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Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

Necessary link to Pr. Duane's lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

Don't talk to the police. Ever.

Video all interactions with police more serious than a traffic stop and video those if you can get away with it legally. Cameras are cheap and Internet streaming is easy.

It seems like the less serious offenses should be video tapped as well. Why not? Nothing serious is going to happen, right?

Police themselves should wear cameras at all times, and that footage should be made freely available to the public.

I'd say that the ones where you think it might not be serious are precisely the ones you should definitely be recording: you might not treat it with the same gravity, especially when you feel that you've done nothing wrong or that the most likely outcome is a ticket or scolding.

recording of police is illegal in many cities - and i mean the voice recording. unless there's an app that lets u record without sound i'd say do not record.

Secret recording is illegal in 12 states, the ones that are two-party consent states. These states require all parties to know that they are being recorded.

Openly recording the police is prohibited in two states - Illinois and Massachusetts. Every other state, you have the right to record the police, as long as you do it openly.

Now, there are a few things that go along with this. You are not allowed to interfere with the investigation. So, for example, you can stand a respectful distance away and start recording. You cannot run up to the cop's face and yell "AM I BEING DETAINED?!"

Recording the police doing their job in public in generally legal and is a protected First Amendment activity. Courts keep ruling in favor of recording police. Laws prohibiting it are not constitutional.

>Openly recording the police is prohibited in two states - Illinois and Massachusetts

No, not really.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/05/7-rules-for-recording-...

Last week the City of Boston agreed to pay Simon Glik $170,000 in damages and legal fees to settle a civil rights lawsuit stemming from his 2007 felony arrest for videotaping police roughing up a suspect. Prior to the settlement, the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that Glik had a “constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public.” The Boston Police Department now explicitly instructs its officers not to arrest citizens openly recording them in public.

The law in 38 states plainly allows citizens to record police, as long as you don’t physically interfere with their work. Police might still unfairly harass you, detain you, or confiscate your camera. They might even arrest you for some catchall misdemeanor such as obstruction of justice or disorderly conduct. But you will not be charged for illegally recording police.

Twelve states—California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington—require the consent of all parties for you to record a conversation.

However, all but 2 of these states—Massachusetts and Illinois—have an “expectation of privacy provision” to their all-party laws that courts have ruled does not apply to on-duty police (or anyone in public). In other words, it’s technically legal in those 48 states to openly record on-duty police.

....

Fortunately, judges and juries are soundly rejecting these [anti-police recording] laws. Illinois, the state with the most notorious anti-recording laws in the land, expressly forbids you from recording on-duty police. Early last month an Illinois judge declared that law unconstitutional, ruling in favor of Chris Drew, a Chicago artist charged with felony eavesdropping for secretly recording his own arrest. Last August a jury acquitted Tiawanda Moore of secretly recording two Chicago Police Internal Affairs investigators who encouraged her to drop a sexual harassment complaint against another officer. (A juror described the case to a reporter as “a waste of time.”) In September, an Illinois state judge dropped felony charges against Michael Allison. After running afoul of local zoning ordinances, he faced up to 75 years in prison for secretly recording police and attempting to tape his own trial.

Oddly enough, police in one-party states want to keep the status quo. Because it means they don't have to get a warrant to record suspects' communications with police/informants.

There was a case in Boston a year or two ago, someone openly video-taped a police action. BPD arrested him, it was later thrown out in court.

Don't pay taxes in places the cops are mostly criminals. Ever.

This doesn't seem like practical advice.

You can find shitty police behavior everywhere, including the EU, Germany and Canada. The probability is just different.

"Mostly" speaks to probability.

I'm not anti cop but the Sûreté du Québec have a pretty bad reputation.

Thank you - this is the only practical solution. Emigration is maybe the only practical and morally viable option.

This will force you to become very intimate with the local prison guard population however.

He means "move", not "evade taxes while living there".

Does he? Because I read it as the latter, and with the amount of internet bravado that surrounds any talk about the police, I'd be unsurprised if it was meant as the latter.

I know him, and he's moved from one corrupt third-world shithole (Detroit) to an almost civilized city in a civilized country (Berlin) for this reason.

The police in Detroit (where I grew up) are saints compared to the cops in NYC (where I lived when I moved to Berlin).

The NYPD is the largest terrorist organization in the United States. They are a blight on this nation.

So, move to your own private island?

But how can she call the paramedics without the police?

Don't call the paramedics either. Desperately try to find your own way (or help the injured person find a way) to the hospital if something is wrong. There is no shortage of stories where people call the police, even for relatively serious issues, only to have the police show up and promptly murder the injured person or another nearby innocent.

I recently had an encounter that was a little surreal. At the art studio a forlorn man walked upstairs into the lunch room. Someone asked him how he was doing, he just looked like he was having a bad day, not super shitty, but bad. Lots of people come in and out of that studio space, it is common to see people you don't recognize. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "I just want to die." The art studio is mostly women, and his response put them all on edge. I could tell someone wanted to call the cops, the guy was definitely mentally ill. But the first thing that flashed in my mind was there was a high likelyhood this guy would be dead pretty shortly after calling them. Either by choice, suicide by cop or because that is just how the cops do things. Somehow it is ok for cops to shoot the mentally ill and get away with it. We eventually talked things out and he left before I could track him down again. I wish I handled that part better. I don't even want to call the cops when I am in danger for fear they will mistake me for someone else. Never been on the wrong side of the law, but I'd like to keep my cop exposure to zero. They never, ever, make a situation better.

The scenario you were afraid of happens. It's not too rare to read a story where someone calls the police because their friend is in medical distress, only to have the police show up and murder the person right there in their own home.

This is terrible advice.

It would have greatly reduced the likelihood of this guy getting assaulted and imprisoned, so I would consider it good advice.

"Don't leave your house, ever!" and "Don't try to stop and help anyone with anything" would also have prevented this. That doesn't make either of them good advice.

There's a difference between simply leaving your house, and actively requesting that a group of armed thugs come to your location.

When you call 911, don't you get the option for Police, Fire or Ambulance? That is the way it works in Australia.

And let me tell you, I've had acquaintances nearly die from overdoses because they've watched too much American TV; here in Aus, if you call the ambulance the police will not come unless you report violence.

But hey, Australia is surprisingly progressive in this way: I just got my prescription for Naloxone needles and did my training today. I'm an ex-addict, and don't hang with those people very often, but if I ever do I can save an overdose :) this is in QLD of all places, despite Newman trying to turn us into a police state.

In my location in the US, all three come when you call.

That is so weird. Where I live, Israel, they actually have different phone numbers (police - 100, medics - 101, fire dept. - 102), and they come only if you call them specifically (if at all). Of course if something really bad happens you call the police first and they call everyone else, but police arriving for someone who fell of their bike? Really? What a weird place.

Same in my location, a neighbor had a small fire in the wall due to plumbing soldering: police, firetrucks and ambulance. Then extra police kept stopping by (I guess they were bored, and the paramedic chick was cute and flirty).

Isn't that kinda an over-exaggerated response, if you only need one of them?

they assume the caller ins't qualified to make the right determination. Not only is the US a police state, but also a Nanny state.

I admit that this is probably the consequence of living in a less populated state, but when they ask the nature of your emergency here (NM), the dispatcher typically makes a decision of what response is needed.

All three are sent for most vehicular accidents for traffic control (state police, county sheriff, or city), fire suppression (volunteer FD, usually), and medical services (sometimes volunteer, especially in the county). Judging by the comments below, I suspect there's an advantage to living in an area that doesn't have tax money to blow. ;)

Mmmm tax dollars. So tasty.

You jest, but that's actually the reason.

I had a friend call the paramedics from home when she got seriously injured. The police did not show up. USA.

Depends on the situation. I've had operators ask if anyone was injured so they wouldn't have to send out an ambulance. Usually, the police are there anyway.

Of the three groups (fire paramedics police) which is most likely to be bored with nothing to do? Of course the cops are going to light the lamps.

This nation would have much better policing if we had half as many cops. I had a single day of jury duty two weeks ago and was dumbfounded by how many sheriff's deputies there were wandering around the courthouse in a daze, loitering around the metal detector, setting off the metal detector, speaking at inappropriate volume, eating in unsettling fashion, etc.

I'm sorry, but have you been to a dispatch room? I spent a day with in a sherriffs department once and then had went on a ridealong - there's no 'loitering around', arranging a half an hour's break for dinner was difficult.

Both you and the person you are replying to have taken personal anecdotes and expanded them out to decide that America has either too few or too many cops.

Oh, no. Both of us already knew the truth. The anecdotes are just for color.

No.

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