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Recording police with your smartphone is a Constitutional right, says DoJ

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11–20 of 66 posts

Re: Recording police with your smartphone is a Constitutional right, says DoJ

#11
post #6

Why aren't the police equipped with recording devices that are active whenever they are interacting with the public? It seems that anyone with that sort of power should have an audit trail for their actions.

Some police are, I've seen them with helmet cams before.

Re: Recording police with your smartphone is a Constitutional right, says DoJ

#13
post #6

Why aren't the police equipped with recording devices that are active whenever they are interacting with the public? It seems that anyone with that sort of power should have an audit trail for their actions.

The Denver police have been trialing a program to do just this: http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2011/10/denver_police_w...

It's taken a lot of brutality cases and lawsuits to get them to this point though.

Re: Recording police with your smartphone is a Constitutional right, says DoJ

#15

How does this apply Illinois' law?

its my understanding that due to the supremacy clause, federal (constitutional) law trumps state laws. in some cases, state laws can grant addiitional rights, but they can't abridge the rights granted by the constitution.

Re: Recording police with your smartphone is a Constitutional right, says DoJ

#16
post #10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people with that sort of power don't want an audit trail of their actions.

That's pretty darn cynical, I think people in general want their privacy respected, regardless of power level.

Privacy comes from private. What you do in your function as a public servant is not private.

Re: Recording police with your smartphone is a Constitutional right, says DoJ

#17
Here is a case from my state of Maryland where a motorcyclist was charged with recording a police man without the officer's permission; it was very upsetting to me when in happened two years ago:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/blog/2010/05/stat...

Re: Recording police with your smartphone is a Constitutional right, says DoJ

#18
post #6

Why aren't the police equipped with recording devices that are active whenever they are interacting with the public? It seems that anyone with that sort of power should have an audit trail for their actions.

I run the OpenWatch project - http://openwatch.net

Many officers use our software to record themselves on duty. They use this evidence in court for exactly this reason.

Re: Recording police with your smartphone is a Constitutional right, says DoJ

#19
post #2

I'm wondering is there a Wikipedia article on this issue, I was interested to get more background on this, especially the status in other countries.

I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_misconduct#Video_and_aud... is the closest you're going to get.

Re: Recording police with your smartphone is a Constitutional right, says DoJ

#20
post #7
post #6

Why aren't the police equipped with recording devices that are active whenever they are interacting with the public? It seems that anyone with that sort of power should have an audit trail for their actions.

Because people with that sort of power don't want an audit trail of their actions.

I think it's just technology adoption lag. Cruisers have had these cameras on their dashboards (dash cams) for a while now. At first with resistance but now it's saved more cops than burnt.
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