Fraternal Order of Police Supports 15 Years in Prison For Taping Cops in Public

[Major Robert Dump]

This will be ended at the Supreme Court, eventually.

[CrossLOPER]

This will be ended at the Supreme Court, eventually.

I have no doubt of that, though it will undoubtedly take a long time and still fail to affect the root of the problem.

[Major Robert Dump]

If making media is free speech, if campaign contributions (with a swell tax deduction even!) are free speech, then there is no way in Sam Hell that recording a public official performing his/her public duty is not free speech. The law should not apply to every public official EXCEPT police. There is no valid argument for a law prohibiting the recording of cops, only knee-jerk, holier than thou poop talk. Whats especially shocking is that the cases highlighted above were recorded by at least one party involved in the conversation, so normal eavesdropping laws should not rationally apply.

Cameras are everywhere. Cops record YOU. The ball bounces both ways. But I fear with the police in the few states with these laws using wiretap and eavesdropping laws to enforce these ridiculous codes, someone somewhere is going to have to trump them with an even better exploitation of laws already on the books. I think the key is going to end up being in the slander/libel area since thats where the whole "public official is open to public scrutiny" thing arose in the first place.

I still remember the look on Deputy Brown's face when he told me he was recording my interview, and I said "yeah, me too." In Oklahoma it is legal to record ANY conversation you are a part of, regardless of the others expectation to privacy.

When someone makes a real 1st Amendment case out of this, it will end up trumping states rights.

[Fisherking]

The fact that such laws exist only shows how effective courts and government authority is at keeping people ignorant of their rights.

Convicting anyone for recording a police officer should be imposable with a jury trial.

[ajaxfetish]

Mr. Donahue added that allowing the audio recording of police officers while performing their duty “can affect how an officer does his job on the street.”

Is this somehow a bad thing?

Ajax

[Ironside]

Is this somehow a bad thing?

Ajax

Of course, can't have the police acting like decent humans can we?

That's even one of the largest points with having it legal.

[Subotan]

The UK has it as well, with the police officer who beat a man to death in the street mysteriously facing no charges whatsoever as Ian Tomlinson happened to conveniently die of a heart attack about five minutes after being smashed on the head by a truncheon, whilst a student who chucked a fire extinguisher off a building that could have, but didn't, hit a policeman has been jailed for nearly three years. Likewise the five policeman who shot a Brazillian electrician seven times in the head on the London underground were let off completely. There are also loads of examples of individuals who have died in police custody, including one man who was having a fit and was arrested for being "drunk and disorderly", before being allowed to die, unsupervised, in a police cell, without a single police conviction, along with 332 others since 1998.