How is this anything other than an attempt to keep people from collecting evidence of bad police behavior?
Now that a large majority of people have a high quality video camera in their pockets, we've learned 2 things: (1) alien abduction was not real (2) police very deliberately kill members of racial minorities. I think this law is a reaction to (2).
You need to read the law to understand it better and also understand the current rulings that courts have provided on filming police. This law is none of those things that you state it's simply codifying a distance for what the courts have already upheld that police can do.
If you are party to the police interaction you can film closer than 8 ft. If you are in a car as a passenger you can film the interaction and the police cannot ask you to stop. If you are a non-party person simply watching the interaction the police can now ask you to maintain a distance of 8 ft.
Courts have already upheld routinely that police can ask people who are not party to the interaction to step away and they can create a reasonable area around them and the scene and keep people out of it. The definition of reasonable area varies based upon the situation. This that a reasonable area is a minimum of 8 ft. There are situations where that distance may be greater.
Regardless of what you think of the police they do need to be empowered to keep bystanders out of the middle of an interaction with their cameras in order to conduct their duties. 8 ft for a bystander is a very reasonable distance. At 8 ft your camera can see anything that a human-sized person is doing it to another human-sized person and it can record the audio of that interaction as well at 8 ft.
And as always the person who is party to the interaction can record the interaction and this is codified in this law as well. Laws like this do more to uphold a citizens ability to record the police then it does to take it away. Any reasonable person would understand that because without a law like this the police could argue that 50 ft is a reasonable distance. Now we have a law that says 8 ft is a reasonable distance in Arizona.
So if you're filming from 20 ft away and a cop walks towards to and yells at you to stop you can film until he's precisely 8 ft away, right?
What if you have a line of cops holding hands and forming a 10ft radius around you? Can you film? What if they start rotating and stepping in and out?
The law is dumb and redundant (you can get in trouble for interfering just fine with the laws on the books today). This is plain and simple intimidation.
The law is dumb and redundant (you can get in trouble for interfering just fine with the laws on the books today). This is plain and simple intimidation.
I was ready to comment something like "meh, you shouldn't be getting that close to them anyway." But you're right, it's already a law to not interfere. Whether you're recording or not shouldn't matter. Unless maybe they needed specific numbers because it is limiting a first amendment right.
Yes you could film in both of those situations. The law specifically lists law enforcement activities as making an arrest, questioning suspects, and dealing with emotional situations (edit: specifically emotional or disturbed person exhibiting abnormal activity).
Also, if you are part of the law enforcement activity, you are allowed to film. So yes, if a cop walks up to you yelling and you are at least 8ft from the law enforcement activity, you are legally allowed to film.
In what ridiculous scenario are cops forming a prayer circle around you? I’d assume in that made up world you’d become party to the police interaction and able to continue to film.
This law only serves to tell police how close they need to move towards people filming in order to get them to stop so their abuses can be done without being recorded.
I think an officer approaching you makes you party to the interaction. I wouldn't shut mine off in this case, and I'd happily face court if an officer approached me while simultaneously claiming I'm not party to the interaction.
The officer's approach to my person is the only the interaction I'm videoing at that moment. Anything else is incidental.
I think that one major issue here is that while you and I likely have the time and other resources to go fight something like this if it were to occur, many of the people for whom this law will be most relevant (areas where the most police activity occurs are often in impoverished areas) do not have that same luxury.
If you're barely scrapping by on an hourly job, and then get picked up or fined for this, oftentimes your only option is to accept the plea so you can get out of the courtroom and try to get back to work.
This law serves to provide a means for the police to place that burden on people who cannot bear it.
This is an amazing pirouette of logic. I have one simple question: Under this law, is it legal (not suggested, a good idea, etc. just literally legal) to observe the police from within 8ft without filming? If the answer is yes, then this law exists strictly to stop documentation of police (mis)conduct.
Thanks for the calm and reasonable response. Some of the comments here make me wonder how close people want to be to an ongoing incident? Inches? A foot? At a certain distance you're just in the way, 8 feet seems completely acceptable. Police are able to do their job without obstruction from onlookers, onlockers are close enough to see/record the police doing their job.
If the issue is proximity to police for safety reasons, then whether or not a persion is videoing the incident has absolutely no bearing on the matter.
This also means that a person who is directly the subject of a police encounter can be found to be violating the law for the simple act of recording the encounter.
There's no provision for this within the text of the law.
The law as it stands is a prima facie first amendment violation.
Police can tell you to step away whether you are holding the camera or not. The thing this does is that people who are close to what is actually happening will be scared to take camera and start filming. And if they do, the cops will be able to harass them.
> Courts have already upheld routinely that police can ask people who are not party to the interaction to step away and they can create a reasonable area around them and the scene and keep people out of it.
Can you cite said rulings? I can't find any on a cursory search.
>Now we have a law that says 8 ft is a reasonable distance in Arizona.
The law explicitly disclaims that it allows anyone to record police, so an officer is just as free as they were last year to claim that 50 feet is a reasonable distance for their safety.
> If you are party to the police interaction you can film closer than 8 ft. If you are in a car as a passenger you can film the interaction and the police cannot ask you to stop. If you are a non-party person simply watching the interaction the police can now ask you to maintain a distance of 8 ft.
Maybe there are different versions going around? The text pasted here suggests even if you are a party to the interaction, police can claim filming is interfering and ask you to stop it.
This is pretty transparently a law to keep people from collecting evidence of bad police behavior. There's been entirely too much of that and people are starting to question the unaccountable armed gangs that roam our cities. To fix people noticing that this might be bad, Arizona is enacting laws to ensure the police can continue to brutalize without repercussions.
It's unfortunate that this thread is full of bootlickers doing mental gymnastics to justify what is clearly an unjust law, but this is HN after all
> police very deliberately kill members of racial minorities
This is an inflammatory statement which demands some evidence. "Very deliberately" implies a knowledge of police state of mind. Do you have such knowledge?
AFAIK, studies of police shootings are pretty inconclusive in that respect. Do you have support for your statement?
Whether there's a racial motivation or basis behind that cannot usually be determined by selectively watching videos. And scholarly sources have published studies that show the answer is complicated:
Defund the police was the stupidest policy in American History and in future retrospectives will almost certainly reveal the Democrats lost congressional seats because of this very bad idea. Crime is exploding across the country, so much so its a top issue in polls [1]. Police violence is not a real concern.
"defund the police" was not a Democratic party idea, it is the watered-down version of an abolitionist movement undergoing recuperation by local politicians that were trying to gain support from a potential base.
police action is in the top 10 leading causes of death for several demographics
No. It really isn't. There are tens of thousands of instances of gun violence and very few instances of police violence. When people say they are worried about being shot, they do not mean by police.
People are worried about school shootings, and there are fewer deaths annually by school shooter than there are by police annually. Just because something is statistically on the less common side doesn't mean people aren't worried about it (police killings are only like 5% compared to the number of homicides, and roughly 10% compared to the number of homicides by a stranger).
Of course if people were operating purely on the numbers, the thought of death by cop or school shooter would barely even register compared to the time thinking about by death from poor diet and exercise or from traffic accidents or consumption of tobacco/alcohol/drugs.
Personally I worry about police violence in part because it's one of the things the individual has the least control over. I can fire back at a robber, I can choose a better diet, I can send my kid to a school with better security policies, I can shoot someone trying to set fire to my house, I can choose not to drink/smoke. I can pick family and friends to hold close that I've personally screened before exposing them to my wife and child.
What I can't do is pick what police officer shows up or hassles me, and then If I'm forced to defend myself from a bad officer it's a near certainty I'll be executed or imprisoned assuming I survive the encounter. My only real recourse is to raise societal concerns to reform the police. Because I have very little individualized recourse unlike the much more common dangers (I can choose not to smoke for instance), it becomes a big concern over something that should appear rather little.
If you have any doubts about some of these issues in Arizona, by all means feel free to witness the anecdotal data point of the execution of Daniel Shaver in what can only be described as a psychotic version of Simon Says. The system even saw fit to rehire the officer that killed him just to give him a pension for "PTSD" from shooting an innocent man.
There are roughly 350 million people in this country. It’s surprising the number of people killed by police isn’t higher. Everyone contextualizes police shootings as if they all happen in their local city, so the numbers seem large.
I want this number as small as possible while not over correcting so much that we have other negative consequences (violent crime increases).
Yes but you have to discount ubiquitous firearm ownership. You can argue that is problematic pretty successfully but I don’t fault police officers (as a whole, obviously individual bad actors, again we have 350mm people here and 1mm police) having to shoot armed and dangerous individuals.
Factor in only unarmed shootings and it’s tiny. The rest are mostly armed and dangerous people actively involved in violence. That it a shocking high number of suicide by cop.
You can watch a thousand videos if you care to and it’s eye opening. I made it a habit of watching the body cam footage of shootings in the news and it’s almost always clearly justified, though I do understand that there is a minority viewpoint that doesn’t consider any deadly shooting justified, even if it’s of an armed individual engaged in a crime.
deleted! And boy did I have this wrong!! (This comment has been edited to show the text, and where I was in error!)
Here's the text:
ARIZONA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Fifty-fifth Legislature Second Regular Session House: APPROP DPA 7-5-0-1
HB 2319: law enforcement activity; recording prohibition Sponsor: Representative Kavanagh, LD 23 House Engrossed
Overview
Outlines regulations for a person making a video recording (recording) of a law enforcement activity (activity).
History
Provisions
1. States that it is unlawful for a person to knowingly make a recording within eight feet of an activity and without the permission of a law enforcement officer (LEO). (Sec. 1)
2. Directs that for an activity occurring inside a closed structure on private property, a person authorized to be on the private property may make a video recording of the activity from an adjacent room that is less than eight feet away from the activity. (Sec. 1)
3. States a person may not make a video recording of an activity from within eight feet of an activity inside a closed structure on private property if the LEO determines the person is interfering with the activity or that is it not safe to be in the area. (Sec. 1)
4. Provides that a person who is the subject of the police contact may make a recording if doing so does not interfere with lawful police actions. (Sec. 1)
5. Asserts these provisions do not establish a right or authorize any person to make a video recording of an activity. (Sec. 1)
6. Classifies unlawfully recording an activity as a petty offense. (Sec. 1)
7. Classifies failing to comply with LEO verbal warnings regarding recording an activity or if the person has been previously convicted of unlawfully recording an activity as a class 3 misdemeanor (Sec. 1)
Statute prohibits a person from obstructing governmental operations. A person commits obstructing governmental operations when the person uses threats or violence to hinder a peace officer from enforcing the law or acting under official authority. This offense is classified as a class
1 misdemeanor (A.R.S. 13-2402).
8. Defines law enforcement activity. (Sec. 1)
Prop 105 (45 votes) Prop 108 (40 votes) Emergency (40 votes) Initials FK Page 1
Fiscal Note
HB 2319 House Engrossed
>and without the permission of a law enforcement officer (LEO). (Sec. 1)
That language is not in the stories talking about the bill, and said language is not in line with the First Amendment.
I'm not sure why you think this law explicitly allows people to be 8' away and film. Instead, it criminalizes being closer than 8' and filming, while not superseding other laws that could be used to harass or prevent recording.
An explicit codification of the right to record and circumstances when it applies could be part of a decent compromise here, but this legislation isn't it.
Because previously, the cop could define their personal "safety zone" as literally whatever - 20ft? 50ft? It wasn't defined in the law. Now it is - it's 8ft. If you're further away than 8ft then it cannot be argued that your filming was unlawful.
Edit: I put the text of it above. Here's where the ugly is: "and without the permission of a law enforcement officer (LEO). (Sec. 1)"
Yeah, that's not in line with the First Amendment at all.
>The National Press Photographers Association sent a letter to Mr. Kavanagh in February that said the bill violated constitutional free speech and press protections. The New York Times Company was one of more than 20 media organizations that signed the letter, which said that the law would be “unworkable” at protests and demonstrations.
I was thinking about the interactions I see sometimes on YT. Often, SCOTUS saying 10 feet is mentioned. The way I saw this was that often questioned bit of information was made explicit, and 8 feet.
The media appears to take it an entirely different way.
Just to be clear, I am an advocate of recording public officials, including the police of all kinds and perhaps didn't take the language of the bill in the same way many are.
Now that a large majority of people have a high quality video camera in their pockets, we've learned 2 things: (1) alien abduction was not real (2) police very deliberately kill members of racial minorities. I think this law is a reaction to (2).