Criminalizing Catching Cops?

Thanks to the development of cell phone cameras, more and more citizens have joined the media in playing the role of watchdog for our society.  When an otherwise uninvolved person sees something out of the ordinary—a small child being reduced to tears by TSA agents as they conduct an airport pat down of her, or perhaps an overzealous arrest—she may pull out her cell phone and record the incident.  In today’s social media culture, such videos may be disseminated to thousands of readers almost instantly.

While many uploaded videos are innocuous, some document police activity.  So what do police departments think of this new phenomenon? Their actions in some cases indicate that they often do not approve.  Just yesterday, in fact,  a California man who had recorded a police officer arresting someone at gunpoint found himself cuffed as well.  The man, who stood in his own garage —down the street from the arrest—while recording, refused the police officer’s demands that he hand over his phone as “evidence”.  After hearing his refusal, the police officer arrested him, citing “police interference” for withholding evidence.

Cell phone videos have served a crucial role in many cases including the one of Oscar Grant, the young man shot to death by a BART officer in Oakland California. Had a bystander not been equipped with his cell phone, charges may not have been brought against the officer.  Since then there have been multiple incidents of police brutality recorded by cell phones, brutality which may have otherwise gone unaddressed.

While surreptitiously recording ordinary citizens is and should remain illegal, recording police officers who are potentially acting outside the permissible bounds of their authority, in a public area, should be protected.  As the examples above illustrate, recorded information can provide valuable evidence of police misconduct—and need not interfere with police activity, since the recording witness in each of those cases did not speak to the police and not attempt to intervene in the public dispute. Hopefully, courts will reject the departments’ claims and recognize the value of these recordings as evidence.