There's a guy in NY, Clark Stoekley, who apparently owns a white panel van that he's painted with the Wikileaks logo to raise awareness of the plight of Bradley Manning (though he has no other connection to Manning or Wikileaks). There's a lot more info on the truck on his website. However, it appears that, unrelated to the truck, Stoekley has another issue to deal with: he was arrested for photographing police at Penn Station in Manhattan. He saw police in the station carrying semi-automatic weapons (an unfortunately common site in Penn Station), and he decided to photograph them with his phone. And from there, a familiar, if unfortunate, and almost certainly illegal incident ensued. As told by Pixiq:
Metropolitan Transit Authority police arrested a man for photographing them at Penn Station in New York City this afternoon – deleting his photo – before releasing him from a jail cell an hour later.
Clark Stoeckley was issued a summons charging him with “engaging in threatening behavior.”
“I was walking through Penn Station and I came across these MTA cops with semi-automatic weapons,” he said in a phone interview with Photography is Not a Crime.
“I stopped to take a photo and the cop came up to me and arrested me. I asked, ‘why am I being arrested?’
“’Because you’re a dick,’” the officer responded.
Of course, we've written tons of stories about police arresting the members of public for photographing or filming them while on duty. The MTA and New York may want to pay close attention to what happened up in Boston, where Simon Glik prevailed against the city of Boston and the Boston Police Department for violating his First and Fourth Amendment rights under very similar circumstances (though I don't even think they deleted the photos). In the end, the city of Boston had to pay Glik a large sum of money for violating his rights.
At what point will police finally learn that when they're in public, being photographed or video taped is fair game?
We've had a bunch of stories lately concerning people being arrested for filming or photographing the police while they're doing their job in public. This is pretty ridiculous, and thankfully courts have started to make it clear that this is a First Amendment violation. Of course, we also just had the story of the city of Boston having to pay $170,000 to one of the people it arrested for filming them. And yet, the message still hasn't reached the police, who seem to keep on arresting people for pointing a camera in their general direction.
JJ sent over a ridiculous story from Philadelphia where a Temple student was arrested for photographing the police, which he actually did as part of his photojournalism class, where he had a "night-photography" assignment. When he saw the police pull someone over near where he lived, he went over with his camera and started taking pictures. What happened next seems positively ridiculous:
As Van Kuyk tells it, he grabbed his camera and began taking photos of the occurrence. After being told to move away from the scene, Van Kuyk distanced himself but continued to take photos, he said. However, an officer soon after demanded Van Kuyk to stop taking photos, he said.
“He was pushing me, and I kept taking pictures and he didn’t like it, and he…got real aggressive and threw me to the ground,” Van Kuyk said.
When his girlfriend, Meghan Feighan, tried to pick up the camera, she was arrested and held for nearly 18 hours, he said. Van Kuyk was arrested and held for nearly 24 hours.
The National Press Photographers Association sent a letter to the police commissioner decrying this behavior, noting that just a few months ago, the commissioner, Charles Ramsey, had actually sent out a memo to police officers, reminding them that they can be "photographed, videotaped or audibly recorded" when in public.
Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped the prosecution of these two individuals from moving forward. The girlfriend agreed to "settle" her case, paying $200 and agreeing to 12 hours of community service, for daring to pick up her boyfriend's camera after he'd been shoved to the ground. However, Van Kuyk is still facing charges -- including one potential felony charge for "hindering apprehension." One hopes that the court here agrees with the appeals court in Boston. Either that, or the prosecutors in Philly learn about the $170,000 Boston just had to pay out...
In a court ruling that came out a little while ago (just catching up now), Judge Richard Posner took the lead in an appeals court ruling that effectively reaffirmed the idea that police don't need a warrant to search mobile phones as they're arresting someone. Of course, this general concept is not new and I've discussed my concerns about police being able to search phones without a warrant in the past -- but this particular ruling does seem pretty limited. While Posner notes some of the bigger questions, he basically compares the phone to a diary, and focuses on the mere searching of basic data, like the address book, to suggest this particular search was limited, and doesn't raise any significant 4th amendment issue.
It’s not even clear that we need a rule of law specific
to cell phones or other computers. If police are entitled
to open a pocket diary to copy the owner’s address, they
should be entitled to turn on a cell phone to learn its
number. If allowed to leaf through a pocket address
book, as they are, United States v. Rodriguez, 995 F.2d 776,
778 (7th Cir. 1993), they should be entitled to read the
address book in a cell phone. If forbidden to peruse love
letters recognized as such found wedged between the
pages of the address book, they should be forbidden to
read love letters in the files of a cell phone.
Effectively, the court more or less says that circumstances matter, and that in situations where there's a chance that data will get deleted or modified, it's perfectly reasonable to do a simple search of the mobile phone, but it could get thornier if it moves more in the direction of voyeurism, rather than as evidence for crimes. I'd certainly prefer much stronger privacy protections -- especially as a phone really is a window into much, much more than just a phone, but the ruling isn't much of a surprise and seems to align with other rulings on similar issues.
We've covered in great detail the ridiculous law in Illinois that makes it a crime to record police, even while they're on duty, without their knowledge. This seems crazy to us, and it appears the courts are agreeing. Last fall, we noted that a state court had ruled the law was unconstitutional, and now (as pointed out by reader John Katos) another local court has done the same.
Judge Stanley Sacks, who is assigned to the Criminal Courts Building, found the eavesdropping law unconstitutional because it potentially criminalizes “wholly innocent conduct.”
Last we'd heard, Illinois prosecutors were appealing the first ruling, and I imagine they won't be too happy about this ruling either. But, at some point, it seems they have to recognize the ridiculousness of making it a crime to record police on the job.
In ever-increasing numbers, law enforcement is finding itself on the receiving end of the camera. Every low-end cellphone comes equipped with a still camera at the very least, and most have the ability to capture video. With a large percentage of the population equipped to document their interactions with law enforcement, hundreds of taped encounters have surfaced, most of them capturing policemen behaving badly.
Several law enforcement officials have turned a bad situation even worse, trying to suppress these recorded encounters by abusing wiretap laws or flat-out seizing recording equipment and destroying the evidence. Despite the knowledge that any interaction could be recorded, many members of the law enforcement community continue to abuse their power. Ken at Popehat gives a brief explanation why:
A certain segment of law enforcement has always viewed the use of force against citizens not as an ugly necessity in extreme circumstances but as a perquisite of the job. Those cops are not going to change their spots just because everyone's got an iPhone. So now we have pushback.
All this adds up to an impunity that grants those with power even more power. These recordings are often the only evidence a citizen can produce, should a situation turn ugly, and the only record of the event not directly under law enforcement control. Officials have found it way too easy to suppress, destroy or "misplace" damning footage captured by police cameras. It's much harder for them to do this with a citizen's recording, especially once it's made its way to the wide-open internet. But that won't stop them from trying. The times have changed, and so have the methods:
Did you think that the New Professionals would be content arresting photographers in the street? Hell, no. If we've gone digital, so have they. And they know how to work the system. Google reports:
"We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests."
So, now law enforcement agencies are trying to clean up their image via some sort of DMCA bastardization. They certainly have no moral reason to be doing this and the legality of the action seems suspect. Obviously the normal intimidation factor is removed completely when delivered via e-form and Google has correctly decided to ignore these requests. But this isn't as far as it goes. Intimidation is very much still part of the plan, as evidenced by the other requests:
Note that Google records not just take-down demands (including categories for executive and police demands premised on "national security" and "criticism," among others), but demands for user identifying information.
I can't think of a single good reason why law enforcement would need identifying information of someone who posted a recording of police brutality, but I can think of several reasons why they shouldn't have it. But what if someone were to, I don't know, enact legislation that gave the government (including all of its various outlying entities) greater control over the internet? Ken spells it all out:
So: bear in mind, when you consider measures like SOPA, that giving the government increased power over internet posts and increased ability to seek out user information may not just impact talking about music and movies - it might impact our ability to talk about, and document, police misconduct. Think the police would never seek to abuse such power? Then you're a damned fool.
We already know that, if passed, SOPA will be abused to hell and back by the RIAA and MPAA. ICE has already shown that it's willing to abuse SOPA's granted powers even before SOPA is enacted. By writing this into law, the government is granting itself the power to remake the internet in its own image, stifling dissent and ridding its brand new toy of anything unflattering. The internet will no longer be an "information superhighway" but rather a series of tollbooths and checkpoints manned by those easily corrupted by power.
By now, I expect that many of you have heard or seen the reports of police in riot gear pepper spraying students at UC Davis late last week. If you haven't seen one of the many, many videos of the incident out there, this one is particularly popular and has a pretty good view of the police officer walking up and down the line of peaceful protesters with their arms locked, spraying them heavily with pepper spray:
However, there appear to be dozens of other videos capturing the same thing from a variety of different angles. I just watched about a half dozen of them, and each one provides a little more insight or perspective into what happened. None of them make the police look good. This and other recent incidents of police pepper spraying protesters raise a few different issues (regardless of what you think of what people are protesting for). Let's discuss two of them quickly.
First, it's fascinating to see how protest is changing in the age of YouTube. In the past, photographs often captured iconic moments in similar situations. Or, in some cases, merely the stories of what happened. And while there can be something powerful and moving about a still photograph, the video of these latest incidents really lets you see the details, and I find such videos to be much more powerful in showing the full extent of what's happening. It makes it that much harder to cover things up or try to explain away the actions of the police. We've talked about why the right to record police is an important right for Americans, but in situations like this, it also shows not just the value of recording what the police are doing, but also the power of bringing millions of people around the world right into the situation of what happened.
Related to that is the fact that such a large percentage of people these days now carry handheld video cameras, often in their mobile phones. That we don't just get one angle on these stories, but coverage from pretty much every perspective, is really quite an incredible experience.
The other issue worth discussing is the long term unintended consequences of regulatory and legal battles against vague bogeymen without a thought to what happens. If you want to read a really fascinating opinion piece on what happened at Davis, you should read what Bob Ostertag had to say. Ostertag, among other things, is a professor of Technocultural Studies and Music at UC Davis, and his discussion is really fascinating -- directly calling out the administration for its bogus defense of the pepper spraying (and comparing it to a similar situation that was handled quite peacefully at Columbia). He goes on to highlight other ridiculous overreactions first within the UC system (at nearby Berkeley) and then elsewhere in the country, such as the pepper spraying of an 84-year-old woman in Seattle.
One of the key points he uses to summarize all this is the following:
Last week, former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper published an essay arguing that the current epidemic of police brutality is a reflection of the militarization (his word, not mine) of our urban police forces, the result of years of the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror." Stamper was chief of police during the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, and is not a voice that can be easily dismissed.
Stamper's article is also a fascinating, yet disturbing read. He points to his own failings in 1999, but also how much worse things have become. He also points to some ideas for turning things around -- creating radically different police forces, with civilian involvement.
Part of me wonders if these two issues converge. The ability of people to so widely document the abuses -- and horrify the watching public -- will hopefully lead people to seek out the sorts of "radical" solutions Stamper suggests (and, yes, I do recognize the ridiculousness of suggesting that police work closely with civilians is considered "radical"). But part of me wonders about the likelihood that things just get worse. We see this elsewhere, where "law enforcement" or the government through declaration or regulation declares "war" on something, rather than trying to understand and deal with the underlying issues. It never helps solve the problem, and oftentimes serves to make it that much worse. But oftentimes it seems like once the moral panics and the "war on..." announcements have been made, politicians and law enforcement become totally committed, unable to back down, even as their "solution" makes things worse.
It's stories like these that should make us wary of jumping on any sort of moral panic that doesn't involve a true look at the underlying causes, and how to fix them, but rather seeks solely a stricter "enforcement" solution. What we see, over and over again, is that that level of "enforcement" becomes a weapon that is used more and more regularly and more and more indiscriminately. Even as some amount of transparency hopefully counteracts some of it, people get so committed that the situation moves far away from solving problems, and just creates more and more new ones.
While US courts have started to make it clear that recording police on duty is perfectly legal, it appears that France is going in the opposite direction. In a recent ruling, a French court has ordered ISPs to block access to a website, which hosts videos and photos taken by citizens demonstrating police misconduct. Apparently, the court claims that such videos and photos, in conjunction with the names and affiliations of the officers seen, is a violation of privacy rights. As is explained in a comment on Volokh's site:
the dissemination of photographs and videos in addition to the names and affiliations of those police officers therein were treated as privacy violations. The court cites Art. 2 of the law of January 6, 1978, which makes makes it illegal for private sector entities to process personal identifying information without first registering with a government commission (CNIL). Moreover, dissemination of that personal identifying information has to be done under conditions that respect the privacy of the persons in question. The court also treats certain statements made about the police on the website as defamatory.
The "defamation" claim at the end may make some people think that this move is more justified, but a later comment clarifies the statements seen as "defamatory." None appeared to implicate any individual, but rather complain about the police in general and seem to be pretty obvious hyperbole -- i.e., things that wouldn't normally be seen as defamatory. The privacy claim is simply ridiculous. It seems to assume privacy rights where none exist.
It's difficult to see how this decision is anything other than an attempt by the French courts to hide police misconduct. That seems rather shameful.
With Illinois planning to appeal the Michael Allison case, in which the state wants to put Allison in jail for 75 years because he recorded an interaction with the police, it's worth pointing out that this is not the only such case in Illinois. A few people have sent over this ABC report about another guy, Louis Frobe, who was arrested and told he was facing 15 years in jail for daring to turn on his Flip cam during a traffic stop. You can see the video of the traffic stop in the news report below. Yes, note the irony: the whole thing was recorded (without Frobe's permission) by the police car camera, but the second the officer sees the Flip cam, he tells Frobe he's committed a felony and arrests him:
The key part:
Frobe calls it the worst experience of his life. He was on his way to a late evening movie on an August night last year when he was stopped for speeding in far north suburban Lindenhurst. He didn't believe he was in a 35-mile-an-hour zone, and he figured if he was going to get ticket he wanted to be able to document his challenge with video evidence, so he got out his flip camera, which he was not very adept at using.
At one point he held it out the window trying to record where he was. When the officer, being recorded on his squad dash cam, walked back to Frobe's car, the officer saw Frobe's camera.
Officer: "That recording? Frobe : "Yes, Yes, I've been... Officer: "Was it recording all of our conversation? Frobe: "Yes. Officer: "Guess what? You were eavesdropping on our conversation. I did not give you permission to do so. Step out of the vehicle."
Louis Frobe was then cuffed and arrested for felony eavesdropping.
Yes, eavesdropping. On himself.
In this case, prosecutors eventually dropped the charges, but Frobe turned around and sued them for the arrest in the first place. The Illinois Attorney General -- who still insists there's no First Amendment right to record the police -- has said Frobe's case should be dismissed since he has no standing. Of course, this is a nearly identical fact pattern to the Glik case in Massachusetts, where the court not only allowed Glik to sue but found 1st and 4th Amendment problems with the arrest. These are different circuits, so the ruling in Massachusetts doesn't directly act as precedent for Illinois, but it certainly can be cited and discussed.
Earlier this month, we wrote about the ridiculous criminal case against Michael Allison, who was facing 75 years in prison for the horrible crime of recording the police. The details of the case made it quite clear that the charges against him were vindictive, in response to attempts by Allison to challenge a questionable fine he'd received. Thankfully, an Illinois state court tossed out the lawsuit, noting that the law pretty clearly violated the First Amendment.
Of course, for whatever reason, Illinois state law enforcement has taken particular interest in the case, with the state Attorney General office coming in to help with the case, and the Illinois Assistant Attorney General flat out claiming that there's no First Amendment right to record police. So, it should probably come as little surprise that the state has indicated that it's planning to appeal the ruling (via Radley Balko). Perhaps this isn't a surprise -- but it does suggest a really broken system where the state is so adamant in trying to vindictively punish a guy for defending his own rights.
We just had a post about how a video of police showed that they lied in arresting a guy. Josef Anvil points us to a similar, but slightly different, story that took place in Chicago. In this case, Debra Green was in a car in a funeral procession, yelled at the driver of a car who was weaving in and out of the line of mourners' cars. Turns out the driver was an off-duty cop, Sylshina London, (rushing to get to work) who decided to arrest Green for misdemeanor battery charges. On what basis? Well apparently London claimed that Green threw a bottle at her and hit her in the face. Green was actually convicted.
The problem? It took a year and a half, but investigators finally realized that some of the incident was caught on police video... and it showed that London's window was shut at the time she claimed Green threw a bottle and that bottle hit her head. Even worse, London repeated that story under oath in court as part of what got Green convicted. Cook County prosecutors have now dropped the conviction and have apparently filed charges against London instead.
It's stories like these that, once again, remind people why it should be encouraged to film police -- and why honest police shouldn't have a problem with it.
