Silly question time (I mean, my questions below may seem silly).
Does Boston T. Party say the police officer should get a chance to examine the video camera prior to its use to ensure it is not, in fact, a firearm merely disguised as a video camera?
Doesn’t the subject of the traffic stop have a right to a copy of the video tape the police officer is (supposedly) making?
If the police officer “conveniently forgot to record” or “conveniently misplaced the tape,” doesn’t that–absent any other evidence to support the officer’s assertions–suffice to bring the issue to a close?
Readily agreed. However, there were riots quite a few years ago in Tomkins Square Park in NYC’s Lower East Side. There was a person videotaping what the cops were doing that night. ( Struggling to quell a bad riot, and a few did get out of hand. Cops, that is. ). The person videotaping the police was arrested for not surrendering the raw video footage. This Site , scroll down to 1988.
Chilling stuff. The police were out of control, they badly needed to control media footage of their behaviors. Arresting a man on a street who is making videotape of the actions of poilce is just plain bad business, IMHO.
The police as a group are intensely protective of their need not to be recorded performing their job. ( Even when they are doing so very admirably). If they lose control over images, you wind up with footage for the world to see of Rodney King being beaten to a pulp, and so on and so forth.
No, it determined that a state law (Nevada, where I myself now reside) requiring a person to identify himself (i.e., “officer, my name is John Smith”) was not unconstitutional. From here: