Issue link: http://lawandordermag.epubxp.com/i/109778
Essentially, the federal appeals court held that First Amendment ���freedom of speech��� includes the exchange of ideas through recording media, and protects a citizen���s right to record the police conducting law enforcement activities where they can be seen and heard by the public. Police Response to Private Recordings Many police offcials naturally are sensitive to the idea of being recorded by private citizens. When law enforcement offcers hear of members of the public ���recording the police,��� many imagine the worst. The mention of anyone videoing the police conjures up memories of the endless media coverage that comes with the recording of police doing apparently bad (sometimes really bad) things. As old as the story is, it���s still hard not to think of the splotchy home video of ���the Rodney King beating��� (as the clip was named) whenever there is talk of someone recording the police. Police agencies have suffered long-term detriment from relentless media coverage of what might otherwise be relatively minor episodes of police misconduct, if misconduct at all. Considering the damage that police associate with these private recordings, it���s understandable why a law prohibiting the public from recording police activities might draw some immediate support in law enforcement circles. It is also true that, after some thought, many police offcers (citizens themselves) do not support such broad restriction of citizen behavior. There is little if any legal justifcation for attempting to distinguish between visual and audio recording the way the Illinois statute did. There may be cause for other legitimate discussions about the dangers of disclosing police tactics, obstruction of justice, or inappropriate recordings of police conversing with a witness or suspect, but as a matter of societal interests and freedom, recording of public behavior of public offcials shouldn���t be made a crime, and most police offcials know and accept that. Why the Fuss? Maybe part of it is that the ACLU was involved and another part the general sensitivity issues discussed above but, despite the publicity and related talk about the courts allowing the public to record the police, the ���eavesdropping��� case doesn���t cause big change in what most police already expected the public to be able to do lawfully. In its simplest form, this ���eavesdropping case��� involved a lower federal appeals court decision striking down an Illinois law as unconstitutional because the law prohibited citizens from audio recording the police in public and called for serious punishment for offenders. The Supreme Court merely declined to review that lower court���s decision, which could be viewed as the Supreme Court���s tacit approval of it, but even that may not be so. The Supreme Court chooses to actually take on only a tiny percentage of the petitions for review, which it receives and it declines review most of the time. This does not necessarily mean they agree with the lower court. What is certainly true, though, is that in most states citizens have been lawfully recording police activities in public as long as they���ve had the technology to do so and this matter is old news in those many jurisdictions. The law that was struck down in this case was, in a way, ���too good to be true.��� It���s hard to imagine that anyone really expected the courts to support a law that called for up to 14 years in prison for making an audio recording of the police in public. Many thoughtful police offcers don���t even want such a prohibition (we are a land of freedoms after all), they just want to avoid some of the humiliation that comes from publicizing what appears to be bad police behavior. Discussion of these issues conjures up bad memories and understandably causes some professional anxiety but, in fact, far more police offcers have been redeemed by recordings of them in action than have ever been condemned by such recordings. Obviously, in most states and countless cases, police themselves have chosen to record much of their public business, including conversations, because such recordings usually protect them from false allegations and help in criminal prosecutions. Many would say the solution to the ���problem��� discussed in this article is not to outlaw the recording of police behavior in public but for police to refrain from behaviors that make the issue so sensitive. LaO Post your comments on this story by visiting www.lawandordermag.com Click on EInfo at - www.lawandordermag.com reader service #11 www.lawandordermag.com 15