We’re talking about public behavior, though. People have no expectation of privacy when they’re in public.
And I can’t wrap my mind around incomplete footage showing an incomplete portrayal. No matter the situation, officers are not allowed to do certain things like punch and kick a person right? They can use their batons and force but not abuse correct? If there is footage showing abuse (physical) that is not allowed than how can the situation be incompletely portrayed? Are there instances when police are allowed to use illegal tactics such that if the incomplete footage does not show the situation then the portrayal is incomplete?
Of all the police abuse vids i’ve seen, not one did it seem possible that the situation was not what was captured. I don’t get it when people say it’s not what it looks like in the case of several officers kinking and punching a guy laying on a floor. they aren’t kicking and punching him? It’s ok to kick and punch people who flinch? This is the right way to treat a person as long as they are on drugs? Inserting a plunger into a man’s anus is acceptable under certain situations?
And no matter how complete the video is, the cops can always still say there’s something that it didn’t capture.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. They may still have certain kinds of privacy rights, such as false light. They still have the right to control their own image and voice with respect to commercial misappropriation. They have certain rights under specific federal statutes, such as wiretapping laws.
These kinds of rights can be defined by common law and statute, and are not necessarily constitutional issue. So far as I am concerned, some kinds of privacy rights could stand to be stronger, even if a person happens to be standing in an otherwise public place.
When both parties are consenting adults, yes.
Officers can punch people or kick them if the situation warrants it.
oh my word, thanks for the visual of someone consenting to have police officers insert a plunger into their anus. I have to say, I am 100% positive that no arrestee would consent to have an officer insert a plunger.
You are more than welcome to prove me wrong with an actual case, but until then, my prejudice stands.
and which situation is that? And where are these rules written.
They have no legal entitlement to it, though. Anything you do in public is fair game to photograph. Fair use doesn’t play into it, because that entails how the image is used, not the mere collection and possession of it. They can’t use it to advertise Pepsi, but they can put it on TMZ and make fun of it.
…
If a suspect attacks a police officer they can defend themselves. They can use appropriate force to subdue a dangerous person. They can use force (up to deadly force) when people’s lives are in danger. Each police force has their own rules of engagement, but they follow along similar lines of escalating force.
http://www.president.ufl.edu/incidents/2007/tasing/UFPD-use-of-force-policy.pdf
From the University of Florida Police Department on the very first page of this PDF on the use of non-deadly force.
“When a confrontation escalates suddenly, an officer may use any means or device at hand to defend himself/herself as long as the level of defensive action is reasonable given the existing circumstances.”
I imagine other police departments have similar policies but I’m not going to look them all up.
Odesio
There was a recent example in Seattle where aggressive jaywalkers attacked an officer. He punche a girl in the face (on camera) and it seemed to do the trick. I fully support face punching in that situation.
@Acsenray - There is no expectation of privacy when in public, generally (police in Chicago passed a law to state that police do have an expectation of privacy on duty - watch that one get challenged). This is pretty clearly the way the law stands. This does not cover upskirt type pictures or other fringe BS, but taking pictures of someone while they are standing in public can not be construed as violating someone’s privacy - there is no expectation of privacy to violate.
Some police and departments have gone out of their way to arrest, detain, harass, and generally be assholes to people filming them. Here’s hoping they pay massive damages.
In fact we had a discussion about a police videotaping recently. Note that Nevada is not one of the states that passed a “wiretap” law like Massachusetts did.
I hope it gets challenged. Or perhaps this ruling settles things unless/until SCOTUS reviews it.
As it stands video tapping a Chicago cop can net you 15 years in prison. Not sure but I think only rape and murder will get you a longer prison sentence in Illinois.
And yeah…that is seriously fucked up. Makes a mockery of cruel and unusual punishment.
This is an issue with protests, as well. Despite the inescapable fact that the Constitution protects the right to peaceably protest, authorities in general and police in particular often don’t like it.
A particular issue arises when off-duty police officers are hired by a business to run off protestors, and the line between off-duty officers and their on-duty uniformed buddies gets blurred. A very popular tactic is to falsely claim the protestors are doing something wrong (standing on the wrong side of a property line, for example) and then arrest them “just to sort things out” and then release them without charges after the protest, so that the purpose of the protestors is thwarted.
Other, more aggressive tactics can also be used – bumping protestors physically and claiming they fought back or resisted, for example.
Protestors have started using observers to videotape the protests so that there’s clear evidence of whether they were in any kind of violation, or of police misconduct. Police have become very sensitive about these videos and try to shut them down.
Think Rodney King.
I think I am the only person in North America who saw the videotape first in its entirety. If you saw the edited version, you saw a black man being beaten down by racist white cops. If you saw the complete version, including the parts where he charged the cops, and also learned that he was on parole, speeding while drunk on his ass, violently resisted arrest, did not submit after being Tasered twice, and that the two passengers in his car, both as black as he was, were not damaged in the slightest, things look a bit less cut-and-dried.
Video can be edited, faked, or misleading. Unfortunately, a generation raised on TV has great difficulty remembering this.
That having been said, this sounds like a very reasonable decision. Not just for the citizens, but for cops, who can also whip out video to prove that the felon they arrested is lying his ass off about how he never did anything wrong - the pigs started whomping on him for no reason at all.
The only drawback might be that juries won’t believe anything unless they see video.
Regards,
Shodan
I would very much like to see your unedited version of the Rodney King tape. Can you provide a link? I bet you cannot.
Oddly enough, the BART policeman who shot a man in the back did get off (with a short jail sentence) in his case. The short version of the tape shows the shot. The long version showed the policeman’s reaction indicating he thought he had the Taser. It also showed him trying to save the guy’s life.
The Rodney King tape? Not so much. Oddly enough, the chief of police, the investigators and the court all sided with my characterization of the Rodney King case. Thank goodness you can prove me otherwise.
Go on, try.
Living in L.A. at the time, I saw the full version and concur with Shodan’s assessment. What struck me at the time was King was on the ground on his knees being yelled out to stay down yet he was still going after the cops. I don’t claim their use of force wasn’t excessive and I don’t think Shodan did either, but it is clear that there was a lot more going on than “here’s a nigger. let’s beat on him”.
I saw the whole tape. Nothing on it excused the beat down. They were acting in anger, not self defense. His drunken resistance at first was more pathetic than threatening. The fact that he was on parole is completely irrelevant, as is the fact that he had been driving drunk.
Lets not forget those assholes were convicted on federal civil rights charges, so the lame-ass excuses didn’t work in front of a jury that wasn’t hand-picked to be friendly to the cops.