Recording Public Police Stops: A 16 Year Sentence??

A motorcyclist was stopped in March by a gun-wielding plain-clothes MD police officer who failed to identify himself as a police officer initially. The cyclist recorded the event using a camera mounted on his bike that he routinely used to record scenery during his motorcycle trips. Rather than being lauded for pointing out, on video when posted to YouTube, the questionable actions of the officer, the cyclist has been charged with a felony, punishable by up to 16 years in prison. When the inevitable press, media, blogger, and civil liberty advocates made this a big issue (which it is!), the local prosecutor couldn't understand why - because he's prosecuted several other similar cases.

Police actions - and actions of individual officers while on duty - are public actions for the most part, undercover operations aside. The cyclist, at worst, should pay a fine for popping a wheely, which was the cause of the stop. In no way should he be charged with - let alone punished for - recording the event. First, it was recorded in the normal course of his activity. It wasn't done clandestinely or for bad reasons. Second, the encounter should be considered a public event - by both the cyclist and by the officer.

It's astonishing that a prosecutor - and the officer and all the others who support the officer - cannot see that there is no case here. The cyclist is not a felonious criminal because he kept his video camera on when approached by a gun-wielding man in plain clothes. Or even if the gun-wielding man was in uniform. Privacy is not an expectation of police officers or other public officials in the performance of their public duties. In fact, I think all arrests, interviews, interrogations, and interactions of the police with the accused should be video-taped - not for the protection of civil rights of the officers, but for the preservation of and the guarantee of the rights of the accused. And to ensure that officers & other officials act according to established and legal procedure. It's time we start holding officers and others to higher standards - especially standards that assume and guarantee the rights of free citizens in a free country. Let's stop making innocent and concerned citizens the villains and the criminals.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/15/AR2010061505556.html?sid=ST2010061505592