Posted on 01/26/2009 7:36:02 AM PST by BGHater
Seconds after BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant, police immediately began confiscating cell phones containing videos that have yet to see the light of day.
In fact, the only videos that have been seen by the public were filmed by people who managed to leave the scene before police confronted them.
In one instance, police chased after Karina Vargas after she stepped on the train, banging on the window after the doors closed and demanding her to turn over the camera. The train sped away with Vargas still holding her camera.
Her video, which did not show the actual shooting but captured the turmoil before and after, was one of the first to pop up on the internet. And soon after more videos popped up showing the actual shooting.
In the most vivid video, the train doors can be seen closing seconds after the shooting as the train speeds away.
But the truth is, police had no legal right to confiscate a single camera.
“Cops may be entitled to ask for people’s names and addresses and may even go as far as subpoenaing the video tape, but as far as confiscating the camera on the spot, no,” said Marc Randazza, A First Amendment attorney based out of Florida and a Photography is Not a Crime reader.
Bert P. Krages II, the Oregon attorney who drafted the widely distributed The Photographer’s Rights guide, responded to my inquiry with the following e-mail message:
“In general, police cannot confiscate cameras or media without some sort of court order. One exception is when a camera is actually being used in the commission of crime (e.g., child pornography, counterfeiting, upskirting).”
It didn’t appear that the BART videos were being used in a commission of a crime, so what could people have done to prevent police from illegally confiscating their cameras?
“Probably not a whole lot,” said Randazza. “You don’t want to get into a situation where you are refusing to comply with law enforcement, especially when that law enforcement officer just shot and killed somebody. No camera is worth losing your life over.”
But what can you do if you’re as stubborn as me and have a tendency to refuse unlawful orders?
“Make sure you have an attorney that specializes in First Amendment law,” he said during Monday’s phone interview. “Make sure you have his cell phone and home number. Sometimes calling an attorney on the spot can be helpful.”
Needless to say, I now have Randazza’s cell phone number programed into my cell phone.
++++”What is the police going to do if I refuse to turn over my camera ? Grapple with me ? Shoot me ?”++++
Today’s standards and blatant disregard for life...YES!
But then they’d have to kill the other eye witness with a camera and so on.....
Cops are just going to have to get used to the idea that everything they do will be recorded. Cameras are getting smaller, cheaper and stacked with more memory. It might even get to the point where many people just mount cameras on their shoulders or in their glasses to record constantly just in case something interesting happens. After all, if the cops aren’t doing anything illegal, they have nothing to fear being recorded. (just to turn cops reasoning for red light and speed cameras along with regular civil rights violations back on them).
“I think they have a right to get your name and address, but to take your personal property is a no, no.”
You have an obligation to give your name, address and date of birth. Beyond that, you don’t have to say squat.
I am very pro police too and I am sure the vast majority of them do their job honorably and well. It’s the few bad apples that sometimes give the rest of them a bad name.
This is a situation where you can be right, dead right, but be just as dead as if you had been all wrong. Officers have the ability, not necessarily the right, to arrest anyone anytime, anywhere. If you resist the situation just gets worse. Not only more charges, but possibly physical harm up to and including death.
Even you do go along quietly your problems are likely just beginning. It’s up to you to prove your innocence and you will have to bear the full cost of that personally. If you can even find an attorney who will take on the system. The government has virtually unlimited resources to mess with you. You, OTOH, are on your own, probably with limited resources at your disposal. And whatever you do, you will have to do it from jail unless you are freed on bond.
My wife has a cousin who was a retired army photographer. He went out to get his paper one morning and saw his the body of his neighbor hanging from a tree in her front yard. He went back in, got his camera and began taking pictures. The coroner accosted him and demanded the camera and or the film. He refused and was arrested and jailed. He could not find an attorney and had to settle for them quietly dropping the charges, after he had been booked and forced to post bail.
It might not be the law, but it’s certainly the outcome that you really don’t have the right to do anything an official doesn’t want you to do.
Easier said than done.
My experience relates to the UK rather than the US but I imagine the situations aren’t all that different. My two brothers were on a night out and my eldest brother got into a dispute with a policeman, now I believe my brother was in the right but even if he wasn’t it’s not relevant to what happened next. He was arrested by the police and handcuffed and at that point my other brother, who hadn’t been involved remotely in what had preceded this started filming the situation, at that point the senior officer indicated to a woman officer to stop him, she approached my brother and he said he had every right to film what was happening (it was in the middle of the street, remember every street corner in the UK has 24 hour CCTV so this shouldn’t be a problem), the officer told him he had no right and at that point the filming abruptly finished.
The next morning both brothers were taken from their police cells, both of them with bloody noses and one with missing teeth to be prosecuted for assault and breach of the peace. They then asked for the return of the camera, it was returned to them in pieces, the sergeant explaining that it must have got broken in the fracas.
At this point however the story gets interesting, the cops in their stupidity smashed the camera but obviously didn’t realise they should delete the video from the memory chip. Six months later the video was produced in court, the cops were proven to be liars and all eleven charges were thrown out against my brothers, they are currently suing the police.
But the important point is that this only ended happily because of the cops’ stupidity, if they had succesfully wiped the video my brothers could have ended up behind bars for the serious offence of assaulting police officers.
So don’t always assume that your rights will be respected by the police. This might come as a shock to some people but sometimes cops lie, sometimes they even wrongfully beat up people, you really do have to be careful even if the law is (supposedly) on your side.
Wouldn’t the officer be destroying evidence seizing by the cameras?
“... and will protect a fellow office.” Therin lies the rub. How often and how many cops do this? When you protect criminals and you have a badge, you are one of the lowest forms of humanity on Earth, backed up by the power of the state.
These cases will become a lot more interesting once all of these cellphone cameras have “live to the net” recording capabilities enabled by default.
Fascism Expansion *PING*
This isn’t Barry’s America. This is the trend of heavy handed law enforcement since Nixon started the War on Terror. The truth is we have the Police that your overly compliant neighbors want. This is a Federalist system with the 10th Amendment. Your neighbors want heavy handed police, so that’s what you get. Try arguing against that in this forum FR and you WILL be flamed and called a pot head and “don’t you know this is a country of laws?” Americans as a body politic don’t want to be free from entanglements with their neighbors through the courts. They will sacrifice all manner of liberties for a small margin of safety.
You are correct but Barry is president so I am going to blame him for EVERYTHING from now on (well until he gone gone gone.....)
The simple act of taking the camera would not destroy evidence. In a perfect world it makes perfect sense for an officer to protect anything that might relate to evidence of a crime, including a camera or memory cards, etc. We don't live in a perfect world though, and frequently those at the scene of a crime or emergency are not thinking all that clearly, especially about the long term effects of what they are doing.
Personally, if I had pictures important to the fair investigation of an incident I would not mind sharing them with anyone involved. The down side is that I take the pictures as part of my job and doing something with them that makes them unavailable for my employer is not fair to my employer. If I surrender my film or memory cards at the scene then it could months or years before I get it back, if ever.
Lots of people at the scene have their own personal reasons for not wanting pictures to be taken of an event. Truth is, those don't really impact on a shooter's legal right to take pictures. But reality often has a way of messing with what is ‘right’! I have had family members take my camera from me and threaten to beat me to death with it. At that point there is no reasoning with them and it's better just to quietly walk away.
I have been prevented from taking pictures at a number of scenes where the pictures would have been very helpful to a wronged party.
Indeed, hold the jug eared racist accountable.
All this started just a couple weeks ago? How is this a result of Barry’s world?
Yea, this is what I am going to do. I am going to blame Barry for EVERYTHING he is president now, he gets the blame - period.
Do you think that if you were killed while preventing a cop from taking your phone/camera, you would be hailed as a hero of American principles, or just forgotten about in a couple of years?
That isn’t even close.
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