More on the police, photos, and videos

I report these but mostly leave the facts to speak for themselves. First are two instances when law enforcement personnel thought people shouldn't take pictures of courthouses.

http://www.lbpost.com/news/greggory/11846

http://warriorwriter.tumblr.com/


In the first, a photographer was taking pictures of traffic driving by in the street, but members of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department wrongly thought he was taking pictures of the courthouse across the street and thought -- apparently for that reason alone -- that they could detain him.

In the second, just a few days ago, a photographer was taking pictures of a U.S. courthouse in Dayton, Ohio, when a Federal Protective Service officer tried to stop him, apparently under the impression that there was something wrong or even criminal about that photography. The photographer, but not the FPS officer, was well aware of the FPS memo affirming people's right to photograph the exteriors of the federal buildings. Not even the memo itself seemed to have much effect on the officer, but a supervising officer whom he reached by radio did. The supervisor seemed to instruct the officer to let the photographer go and just leave him alone, and so the FPS officer did. According to the photographer's account, the officer didn't seem very happy with this outcome.

I find the issues raised here more disturbing:

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/06/15/videotape-police

This page links to the episode of June 15, 2011, of a National Public Radio public affairs program, On Point, concerning photographing and taking videos of the police in action, and the reactions of some police to being photographed or videoed while in action. People with different points of view all get the chance to express themselves, including UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh. The program is about 45 minutes long but worth hearing (via streaming audio or .mp3 download).

More and more people routinely carry miniature cameras and video recorders especially when attached to iPhones and other smart phones. So, more and more, the police are exposed to having their conduct recorded. At the same time, the police seem more and more to be pushing back aggressively.