Recording of Police can get you arrested?
by CmdrFenix on Jan.13, 2010, under General
Here in NH, some of the free staters have started recording their police encounters. I am not a supporter of the free staters, but I am a supporter of this practice as IMHO (in my humble opinion), there is no reason why a public encounter with police should only be recorded by the officer. It also puts them on notice that you do care so they’ll perhaps exercise more thought before they act.
Down in the progressive state of MA, even Martha Coakly is telling local LEOs to NOT use the state’s wiretapping law as a justification for arresting people. Here we have the case of Simon Glik who after walking down the street, observes some LEOs pulling a plastic bag out of the mouth of a suspect being a bit on the rough side. I am not saying they were, but he thought so, so he decided to record this event with his cell camera. This promptly landed him in handcuffs and under arrest for illegal electronic surveillance.
“One of the officers asked me whether my phone had audio recording capabilities,’’ Glik, 33, said recently of the incident, which took place in October 2007. Glik acknowledged that it did, and then, he said, “my phone was seized, and I was arrested.’’
The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance.
Jon Surmacz, 34, experienced a similar situation. Thinking that Boston police officers were unnecessarily rough while breaking up a holiday party in Brighton he was attending in December 2008, he took out his cellphone and began recording.
Police confronted Surmacz, a webmaster at Boston University. He was arrested and, like Glik, charged with illegal surveillance.
What do you think about this? Should the “only ones” accumulating evidence be the police? I am not saying we should all be detectives, or put comprehensive camera systems in our cars, but how many of the legal slip ups by people could be avoided if they had another eye on it?
January 13th, 2010 on 4:26 pm
A lot of the videos I’ve seen are of freestaters going out and basically trolling the police, which I think it really dumb and morally wrong. The police are out there doing their job, and if you want them to respect you, I suggest you respect them. Do unto others, etc.
On the other hand, if the police are acting in an illegal manner, it should be within a citizen’s right to gather evidence against him. This should be taken to a court of law though, not posted on the Internet.
January 13th, 2010 on 10:11 pm
The biggest problem with this is that they never prosecute people for “wiretapping” because the RSA states that the person being “wiretapped” must have a reasonable expectation that their communications are secure. If you tell someone you’re recording them, then they no longer expect that they are having a secure conversation. There are NO cases of this being prosecuted. The police use this as an excuse to arrest people when they don’t want to be recorded, then later drop the charge. It happens quite frequently among the freestaters that record their interactions with the police to protect themselve and the police, it’s hard to charge someone that has proof that they didn’t do something wrong.
January 14th, 2010 on 11:23 pm
I couldn’t agree more with what Chip said. The majority of these cases I’ve heard about (basically 100%) have all been people who frankly were looking for a problem.
Does it mean that incorrect police get a free pass? No. But if you go out of your way to look for trouble, you’ll probably find it .. and people who look for trouble with the police (or are so over paranoid as to create trouble where none would have otherwise existed) usually succeed in finding it.
January 15th, 2010 on 8:09 am
No I also agree 100%. Some of the encounters I have seen basically show a level of contempt for police. Should you be allowed to record them? Yes. Should you show respect and courteously at all times? Absolutely. Does that also mean you should know your rights and if asked to be searched or what not you should just submit? Absolutely. That is why I like the video. Bad acting. Good message.