Freedom of speech is the bedrock of our republic, protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Americans are protected from government censorship and courts have ruled that constitutional right extends to videotaping police officers on duty in public spaces.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Glik v. Cunniffe that any private citizen has a First Amendment right to openly record video and audio of public officials and police officers in public spaces. The courts have also ruled that the Fourth Amendment protects citizens from arrest or unreasonable searches and seizures of cameras used to videotape a police officer on duty.
Two weeks ago, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by police in suburban Ferguson, Mo. The young man’s death led to largely peaceful protests by residents. Police responded with SWAT teams and police in riot gear, armed with sniper rifles, automatic weapons and armored personnel carriers.
The videos from Ferguson are disturbing, to say the least. Fully armed police in military fatigues aiming heavy weapons at unarmed Americans in a quiet suburb of St. Louis looks more like the occupation of Baghdad or civil war in Ukraine than our own country. In one incident, photojournalists and reporter Elizabeth Matthews from KSDK-TV were fired upon with beanbag ammunition on an empty suburban street, then an Al Jazeera America TV crew was hit by a tear-gas canister and abandoned their location. Police destroyed their equipment. Numerous television, newspaper and radio reporters have been shot by rubber bullets. Reporters Wesley Lowery and Ryan Reilly were ordered out of a McDonald’s being used by reporters to file stories and arrested for videotaping police. Lowery and Reilly said police slammed them against doors and a soda machine and confiscated their smart phones.
The treatment of media is a barometer for the treatment of average citizens. If police abuse reporters covering but unaffiliated with a conflict, how they are treating legal protesters or civilians trying to stay out of the way?
On-duty police officers are not subject to any special protections from videotaping anywhere in the United States. According to the courts, the freedom to tape police and public officials in public spaces keeps them accountable. Misconduct can be documented and, if illegal, disciplined and prosecuted. Police agencies that detain or stop private citizens from legally videotaping their actions are subject to civil rights violations and have been made to pay penalties in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Last year, the New York Police Department issued a formal memo to its 34,000 employees reminding them that private citizens have every right to film police on duty: “Members of the service [NYPD] will not interfere with the videotaping or the photographing of incidents in public places. Intentional interference such as blocking or obstructing cameras or harassing the photographer constitutes censorship,” the memo reads.
Arizona state law only requires permission from one party to record an interaction in public. In Arizona, private citizens do not need permission to record so long as they not interfere with police work. Officers can ask private citizens to stand back from a crime scene or out of the way of police and first responders responding to a scene, but they can not order private citizens to stop recording nor confiscate their equipment, be it a camera, smart phone or audio recorder.
Videotaping is not illegal. Standing on a public sidewalk is not trespassing. Private citizens are not required to share their video with police except under a warrant, subpoena or other court order. Secret or undercover recordings are not protected like public recordings, so anyone who videotapes police officers should do so obviously, camera in hand. If confronted by police, citizens should calmly and clearly state that they are exercising their First Amendment rights to document and record police actions.
Violations of any American’s First Amendment rights are an attack on all Americans’ civil rights, inexcusable and unforgivable.
