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Comment by aftbit | Hacker News Reader

> The same day as the court’s ruling, DeSantis signed into law two bills affecting law enforcement in Florida. Two judges on the panel that issued the ruling Friday were DeSantis appointees.

> 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.

View on HN

What's the point of a citizen review board if the sheriff or chief appoints everyone on it? Talk about fox guarding the henhous!

> What's the point of a citizen review board if the sheriff or chief appoints everyone on it?

I don’t know, but I know what the point of the law was.

This sounds like a case of "the citizen review board was created by fed-up voters at the municipal level, and then the state stepped into neuter it". Because DeSantis etc. are about local control except when the locals make a decision they don't like.

See also: the Texas "water breaks ban", which actually superceded all county and municipal employee protections in a wide array of classes that exceeded the state minimums.

There was no water break ban as such. And no one in Texas will forbid employees from drinking water in the scorching heat unless it is to make a political point.

Yes, I explained what the law actually was in my comment. The nickname was earned by removing municipal protections for hydration breaks along with every other protection not specified at the state level.

I find it interesting how it probably evolved from "people on the citizen review board don't know what it means to police" to a moderate position of "why not add a retired policeman, so he can at least explain it to them?" to "fuck it, let's dismantle the whole thing"

> people on the citizen review board don't know what it means to police

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, I don't want want to be too political here. But there were people saying out loud that it would be better to have no police at all a few years back. Not sure how common this position is nowadays. But that shows that it is easily possible for people to come to unrealistic conclusions if they don't have a real dialog.

In Louisiana, the literal parish (county) level government used to be called "police jury" (and still is in some more rural parishes)

The article I read pointed out that ther used to be a report on the FDLE website, done by a LEO, that came to the conclusion that the Citizen Review boards had generally good feedback by the LEOs they were reviewing and from the communities. Of course, that report has apparently been scrubbed from the FDLE site now.

To make sure everything passes the citizen's review board.

The text isn't clear on if it's all or some members. I'm guessing the latter.

Having a retired cop in the room who understands police work sounds pretty sensible to me.

Sounds like the police trying to influence the boards 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.

Is the tradeoff with the potential positive influence worth it? Are there ways to mitigate the potential negatives?

What's the potential positive influence here? Genuinely trying to find one. Is it that a cop can tell the board "oh that's no big deal we assault everyone?" Policing isn't hard to understand, if it were there might be some minimum training standards somewhere.

The positive influence is just that a cop understands police work.

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.

The point is that "understanding police work" is irrelevant when you're building a body of neutral observers

As someone who was a reddit junkie who got guilty pleasured by youtube into watching tons of police bodycam videos...

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.

> 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).

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.

The body cam channels aren't really trying to push a narrative. They just take public body cam footage from a handful of locales and upload it with very little production work. It's almost no work and generates (comparatively) a lot of views. The majority of it is pretty mundane, lots of drunk people.

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.

No, no MY bubble is reality.

The thrust of the videos is not political in any way. The channels host videos of bad cops just as eagerly as any other channel. They just want views from content that they don't have to produce themselves.

The fact of the matter is though that for every bad cop interaction, there are about 10,000 normal ones.

> People generally have no idea what .... is and isn't legal.

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.

I suggest watching some of the videos to pull yourself back into reality a bit. Body cam watch, code blue cam, police activity, etc., there are a whole bunch of channels that just post public body cam footage.

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.

Perhaps there should be a confirmed victim of police brutality on the review board? Surely that would be similarly beneficial?

I get your point, but I think some kind of civil rights lawyer would be better than some beaten up criminal.

Not everyone who has been a victim of police violence is a criminal.

Yikes. Getting beat up by the police doesn't make you a criminal.

I don't know what you are talking about. The text is very clear on this.

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.

OK, that's quite clear. The article was less so.

> 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.

I'm told that the key to good governance is gridlock, checks and balances.

>What's the point of a citizen review board if the sheriff... appoints everyone on it?

Would you rather someone unelected by the citizens decide who sits on the citizen review board?

> 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.

no, but it could be someone elected who is not part of the police. Of course you can argue that you believe that other someone would be corrupt anyway, but at least this removes the appearance of impropriety

Appearances might not be as important as actual issues, though - I think it is okay to do it this way. Doctors in the UK sit on ethics boards looking at other doctors' behaviour.

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.

That is a different type of review though. Police departments also have Internal Affairs officers who review the work of other policemen for various problems.

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).

> 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...

Yep. There's just incredible demand for media attention on police problems (or certain problems) and in a country of 350m you can always find something somewhere that can be reported.

What the poster above is showing is that even the medical review boards are actually bad and should probably be replaced with independent oversight. You seem to think that it's the other way around.

> and should probably be replaced with independent oversight

I don't think they said this at all.

They didn't say it, but it is the natural conclusion to be drawn.

C'mon man, it's not just because there's 350 million people in America.

You know there are countries that have less of these problems per capita.

I don't know at all. Happy to look at peer-reviewed studies that publish their data, though.

You genuinely believe that the United States is #1 in the world for lowest per capital w.r.t. police problems like corruption and brutality?

Where does that belief come from? Do you just default to thinking that the US is the best, or is this opinion based on some sort of life experience?

Like can you not conceive of another country where the kinds of things that go on in America with police are not routine?

Have you been to another country? Have you ever just walked down the street somewhere else? I've been to many countries, one of which is America and holy shit I can tell you that the police there are weird.

This suggests that maybe there should exist citizen's review boards of medical malpraxis just as we are trying to create for police. Thanks for bringing this up.

Given the track record of police reviewing police in US, it is definitely not okay to do it this way.

I'm not sure I can support throwing out review boards because they look improprietous by conducting reviews. Seems a little backwards.

i never said “throw out review board”. I said “select someone elected other than police to staff the review board”

>I never said "sell the cake instead of eating it", I said "eat cake, then sell it".

you said "I'm not sure I can support throwing out review boards" when I never suggested anything of the sort

I would prefer citizens themselves to elect citizen review board members.

It is very common for a city/town to have at least one councilor on the police review board for their term, and while not perfect this is close to "elected". I already need to vote for school board trustees and a bunch of other positions I know/care nothing about, don't make me vote for all board compositions too.

The first is an absolute farce. All an officer who doesn't want to be recorded needs to do is get in your face (or have his partner get in your face) - at which point, you are now recording within 25 feet of an officer, and must either stop, or face arrest.

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.

Its worth reading the actual law as written [1].

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 isn't the correct bill, the bill that passed has the more broad phrasing "to violate such warning and approach or remain within 25 feet of the first responder"

https://www.flsenate.gov/Committees/BillSummaries/2024/html/...

Oh thanks, yeah that clarification is an important one!

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.

> If a first responder approaches you then you've done nothing wrong.

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.

You can beat the wrap, but you can't beat the ride.

Well, unless you're poor, then likely you can't beat either.

Yeah there's definitely all the usual problems of having to fight an unlawful arrest. Its expensive, or you likely get poor representation from a court appointed lawyer, and it can take a ton of time that most people don't have to spare.

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.

>> 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.

That is fascinating to me and the opposite of my previous understanding! Do you have any links or experience to provide? Many thanks! :)

In the US jurors are basically untouchable for any decision they reach and can't be made to testify about their deliberations. So nullification is an off shoot from those two things where a jury can decide whatever they want even against their oath to follow the jury instructions and decide impartially. The prosecution tries to screen for this though during selection.

"Follow jury instructions" is a very slippery slope that IMO we shouldn't be okay with.

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.

I'm afraid you're mistaken. Quoting with emphasis mine.

> 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.

The instructions are a product of both the prosecution and defense and largely just lay out what components the state is supposed to prove in order to satisfy the requirements of each of the charges. Those requirements are not as simple as just what's in the law and often are modified by court cases which is why they exist.

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.

That seems like a reasonable explanation of legal instructions, definitely more clear than my earlier one.

IMO the use of jury nullification really shouldn't depend at all on how it was used in the past though. Plenty of things have been used for terrible causes in the past, we can't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Jury nullification is the term to search for here. I'd really recommend you just dive in and do your own reading. Its a complex topic that is viewed very poorly by lawyers and judges, not surprisingly as it means the success of their cases depend on juries that may not necessarily be predictable.

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.

Haha, this was pretty good. I think a bunch of them involved police walking towards the videographer, requiring them to walk farther back.

If the law forbids you from approaching, staying where you are would be fine wouldn't it?

     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

https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2024/184/BillText/er/H...

Like the original comment said, it's "approach or remain"

That's the usual phrasing of trespass laws, and remain here means "remain after approaching". I can't see any judge siding with a cop following someone and requiring him to stay 25 feet away.

You’re overestimating judges. Even aside from the possibility of corruption, which has certainly happened before and will again, some judges are awful people or not very clever. Generally the minimum requirement to be a judge is to pass the bar and then get elected by people who don’t know anything about you. It usually helps to be a friend of cops.

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)

You can't legislate away corrupt judges. Also when one of the sides asks to question you as a witness and the judge proceeds to swear you in, you do just that and later complain, not start and argument there and then.

> Generally the minimum requirement to be a judge is to pass the bar and then get elected by people who don’t know anything about you.

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.

Here I was thinking Roy Bean had vanished into legend and myth.

I agree with your implicit statement that this is a problem. It’s also important to note that “lay judges” only exist in eight states, and, AFAIK, where they exist, their authority is almost if not entirely limited to misdemeanor cases.

Still problematic, in my opinion.

> 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.

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...

Once the law is on the books it gives cops an(other) easy excuse to arrest you and throw you in jail for recording them. Many people can't afford to miss a day of work, let alone try a case in court.

What happens in court is irrelevant. The police will have arrested you, and they had a "reasonable pretext", so they won't face any repercussions. You, however, will not only lose the opportunity of filming them, but will at least spend one night in jail. You might get some damages from the city, but most likely not enough to cover the court costs of even pursuing this.

> I can't see any judge siding with a cop

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.

Unless the judges actively punish the cops for doing this, the cops win, and are incentives to bully away any potential witnesses. It is not enough for the judge to just throw out the charges.

The remainder of 33 is really important. If the first responder needs to move in the direction of the videographer in order to perform their duty, then the videogrpaher should move.and give them space. If the movement is not necessary, then they would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the videographer was remaining in place to harass the responder or otherwise was impeding to their duty.

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.

you are expecting good faith from US police?

Am I allowed to stand my ground with deadly force in such a scenario?

No, you must retreat to your designated free speech zone.

What does that mean?

He thinks he can outdraw the cops.

Most people competent with a gun can. The requirements for firearms practice (and especially draw-and-fire drills) for cops are pretty minimal across the board. Your average 3-gun or USPSA competitors (who admittedly train much more than a bench shooter probably does) likely spend 30x more hours per year training than a cop does.

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.

><Outdrawing the cops isn't the issue, outnumbering them is.

The old saying when running from the cops goes

> "You can beat Mopar, but you can't beat Motorola"

Here's a breakdown of the civilian training requirements:

--- 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.

> a breakdown of the civilian training requirements

Which is why I specified:

> most people competent with a gun

Most civilians are not people competent with a gun.

It is very relevant that hobby shooters can easily far outpace police in their weapon competency with just a casual amount of shooting practice (hell, most ranges give you a 2-hour block of time, so even one range day a YEAR could put you even with some of these departments). Whether some cops are also hobby shooters is irrelevant to the complete lack of reasonable training requirements at a policy level before we turn cops loose on the streets with firearms.

Using deadly force against police officers in the middle of doing their duty is a recipe for being beaten and then murdered, even if you were technically within your legal rights to do so.

I thought you can only use deadly force if you fear for your life. A cop approaching you, or even physically grabbing you and moving you to a new location won't kill you.

I don't know what you consider to be a credible threat to your life but those two examples make the top five for me. There is no one I will ever interact with that has a greater chance of ending my life than an on duty police officer. Not the least of which because a random civilian that kills me will for sure go to jail which can't be said for the cop.

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?

Trying to apply "stand your ground" in such a situation almost certainly increases the odds that you will die.

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.

> There is no one I will ever interact with that has a greater chance of ending my life than an on duty police officer.

So why in the world would you "stand your ground" in this scenario?? Perhaps you posted in the wrong comment thread?

As Breonna Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker can tell you, it is not wise to do so.

Is recording someone an expression of

> the intent [..] to interfere, threaten or harass them

Maybe there was a precedent where such a person walked in and demanded something?

The police often interpret recording as a threat (to hold them accountable). They then can construct situations to make it impossible to record without intefering.

> 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.

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.

Legality aside, I can't imagine waving a 15ft long pole towards the police will go over well.

Yeah, very many people can't afford a decent lawyer when they need one, and might not get one even if they can, in which case legality really is... aside.

>The second law is just a straightforward neutering of citizen review boards.

It says reestablished. How are they neutering something that doesn't exist?

Where does it say it is creating an entity that doesn't already exist?

The word reestablished means that it used to be established but is no longer established. It is now coming back.

Not completely. It also means to disband something that currently exists, then recreate it, effectively reestablishing the board. You are paying attention to only one possible reading, which is the one not consistent with the truth. Citizen review boards exist in Florida. These currently functioning boards will have their power stripped immediately and members will be replaced with captive appointees. This is not creating citizen review boards, this is destroying them

Using the word “reestablish” in that way would be the confusing and odd considering the multiple other word choices that would be far more precise.

Note that this is just a phrase that occurs in the news article, it doesn’t seem to be present in the actual law as far as I can tell.

Congress gets "reestablished" every two years. The English government gets "reestablished" every year when the Prime Minister asks to form a government in the Monarch's name.

So it could just mean when the current term is up and the new appointees are sworn in.

Florida’s website is a bit confusing to navigate, but I think I found the actual text of the law.

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.

The “re-“ part of “re-established” suggests that this is a modification of an existing thing, no?

It sounds like it used to exist. No longer exists and is now coming back. If it was currently in existence it would say modified.

Re-established in this case means, dissolve the existing boards and reconstitute them with the appointees. Review boards already exist in Florida.

No, it means that the boards have their power stripped until their membership is replaced by the new, captive appointees that can be relied on to not be independent of the agency they are notionally overseeing, at which point their powers are restored.

That's what “required to be re-established” means.

Well, regardless of what it sounds like, they do exist. The wannabe autocrat is weakening them.

No. My city has an independent citizen review board. This law means "yours will be dissolved and we will make anew one appointed by cops."

> Probably in a way that is most favorable to LEOs.

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.

> suddenly 20 hard of hearing people need to crowd around him really close in order to record him

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.

Laws that rely on an officers/departments personal reading of a situation/interpretation are easily confused and abused, especially when it's something as fuzzy as "interference". Having clarity is nice. I personally think it's fine to give an officer some sort of personal space. If I were an officer arresting someone, I wouldn't want someone affiliated with them standing 5 feet behind me, where I would have to worry about being attacked. Not sure how this works indoors though, where 25 feet would make observation impossible.

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.

> 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.

Without sane body camera policy, deterministic accountability is fantasy. I was speaking from that goal.

That seems about as realistic as immediate dismissal from your job if you forget to unmute yourself on zoom.

It's OK to expect higher standards from police officers. Cameras should record all day and officers should only be allowed to mark timestamps they wish to be deleted later. The footage should still be logged in a black box, encrypted with something to make it not easily accessible. That way a cop could "whoopsie" their camera before beating someone, but it would still ultimately be possible to get that recording.

Bingo. Body cameras are a technically-solveable problem.

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)

Bingo, you have the answer. Now do the same suggestion for security cameras in homes for domestic violence, bathrooms for rape, politician's and judges offices for bribery, offices of government clerks, etc.

You'll realize people get very uncomfortable very quickly when you start heading down a near bulletproof solution. They want the chaos, the charade and they definitely want the "vagueness" of laws because they can't handle the black and white nature of a lot of laws that were drawn up lazily.

Laws and enforceability are intrinsically linked.

If you have non-omniscient enforcement, there's a certain amount of lubrication between the law and reality.

If you have omniscient enforcement, the onus is on the law to account for reality.

My proposal is simple: a cop is someone deputized by the State to be a cop who is operating a body cam.

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.

Sure it’s simple. You can get even simpler without changing the realistic probability of it happening: just don’t hire bad cops.

One of these is actionable, one of them isn't.

Mandatory body cams were also dismissed by the cynical, and it's the rule in many forces now, perhaps even most. This is just an extension of that policy.

No, it isn't actionable. It would require constitutional amendments in multiple states, changes to state law, changes to multiple federal laws, and I wouldn't be surprised if it all got thrown out at multiple levels. That is no more an action than "thoughts and prayers".

That requires a reliable test that can filter them, including new officers. If you think you can easily filter "good" and "bad" people, acting in extreme circumstances, you're delusional.

I don't think it's possible at all, let alone easy.

If the mute button is right next to the “execute participant” button, more caution with the buttons is warranted.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

ALL enforcement of laws in normal situations rely on officers/departments personal reading of a situation.

The exceptions are Grand Juries and indictments.

Sure, but less personal reading is a good thing for the public. For example, speed limits make it clear how fast you can go, requiring something exceptional for an officer to stop you, and acting as protection if they do [1]. Similarly, this makes it clear that they can't threaten you with claims of interference, beyond this distance, unless you're doing something exceptional.

[1] https://www.heddinglawfirm.com/unlawful-police-stop#:~:text=....

Yup, though as a counter, police academies really focus on the ability to generate PC (probable cause). It’s a highly prized skill.

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 struggle to think of examples where a suspect has actually ELUDED law enforcement due to citizens recording an interaction or arrest, and I'd be very curious to see any such thing.

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.

I've seen plenty of videos of police where the people filming are actively escalating tensions. It's usually by yelling though, not filming, but the yelling seems to usually be for the video, rather than anything productive.

As someone who works in emergency services, frankly, "so what?". If you can't tune that out as background noise, you're not going to be able to do your job effectively. Otherwise, what, you have police who can only do their job in ideal circumstances.

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.

I'm assuming you're not speaking about law enforcement since you didn't mention it specifically but I think there's a big difference between a chaotic and interested crowd vs an antagonistic crowd.

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.

Why would it be bad? Surely sunlight is the best disinfectant? Let people film as much as possible. It's been demonstrated that police cameras don't always function... mysteriously.

My personal take about giving an inch on this topic is that it'll embolden people to "get involved" without much facts but having a lot of emotions about a volatile situation. E.g. Some rando drug dealer purposefully shouting at a nearby uninformed mob about "profiling", so everyone gets involved because hey "cops are bad, shame poor brown person", they all shout at the police officer, they all offer their opinion whilst not being a judge or jury. Next thing it's sheer Chaos for the simple encounter, because we forget that mob mentality is a real thing.

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.

Your personal take is that of someone who hasn't been bullied or abused by officers of the law, I'm assuming. Consider that some people have, and they may want police accountability, with no desire to sow chaos.

I'm not a drug dealer, but I did get not so nice treatment from police once. Well, more than once but this was the most applicable to this discussion.

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.

> 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

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.

This isn't an either/or scenario.

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.

> This isn't an either/or scenario.

Right, it's already illegal to interfere with police.

If I'm on the ground and an officer is yelling at me, I do not want other people even within that officer's bubble of space.

It's unreasonably escalatory in situations that instead need more calm.

>If I'm on the ground and an officer is yelling at me, I do not want other people even within that officer's bubble of space.

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.

Oh, always-on cameras are a 100% prerequisite solution. The presumption needs to be that if a body camera is ever off, the worst thing happened while it was.

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)

You don’t want more than one person to be close enough to notice if you’re still breathing?

There are a lot of laws passed to clarify or elaborate on existing laws. Unless there's common law that already specifies this exact scenario, this just specifies a specific case for judges, citizens and first responders.

I get the impression this law exists more for political reasons than for practical application --not that it won't be applied. Floridian voters seem to like the police but hate taxes. Granting powers to the police to help them harass "undesirables" without any added cost is the kind of law they get excited for.

> we can all agree that someone loudly "recording" shoulder to shoulder with police officer disrupts their ability to resolve situations

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.)

How come this kind of shit is only a problem in places where police are more likely to be involved in criminal events that involve brutalizing innocent people?

Does Norway have a problem with an excessive number of people filming police interactions in public?

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