Lakhota
Diamond Member
Snapping photos of police in Ferguson, Missouri, may have gotten Huffington Post reporter Ryan J. Reilly arrested Wednesday night while he was covering protests prompted by the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was shot to death by a police officer.
Reilly and Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowrey were detained and assaulted after attempting to film a swarm of police officers inside a McDonalds. An officer slammed Reilly's head into a glass window, and Lowery was shoved into a soda fountain while wearing press credentials around his neck. Both were later released without being charged with breaking any laws.
They essentially acted as a military force, said Reilly, who was in the restaurant to charge his phone and computer. It was incredible.
In recent years, there have been countless cases of police officers ordering people to turn off their cameras, confiscating phones, and, like Reilly, arresting those who attempt to capture footage of them. Despite a common misconception, its actually perfectly legal to film police officers on the job.
There are First Amendment protections for people photographing and recording in public, Mickey Osterreicher, an attorney with the National Press Photographers Association, told The Huffington Post. According to Osterreicher, as long as you dont get in their way, its perfectly legal to take photos and videos of police officers everywhere in the United States.
This misconception is pervasive enough that the New York City Police Department circulated a memo last week reminding officers.
Members of the public are legally allowed to record police interactions, the memo states, according to the Daily News. Intentional interference such as blocking or obstructing cameras or ordering the person to cease constitutes censorship and also violates the First Amendment.
The NYPDs reminder comes as police activity is in the national spotlight. Just two days after Michael Browns death, cops in Los Angeles shot to death an unarmed black man who allegedly struggled with mental illness. And three weeks ago, a New York City police officer put Eric Garner in an illegal chokehold that left him dead after gasping I cant breathe! A bystander caught the entire thing on video.
Those deaths, along with the arrests of Reilly and Lowrey, have raised questions about what, if anything, individuals can do to hold the police accountable for their actions. But one unquestionable right people have is to capture officers on film.
Theres no law anywhere in the United States that prohibits people from recording the police on the street, in a park, or any other place where the public is generally allowed, Osterreicher said.
So why do so many police officers still act like filming them is a crime?
Probably because they havent been trained otherwise, said Osterreicher. I think that there are many officers that believe that the minute they tell somebody to do or not do something, that thats an order. But police can only order somebody to do or not do something based on the law, and there is no law that says you can not record or photograph out in public.
More: It's Perfectly Legal To Film The Cops
So, if a cop tells you to stop filming or recording - you have the legal right to ignore him. This is good to know, because I've heard conflicting accounts on the legality of filming cops in action during the last few years. So now I know it's legal in all 50 states.
