But I will also wager that you have no idea how dumb and childish the average criminal is. There are 100,000 normal police encounter videos of police dealing with total idiots for every 1 evil cop needlessly killing someone video. You just have 0 exposure to them.
I don’t have any trouble believing that your social media feeds have rage bait videos that follow this pattern, but I’d remind you that the videos recommended to you are unlikely to be representative of reality.
Some feeds support narratives like “criminals lie and waste resources” whereas others show “cops lie and hurt people”, and what you see is strongly correlated with what will catch (and maintain) your attention.
I wouldn't compare it to agenda channels that upload heavily edited and cherry picked content with "telling you how to feel" narration. The unedited average police doing average police work content is enough to stand on its own.
30.61 Establishment of civilian oversight boards. (1) A county sheriff may establish a civilian oversight board to review the policies and procedures of his or her office and its subdivisions. (2) The board must be composed of at least three and up to seven members appointed by the sheriff, one of which shall be a retired law enforcement officer.
They can appoint everyone on it. This is something setup by the sheriff, and the sheriff controls the appointments. They don't have ot appoint all the people, but they can. Which means the original comment still stands.
> Having a retired cop in the room who understands police work sounds pretty sensible to me.
That doesn't mean they have to be on the board. You can easily bring cops in when needed.
> That doesn't mean they have to be on the board. You can easily bring cops in when needed.
The experience from Oakland/SF is that the review boards gets controlled by anti police activist who make policing near impossible.
Would you rather someone unelected by the citizens decide who sits on the citizen review board?
Not sure what the point of this argument is. The mayor could appoint someone. The public can directly elect someone. Why is Florida making the boards charged with oversight of the police can only be appointed by the sheriff? It does not sound like a 'citizen review board' but it does sounds very prone to corruption.
I would think it would be good to say that not more than 50% can be ex-law enforcement though, to ensure a reasonable mixture.
Citizen review boards become necessary because the public is losing confidence in an entire institution. If the public trusted the police department, then an outside review board would have been entirely unnecessary, the IA department would have been enough.
Hospital review boards are not necessary for this reason: overall local hospitals are trusted enough to ensure that they can handle bad actors on their own (in general - it's not like there are 0 cases of bad doctors being covered by their colleagues, but they are the exception).
I don't think this statement aligns with reality:
> The mission of our various state medical boards is to “protect health care consumers through the proper licensing and regulation of physicians and surgeons” [15]—to protect, in other words, specifically from doctors who would intentionally harm their patients. But medical boards typically are more lenient with problem physicians than other patient safety processes.
> For example, over a 10-year period, researchers found that “seventy percent of the physicians with a clinical-privileges or malpractice-payment report due to sexual misconduct were not disciplined by medical boards for this problem” [1]. Additionally, 67% of insurance fraud convictions were associated only with what I would describe as light discipline—no suspensions or license revocation from medical boards. It seems that medical board members have confused their statutory duty toward patient safety with a well-meaning but terribly misjudged desire to rehabilitate problem doctors.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8445548/
> Board member Eserick "TJ" Watkins, who was appointed in 2019, charged that the board doesn't serve patients. Watkins started tracking discipline cases and says the California Medical Board handed out more lenient punishments than its guidelines suggested in nine out of every 10 cases. [...]
> "The way they speak is always with doctor care in mind. You never hear patient care, ever — and I mean, ever," said Watkins.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/doctor-complaints-discipline-ca...
If you take a few steps back, he can, of course, repeat this process ad-infinitum.
Sure, you can argue this in a Florida court, and you might even win, but in the meantime, the law accomplishes exactly what it intends.
Looks like the distance is actually 20 feet, and it specifically states that you can't approach a first responder with intent to harass after being given a verbal warning. If a first responder approaches you then you've done nothing wrong.
[1] https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2024/75/?Tab=BillText
That is not how this is going to be enforced. Other places have passed this law and cops repeatedly walk up to people recording and threaten them to go back or block their view and often arrest them under their interpretation of the law the recorder then has to spend time and money to fight or simply suffer the consequences of an arrest even if they're not ultimately charged.
Well, unless you're poor, then likely you can't beat either.
Unfortunately its up to jurors in these situations. If we fundamentally disagree with a law as written and can't get representatives to throw it out, just toss out the case. Jurors aren't legally bound to decide whether the facts as presented meet the law as written. Jurors are empowered with deciding whether a peer should be punished. In the case of a law that you disagree with for whatever reason, you are well within your rights to go not guilty and avoid punishing a peer for something you don't think is worth punishment.
That is fascinating to me and the opposite of my previous understanding! Do you have any links or experience to provide? Many thanks! :)
The history of this is fascinating though as it goes right back to the founding of the US and why our legal system is designed the way that it is. I know one of the founders wrote extensively on this I want to say it was John Adams but then I'm sure Hamilton did as well since the dude never stopped writing.
It allows for a scenario where lawyers and/or the judge can instruct the jury to exclusively consider the statutes in question as read and interpreted by the court, facts deemed relevant as determined by the court, and decide only if the facts presented appear to have violated the statutes presented.
This isn't a way that law should work and there's absolutely no reason to have a jury in the first place if it is going to be so mechanistic.
A jury is there to judge the actions of one of their peers. Lawyers are there to present the facts and the arguments for why a person should be considered guilty or innocent. A judge is there to make sure the proper procedure is followed and the trial is fair. That's it.
Jurors aren't bound to listen to only what lawyers tell them to listen to. Jurors are asked to decide whether or not to punish the person in question for the crime they're charged with.
Of course lawyers will try to screen for this view though. They want a predictable jury that will listen to every instruction given to them without question. When juries think critically and decide for themselves a lawyer can't predict which way the trial will go and a carefully constructed series of facts and yes/no questions during testimony may be wasted. Lawyers want a script and assured convictions when they can't get deals before trial, that's the whole game.
> judge can instruct the jury to exclusively consider the statutes in question as read and interpreted by the court, facts deemed relevant as determined by the court, and decide only if the facts presented appear to have violated the statutes presented.
> This isn't a way that law should work and there's absolutely no reason to have a jury in the first place if it is going to be so mechanistic.
> A jury is there to judge the actions of one of their peers. Lawyers are there to present the facts and the arguments for why a person should be considered guilty or innocent.
This isn't how it's supposed to work. Juries are not supposed to "decide if the facts appear to have violated the law". Lawyers are not supposed to "present the facts".
The textbook explanation of how the system is supposed to work is: juries are supposed to decide the facts after considering the evidence presented (either written or live testimony by witnesses), and then, given the facts they have determined, apply the law as instructed by judge (and argued by lawyers), decide the result of the case.
In short, facts are supposed to be decided by juries, and law is interpreted by the judge after hearing legal arguments from the lawyers. I think you kind of got it backwards.
Perhaps what actually happens in courts deviate from the textbook norm (since I don't know where you got your information from), but it's not supposed to happen that way.
I do think juries have a role in using nullification judiciously but it's also important to remember the most prominent and wide spread use of jury nullification in history was during the Jim Crow era when juries routinely refused to convict or charge (in the case of grand juries) lynching cases.
https://www.flsenate.gov/Committees/BillSummaries/2024/html/...
The or remain addition ruins it, though I also don't see that holding up in court with any reasonable jury. In that scenario, if I start more than 25 feet away and stand my ground if a cop approaches me only with the intent of making me move or stop filming, I've truly done nothing wrong and the cop is intending to infringe on my rights.
Will a judge or DA see if this way? Almost certainly not. But if I were on the jury I'd throw that shit out, I don't really care what the law says as written if its a law I don't think is constitutional or reasonable. Juries are there, in part, to act as a check on the legal system.
28 It is unlawful for a person, after receiving a
29 verbal warning not to approach from a person he or she knows or
30 reasonably should know is a first responder, who is engaged in
31 the lawful performance of a legal duty, to knowingly and
32 willfully violate such warning and approach or remain within 25
33 feet of the first responder with the intent to
Like the original comment said, it's "approach or remain"
It is not a crime to be within 25 feet of the first reaponder, it is only a crime if all elements of the statute are met.
Here’s a judge who jailed a guy known for reporting on police misconduct under the excuse that he refused to become a sworn witness in the trial of a cop murderer - which he had nothing to do with, and was simply attending in the audience. https://therealnews.com/a-cop-watcher-attended-the-trial-of-...
(I think what they were trying was just kick him out of the courtroom; my understanding is that when someone is a (potential) witness testifying in a trial they are not allowed to attend)
In large swaths of the rural parts of the US, judges are not required to pass the bar exam.
Or have a legal degree.
Or have a college degree.
Still problematic, in my opinion.
If the judge just wants someone out of their courtroom they can simply order them to leave. If they do not leave a bailiff or two will be happy to encourage them to go.
Earlier that week officer Dean had been convicted of killing Jefferson. The trial then moved to the sentencing phase.
On the day the conviction was announced there had been a group protesting in front of the court. When the officer's family was escorted out through a side door many of the protest group moved to there and confronted the family. There were allegations that this included threats against the family, including specific death threats.
One of that group, Mata, showed up in court later as a spectator but instead of sitting with Jefferson's family and supporters sat with Dean's supporters, within immediate reach of Dean's family.
The defense attorneys wanted to talk to him to bolster their case that the trial should have been moved to another county. The judge wanted to talk to him because the judge was concerned that someone who was part of the group that had allegedly issued death threats to Dean's family was sitting right next to that family [1].
[1] https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2022/12/19/man-arreste...
Then simply you've never hung around a single judge.
I come from a family that had more than its fair share of members that work in law enforcement and first responders. I've hung out with judges at barbecues at their house. The people at these private events are mostly other elected officials and other law enforcement officers. These people are their friends, they've known them for years or decades, hell, quite often grew up together. And yea, while a judge can attempt to be unbiased as possible, human nature always leads people to bias toward those they know and against those they do not.
If a guy with the closest thing the real world has to a license to kill, who is doing something bad enough to warrant being recorded for later evidence, turns their attention to intimidate you or physically force you to stop — this is a person you believe yourself to be safe around?
Look, I'm not condoning police violence or immunity. I'm just saying that, as a purely practical matter, if you fear for your life when you interact with police, trying to "stand your ground" does not make you safer. Quite the opposite.
So why in the world would you "stand your ground" in this scenario?? Perhaps you posted in the wrong comment thread?
Here's a per-state breakdown of police training requirements. https://www.apexofficer.com/police-training-requirements
Most of them require 20 hours or less PER YEAR, and that is not just firearms training, but total training across e.g. deescalation, driving, EMT, less-than-lethal force, crowd control, etc. Several of them specify that the firearms training is only 2 hours. Most hobby shooters can knock out 12 hours of dedicated firearms training in a month or 2 of weekend range days, so 6x what a cop might have to do in 12 months.
Outdrawing the cops isn't the issue, outnumbering them is. Unless you've also got 300+ buddies you can call for support, you're going to lose in the end.
The old saying when running from the cops goes
> "You can beat Mopar, but you can't beat Motorola"
--- end requirements. It's not exactly relevant that some people spend personal time shooting as a hobby, if you're not willing to admit that some of those people are cops.
> the intent [..] to interfere, threaten or harass them
?
It may be possible to stand 25ft back and hold a 15ft long pole with a camera, or place a phone/camera on the ground and then stand back, to get past this issue.
It says reestablished. How are they neutering something that doesn't exist?
That's what “required to be re-established” means.
https://myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?B...
I think it is under bill text/enrolled.
I don’t find the word re-established in there. So, I think that’s just the wording that the newspaper picked. Regardless of any difference between establish or re-establish, it doesn’t really make sense to put too much weight on subtle implications of the newspaper’s wording.
So it could just mean when the current term is up and the new appointees are sworn in.
I think this makes sense. Would be bad if every time a police officer tries to stop a crime, suddenly 20 hard of hearing people need to crowd around him really close in order to record him. Oh look, the criminal got away again. There are situations where different laws will conflict, and I hope in those situations crime prevention and safety take precedence.
Modern phone cameras are really good and 25 feet isn't very far. Seems like a good compromise so that cops can do their jobs but there can be some citizen oversight.
It would. Do we have credible examples? Because we have a lot of evidence of cops lying, and only being caught on account of recordings, with disastrous effects. If one side is hypothetical and the other substantiated, it strikes me as reasonable to favour one over the other.
There's a reasonable distance that a law enforcement officer (or paramedic, or firefighter) need to be in control of, in order to focus on their job. Maybe it's 1ft, maybe it's 50ft: the courts should decide.
There's also a reasonable public expectation to be able to record police officers doing their job, for subsequent review.
Hopefully we can all agree that someone loudly "recording" shoulder to shoulder with police officer disrupts their ability to resolve situations? Just as we can agree that not having any recording of a police officer's potentially illegal actions is antithetical to ensuring justice?
There are disingenuous protesters who abuse recording excuses to disrupt law enforcement.
There are corrupt cops who abuse recording limitations to disrupt transparency.
Both of these things are wrong.
Right, it's already illegal to interfere with police.
It's unreasonably escalatory in situations that instead need more calm.
If you're in that position, particularly for something as simple as he took something you said the wrong way, the cameras might keep the officer from going overboard too.
Along with ensuring that hardware reliability and UX clearly communicates camera functioning to officers. (I'm not young enough to still assume widely-deployed tech, procured by the government, in real world scenarios is always functional)
Sure. We can also agree that throwing rotting sea slugs at anyone eating a hamburger is disagreeable. But absent evidence of it (a) happening and (b) going un(der)punished, any legislation to ban it is performative.
Performative legislation isn't bad per se. Ideally, it would have no effect. But given almost any increase in legal surface area brings rise to unintended consequences, the result is a net negative.
> are disingenuous protesters who abuse recording excuses to disrupt law enforcement
Again, do you have examples of people recording police disrupting law enforcement where those recording weren't punished (sufficiently)?
> Both of these things are wrong
If one is occuring more frequently, and moreover going more-frequently unpunished, then tipping the scale further in that direction is counterproductive.
If police abuse is running rampant while nobody can find unpunished instances of disruptive recording of the police, then these rules are more likely to further the abuse than facilitate legitimate law enforcement. (To say nothing of the wasted political capital, given the myriad of problems Florida has to deal with.)
It’s already against the law to interfere with an arrest. A mob of people surrounding officers attempting to arrest someone is already illegal, whether they have cameras in their hands or not.
This assumes sane body camera policies are in place, like immediate dismissal if the camera/mic is turned off/covered, during any part up to or during an arrest.
Assuming fantasies is rarely helpful when judging the effects of legislation.
I think every single copy would be fired because of this. I've yet to see any body cam footage during an arrest where the camera wasn't covered up at some point. And since you are the one proposing clarity and specifics here, you've just demonstrated by having these specifics in place don't always help.
After all, can you, with 100% accuracy, measure with just your eyes 25.1 feet? What's the cop going to do? Break out the measuring tape? Where do they measure from? Also, how do they prove the intent part. After all, that's subjective. If I'm recording but my intent is not to do anything that is listed in the law, it doesn't apply to me.
So, lots of lack of clarity in between lots of bad specifics.
What I said is not the policy of most stations. I never claimed it was. But, it is a logical implementation that would protect against bad officers. For those places where it is policy, a failure of enforcement doesn't mean we throw out the concept of law, ffs.
> So, lots of lack of clarity in between lots of bad specifics.
You know what's harder to judge than, say, 25.0 feet? Having to completely guess, leaving it up to how grumpy the officer is.
Body cam is off? He's just a citizen with a nightstick. When he's tried, prosecution is held in contempt of court if they allow the jury in any way to know that, were his camera on, he would have been a police officer. Same with the defendant: if he mouths off about what was otherwise his job, he's going to jail for as long as it takes to convene a fresh jury, no bail, contempt.
Zero tolerance and enforcement should be the starting place.
(Coupled with adjusting policies and procedures to be more in line with actual experience, if we're going fully transparent)
The exceptions are Grand Juries and indictments.
[1] https://www.heddinglawfirm.com/unlawful-police-stop#:~:text=....
Something hanging from a mirror, a broken tail light, out of spec window tint, child seat improperly secured, load improperly secured, weaving in the lane, driving too slow for conditions, too fast for conditions, driving inconsistent speeds, not properly signaling, failure to maintain your vehicle in a safe condition (bald tires), illegally modified emissions controls (exhausts), using a cell phone while driving, etc.
Also, speedometers are notoriously out of calibration, and no one is going to believe the driver when they say they were going x speed without some evidence.
The vehicle code is huge, and it’s a rare driver that can’t be pulled over for something. ‘Fishing’ is a common activity that catches a lot of drug smuggling, people on warrants, DUI, etc.
Speed traps also generate a lot of revenue for many departments, depending on state laws.
If you look like you keep your nose clean, you’ll usually get left alone though, unless they’re bored.
I’ve personally had at least 2 instances where I was driving on rural highways at night, and was followed for 15+ minutes by police trying to find a reason to pull me over so they could search me though. They both let me go after it was obvious I wasn’t a drug smuggler or DUI.
I will agree that such recording has interfered with the arrest process at times, and that is more problematic.
But I'm a paramedic/firefighter and often have to work on patients (in an MVA, for example) in much closer proximity to rubberneckers.
Like when I teach EMTs and paramedics, and we cover things like extricating patients from vehicles. "This is great. The vehicle is level, you're in an apparatus bay at a fire station, you have great lighting, no noise, it's not pouring rain..."
More often than not, I see police escalating situations with people of interest and bystanders, rather than the other way around.
Law enforcement are often trying to handle a person they view as dangerous and, if there's a crowd of people around who are vocalizing their displeasure with you, you're going to feel more in danger.
I don't disagree with you about police escalating _violence_ in these situations which is why I specifically said "tensions".
IMO, a bad cop who is completely in the wrong and prone to violence will be more likely to commit violence if their attention is split between their suspect and the antagonistic crowd. Being surrounded by unfriendly people doesn't make people react better than they would have otherwise.
There are plenty of bad cops around. All I'm advocating for is that, if you're recording an altercation you believe unjust, record it and don't become part of it.
I don't want to open up that messy box. The rule should be simple, stay at least 25ft away and record if you want to. This shouldn't even be up for debate.
Like who even wants to be within 25ft of anything remotely dangerous unless someone you know is involved. Why are we even having this discussion.
My theory: Because people want to neuter the police so that they can sow chaos and destabilize society. Bonus points, they take away the people (police) keeping the violence and bullies at bay through the threat of fear and consequences.
I was profiled, verbally assaulted, shouted down, searched, etc. All while AK assault rifles were being waived around to scare me while my car was searched.
I knew I did nothing wrong and it was just corruption and intimidation and fishing. So I responded with yes sir, no officer, etc. Eventually it blew over.
No idea how it would have went if bystanders started getting involved and causing chaos with proximity to the police.
Does Norway have a problem with an excessive number of people filming police interactions in public?
1. Ambiguous may, which could refer to permission or to possibility
2. Doesn't specify which party is permitted to do the recording/might be doing the recording
Makes me wonder why that phraseology is so widespread. Why not use We might record this call?
Gonna be a fun call with PayPal tomorrow!)
If this took place in a two-party consent state then your consent alone is not enough, you'd also need the caller's consent which my company doesn't have. If you were to record the call without letting the employee know beforehand, that recording would be illegal.
Funnily, the phrasing "may be recorded" is not interpreted by the corporations as "the customer may be recording as well" and in many cases their default policy is to not talk to you if you've declared you're recording. Single-party consent jurisdictions make it even more muddy.
They were trying to screw me, and the state insurance commissioner finally had to step in and put them in their place. The person who caused the accident had the same carrier I did, and since they knew they were on the hook for the charges either way, they made no effort at all to adjudicate fault. They wanted to split it 50-50, and I wasn't having it.
Don't they simplify it? You're on the call. If you consent to recording, you've given your single-party consent. You don't need to tell the company you're calling you're recording.
This is possibly worse than staying silent, given you're betraying bad intent.
IANAL but AFAIK the "this call is recorded ..." warning that they automatically play gives license for both sides to record, even in a 2 party consent state.
AFAIK there is no state where anti-recording rules are asymmetric between participants. Either both have an expectation of non-recording, or neither do.
In other words, phone number plus a 6-digit extension, otherwise voicemail.
Sort of like your code, but allowing a person to talk to you in the first place.
(If it isn't directly possible, I'm fairly sure using some sort of iot telephony servive would help getting hundreds of legitimate numbers. Now only to build a cell interceptor to funnel them all to one phone!)
Last I knew, they used T-Mobile for their cellular connection.
but it could be like letting smart people organize their life using email addresses in a similar way: foo+extra@gmail.com
Only a couple times have I used it on purpose, but it has triggered on me accidentally a handful of times over the years, usually in weird situations like in my car (older cars, with Bluetooth-only car phone systems). Makes everybody nervous, myself included.
In some jurisdictions, all that is required is an audible beep (or even no notice at all). In others, full consent [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_call_recording_laws#...
So they are giving you explicit permission to record the call if they say the call may be recorded.
May is about permission or likelihood. Can is about capability. A telephone call can be recorded even if it may not be recorded. That is the recording apparatus exists and is connected needing only the signal to start recording but permission is not forthcoming.
It is only in colloquial speech that the two are equivalent.
As someone living in a two party consent state that is not Florida I am curious if this precedent will carry weight in my home state.
A Florida decision carries no precedential power outside Florida, but judges in other states can nonetheless refer to the Florida decision for its analysis.
> Waite surrendered after a detective shocked him with an electrical device.
> “Waite did not demonstrate a lack of good faith and should have complied without resorting to violence,” the judges said.
Love this double standard. Armed men can show up at your door, shackle your wrists behind your back, and haul you off to a cage, all in bad faith, but if you resort to meeting violence with violence, you're the one who gets sentenced.
I have managed to avoid it, but I know more than a few people who’ve been roughed up in bad faith…
Sounds about right.
I was worried that this referred to personal conversations and was about to say "dang have we gone too far?" but yeah this makes sense.
Probably goes without saying but — we don't want to condemn/bastardize/immiserate the entire institution...
Prior to uniformed police, communities maintained order themselves -- often through night watches in which everyone participated, or eventually through hiring people to "cover my watch".
Police in the modern era have been used as a threat of violence against common people more or less since their inception in the 1800s, from slave patrols to strikebreaking. They've been used as political assassins killing the political opponents of the state (see Frederick Hampton) to the systematic oppression of gay and trans people (see, for instance, Stonewall inn). Lest these feel like old examples, just this year police shut down a gay bar in Seattle for having "indecent apparel" being worn by the gay men in attendance.
I think it's absolutely fair for people to think critically about the history and legacy of the institution and wonder, is this the best institution we can imagine to fill this role? Are there better ways to imagine the roles it fills today? Are there systemic issues that need fixing with it?
The reason I bring this forward is that any thoughtful critique of the institution is often painted broadly as, "you are just an anarchist who cannot think beyond your slogans!" Perhaps the institution could do with some immiseration.
Particularly they were infamous for playing "both sides" by taking money from a victim to arrest a thief, then taking money from the thief not to arrest them.
Dispensing violence as part of these watches was also generally accepted. I'm not sure how that would work in a modern environment.
(You're also referring to a period during which most of the world was feudal or quasi-feudal. The people maintaining order had their own security forces.)
By most definitions of "feudal", there has never been such a period. What does "feudal" mean to you?
Also, I’m now curious what a the future of homeland security could look like. Is anyone writing rationally about this?
In some societies you could seek justice via a duel, essentially calling out the criminal and relying on social pressure to see the duel adhered to.
In England there's a system of tithings, shires and shire reeves, individuals who were kept employed and told to keep the peace. The shire reeves could muster people to enforce the law, temporarily.
In the 1600s-1800s the monarchs in various countries instituted police forces, but they were typically plainclothes or carried only a symbol of office. (E.g. a badge) These police were closer to what we expect police to be in the modern era, but were not typically or consistently in the same visible, standard uniform. (Though they may have carried, e.g. a sword that might mark them out.)
The U.S. also had other police systems, including slave patrols, essentially self formed posses that would ride down escaped slaves.
In the 1800s, police forces in England thought, "you know what would deter crime? Visible police!" And they began to standardize uniforms with the intent to prevent crime, rather than react to crime. Prior to this moment, policing was typically reactionary -- an aggrieved party seeking justice. The innovation was that if people saw a neighborhood patrolled by uniformed police, they might believe that area was safer and criminals might go elsewhere.
Around the 1860s, this idea really took off, and you see many places copying it.
I'm on my phone, I'll dig for sources later.
The massacre caused such public outrage that, among other things, London set up the Metropolitan Police (a.k.a. "the met") 10 years later. They were deliberately designed to be a non-militarised force: they wore visible uniforms, but they were black instead of the army's red; they carried truncheons instead of swords or firearms (this is also why most police in the UK to this day do not carry firearms); they were deliberately "civilian" not "paramilitary"; and they were "answerable to the public" in the words of Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel (under whom the force was set up). The preventative instead of reactionary nature of policing definitely fits into this context too.
We do that now. The division of the army responsible for that is called "the police".
Countries like Italy have Army corps (the Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza) that do police work but are still part of the army, in addition to also having regular Police. I think this is not uncommon in countries where Napoleonic France had a strong influence, but there’s plenty of commenters here with a better knowledge of the domain, so please correct me if I misremember:)
But having part of the army do police work doesn’t really fix most problems with the police, of course.
If you've read my other posts you've probably been able to infer that I'm not a fan of the police, but I find that being quippy about them undermines actual meaningful conversation about their history and how they could change.
That doesn't mean anything. If we renamed the police "gendarmes", what would be different?
Your comment about slogans reminds me of the 'thin blue line between anarchy and order' slogan the police themselves use which, to me, is a bare-faced admission of existing to protect the property and interests of the wealthy by suppressing the rest of us. I've never quite understood why that slogan became so popular.
We can argue about whether the police deliver what the slogan offers, but your inability to understand why the slogan is popular stems from your very weird take on its meaning.
It's just hilarious (and confusing) to me that it's just as easily a condemnation rather than praise; no leaps of logic required. At all. Other such slogans are usually a bit more obtuse and harder to challenge than 'yeah, that is exactly correct, and it horrifies me', hence the confusion. I suppose it is a very effective thought terminating cliche.
From your other comment. This is the only way in which that slogan can be interpreted to mean anything negative—if you're one of the very small number of people who believe anarchy to have positive connotations.
> it's just as easily a condemnation rather than praise; no leaps of logic required
It's not a leap of logic, it's a leap of semantics. For the vast majority of English speakers "order" has positive connotations and "anarchy" has negative connotations. For you it's the opposite. Given that, it's not surprising that you interpret it the opposite way as most people, but it's weird that you have so little understanding of the rest of the Anglosphere that you don't realize that you're the odd one out.
My interpretation of the phrase strictly retains the semantics, including that of the word 'order' to essentially mean 'the state', or perhaps more generously 'the status quo'. Like I said, it's not one of the more obtuse slogans, like ones artfully designed to sound reasonable when taken at face value but is actually semantically overloaded, take any dog whistles like weird anti-trans rhetoric about chromosomes which was never actually about chromosomes. I hear they're on to hand-wringing over gametes now; I wonder what they'll run to next. This thin blue line stuff doesn't have any of that overloading (or resultant churn); the semantics of the phrase itself are no deeper than it first appears.
It's been very frustrating watching so much police violence, corruption, etc. being openly reported internationally and nothing changing, at all. In Australia (and from what I've heard of the US) there's not much of an effort to try and suppress news of or spin better PR over the horrific stories of police brutality and corruption any more. Like they're not even bothering to keep up pretence and plausible deniability any more. It feels like we're unfortunately a long way from re-evaluating the police even very strictly within the current political frameworks we have. Gotta try to stay optimistic and active, though!
But the other thing that's important to remember is that those communities need to be organized for the well being of all, and there aren't such places today.
Also, there's a practical element. Capitalism is here and powerful. I still need to eat, so I participate. I just also spend a lot of time and money on mutual aid (I have a spare house I rent at "cost of maintenance" to families in need, because I believe housing should not be a commodity. Do I take what I can out of the capitalist mode and put it into the anarchist mode.)
Also an anarchist, though not the kind you probably are ("anarcho capitalist" vs "anarcho space communist"). Either way, I don't have a rainbow happy view of human nature, and as such I don't think you can get away from having bad guys that require some sort of police or enforcement.
While I'd personally push for removing most of those roles from a police force, and I believe that communities could do so safely and better with more community run organizations, as an anarchist I believe it should be up to communities to decide what's right for them. If a group decides they really want police, then they should do that. I'd disagree with their decision, but that's ok.
Isn't this more or less what's already happening today? Some communities have scaled back their police force dramatically, others have maintained theirs or even scaled them up.
Is the difference just that you'd prefer to see us start from a clean slate and choose from the buffet table, rather than have to migrate from legacy systems?
The men hired by constables were typically not uniformed, full time workers, but temporary muscle.
The first, iirc, police force was in Glasgow in 1800 with London following in the 1820s.
"legal liability": if you beat someone up in Medieval Europe, the big danger is not the authorities' sentencing you to jail, it was getting sued by your victim.
England before 1780 or so was organized for the benefit of the artistocracy (barons and higher ranks). You can see just from the fact that constables were not paid a salary that they probably were a net harm (more of a menace than a help) to the common person, but they were a net benefit to the aristocracy because they generally kept commerce humming along at an faster rate than it would have without the constables and because any constable that messed with an aristocrat would be harshly punished. (The aristocrats specialized in military violence, but it was tedious for them to moderate disputes between commoners, so they farmed some of that work out the the constables, who of course were commoners.) When historians say the world's first police force started in England in 1810 or whatever year it was, they mean the first force with a monopoly on violence that was a net benefit to the every class of society including the commoners.
They were a thing in Imperial Rome [1]. I believe they got the idea from the Egyptians, who seem to have invented civil policing (or the Chinese, depending on how you categorise police).
Otherwise, what we today consider police work would have been handled by an army.
In most cases when people think of police in the contemporary setting, they think of a non military force. But you are correct that I should probably say "uniformed civilian police force" rather than "uniformed police force", as there have been a couple historic examples of the military being used to police people in uniform.
Source?
They certainly weren't organised under the Roman military. Until the 2nd century, Roman citizens weren't even allowed to serve as vigiles. We could argue they were a paramilitary, but then almost every contemporary police force would qualify as well.
> there have been a couple historic examples of the military being used to police people in uniform
This was the status quo. The exceptions were the civilisations which invested into legal systems and the investigation of crimes, and even then generally only for a minority. One could argue that industrialisation increased the value of a human life enough that a lord dealing with crimes by murdering random peasants (or a nightwatch "cleansing" its community by beating up a pariah) became untenable.
Please double check the post I made, I highlighted the existence of alternative systems not to say "return to tradition", but rather to say "police forces as we know them today are not axiomatic. We can invent other systems."
Police may be an improvement on those past systems, while at the same time be outmoded (if one believes they are outmoded.)
If cops can't be sued for their actions due to qualified immunity, then they should absolutely fear the response of people unjustly detained. This American cop carte blanche is going to fucking stop.
Seems very fair to me.
Now, whether that applies to privacy is a different question, but it's clearly not as black-and-white as your neighbor makes it out to be.
That's the definition of tyranny and authoritarianism. The same rules that apply to them should apply to us. To suggest otherwise is to accept there are special classes of people who are more deserving of freedoms than common men. The government people are just fallible, corruptible men. They are not a superior class of people who have a unique capacity for the lawful application of violence. They're just humans like us. They deserve to have exactly the same freedoms we ourselves enjoy, no more and no less.
In public, you have no expectation of privacy - so anyone can film anyone, government or non-government. That would be most police activity. Any other police activity - such as when raiding a home - would be subject to standard legal review in terms of admission into discovery and whatnot.
There is an excellent shortcut called "Hey Siri, I'm being pulled over" that "will dim your phone, pause any music being played, and start recording video from your front-facing camera."
Not all cops are bad, but the power imbalance makes these issues necessary for citizens to protect themselves.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/17/21293996/siri-iphone-shor...
Only in the US. In most developed nations, this isn't the case: even in public you have a certain amount of privacy allowed, so for instance, people aren't allowed to take your photo without permission. Of course, there's practical limits here, but usually it comes down to whether the person is the subject of the photo or not. If a person sees themselves in a public photo, but they're in a crowd off in the distance, then that's ok. If someone is following them around and taking fairly close photos of them, that's not.
This makes sense cause the public official doesn't have an expectation of privacy when they are performing their official duties. That makes sense. Nothing they should be doing when they are conversing with a member of the public should be private to them (unless it is private to the person they are talking to - and if it's private to someone else then they probably shouldn't be sharing it with the person recording).
“Waite emailed his recording of the call to the sheriff's office records department and requested an internal investigation. A month later, Waite was accused of five counts of illegal wiretapping for recording the conversation with the sergeant and four other calls with sheriff’s employees.“
Just common sense really.
Just sayin'
But most states - whether one-party or two-party - do not require consent to record a broad swathe of exceptions (particularly extortion, but not just that). Exact laws vary quite a bit - honestly one of the worst things about America is how different laws (of all sorts) can be in different jurisdictions.
For example, I think it's awful that in some places it's legal to privately tell you friend about a mental health struggle you are having, and for that friend to, without your knowledge, share a recording of that conversation with other people. In my mind two party consent is a basic data-privacy law. You cannot create a record of something you expected to be private. You can have an expectation of a private conversation to be private.
If you’re saying something that “could be placed on twitter”, maybe reflect on the harm your statement is causing that the rest of society agrees about. Even if this was a law, the only defense is suing anyone who records your conversation and brings it to the limelight - the JKR approach.
Some states are single party consent, some two, some might be more subtle.
I would love to know how the deputy is grabbing arms. I mean try this at home, get a friend to face away from you and once you touch their arms they can try to elbow you in the face. Like the guys 63 and somehow he can extend half his arm length (it's elbows) to hit you in the face?
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideo...
Good news! It's not.
I've seen cops make statements that they must have known were not truthful to people's employers, seemingly for no purpose other than to damage the person's reputation after a heated (but legally protected) conversation. I've worked on bills where multiple members of law enforcement turned up to testify to say things that I'm pretty sure they knew were wrong, just to get their way in policy.
The sad reality is that there are many cops out there who lie to get their way and hurt people they don't like, and so I really don't find it hard to believe that they would accuse this guy of being a sovcit to damage his credibility.
edit: also in this case, remember that they've also accused him of resisting arrest when they went to get him for recording phone calls. So they've also made many claims that WERE about law violations.
Just why?
Really disappointed in DeSantis. Not that I'm even remotely shocked - he's an outright fascist and this sort of ruling and law is right out of 1984. Let's hope that the Supreme Court strikes down both laws.
Can't wait to vote his ass out of office.