The reason you need to record police action (above).
Several Marylanders face felony charges for recording their arrests on camera, and others have been intimidated to shut their cameras off. That’s touched off a legal controversy.
Mike Hellgren explains the fierce debate and what you should do to protect yourself.
A man whose arrest was caught on video faces felony charges from Maryland State Police for recording it on camera.
“We are enforcing the law, and we don’t make any apologies for that,” said Greg Shipley, Maryland State Police.
“For the government to be saying it has the power to prevent citizens from doing that is profoundly shocking, troubling, and particularly in the case of Maryland, simply flat-out wrong,” said David Roach, ACLU.
Heaven forbid the cameras are turned on the apparently corrupt Maryland police. And ask yourself who ultimately pays the bill on the lawsuits the police lose in these matters.
found by Aric Mackey
Bad Cops are a blight on the justice system, and those who defend bad cops are just causing this country damage. Why is this even under debate? Why do the apologists and ne-fascists have the upper hand in this?
Here here to the ACLU !
Despised by fascist conservatives and celebrated by us civil libertarians.
Dumbfounded Canadian question: what is the possible reasoning for making the filming of an arrest a felony charge?
@qb
The cops in this case consider it to be illegal wiretapping.
I guess they are basing their actions on this, “Under Maryland law, conversations in private cannot be recorded without the consent of both people involved.”, and that seems little weird. If you are getting pounded on the street it’s hardly private. But you know the law, it’s all interpretation.
1. REPEAT
2, the kid is the grandson of a retired Judge.
3. the JUDGE IS PISSED.
4. the COPS are a PUBLIC SERVICE, just as ACTORS..they should get NO BETTER then actors..
5. PUBLIC LOCATION. PUBLIC RULES. this is/was NOT private property so the cops have no say in the matter.
6. 1 person, 1 cop…TALK DONT HIT. And then you know why you cant BEAT YOUR KID.
What are the cops going to do when the public turns on them? No one likes a bully.
#1, Alix,
No one is defending bad cops. They do, however, defend a cops “right” not to be caught being bad.
@Alix – the reason is because there are a *lot* of bad cops. There’s a few good ones, and probably more that are just okay. But the okay ones aren’t going to rat out the bad ones (purely societal pressure – no one wants to be a “rat”, or be seen as a turn coat, especially at a job where you *have* to trust your partner to have your back. Can’t trust the guy who’s bearing a grudge against you for reporting him to the brass.) Bad cops are also much more efficient – their arrest numbers look solid, and even their conviction rates are pretty high (for every one beat down that goes recorded there are, I’m willing to bet, over 50 that do not) and thus are seen as “better” officers on paper, so the brass has an incentive to protect them. I’ve literally had ADAs tell me to my face that they aren’t doing their jobs if they aren’t protecting the cops.*
*Bias/Background note: commenter is a criminal defense attorney in a state which, like Maryland, criminalizes the filming of police arrests/beat downs.
What do the police have to hide? If they aren’t doing anything wrong then they shouldn’t mind being recorded.
Do police need our permission to record us with their dash mounted cameras?
I thought not. Time for the citizens to get the laws changed.
I recently read the law when they were trying to charge to press charges against the filmmaker who went undercover in acorn as a pimp. And the law clearly states that it has to be a private conversation and it only applies to audio.
Most of the cases which I saw look like the people who were recording were doing so legally. The only one which looked questionable was the motorcycle one but that one could also have been filmed legal.
But hey welcome to the People’s Republic of Maryland.
This absurd full court press the police are trying on this one, will do nothing but hurt them in the end. Especially seeing that the incident that sparked all this wasn’t really a high point in MD. policing.
Kinda hard to defend the “felony wiretapping” accusations when it involved them trampling on civil liberties to begin with.
If you are out in public you have no expectation of privacy. Has the MD law ever been used successfully in a matter such as this one?
I’m sad to say the cameras are needed to help keep everybody honest.
For every camera a police society wishes ON THE PEOPLE..
you must have TWICE as many on the POLICE.
#9–Aberrant==I can’t think of a case more worthy of ACLU challenge. Police can charge anyone with anything–what are the DA’s actually taking forward? Has anyone actually been CONVICTED of wiretapping in such circumstances?
Its hard to tell when the Dvorak Eds are as outrageous in their Headlines as the Police may be in their arrest practices.
Think I’ll try a quick google on the issue as this truly is “shocking” ((if true)).
I googled (Maryland, wiretap, arrest) and found this illuminating case revealing some pretty bad stuff I would not believe is taking place in GOUSA:
http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-spends-26-hours-in-jail-on-wiretapping-charge-for-filming-cop-with-gun/
JUDGES issuing arrest warrants have an expectation of privacy?==UNBELIEVABLE!
JUDGES issuing arrest warrants based on wiretap allegations surrounding a public arrest?===UNBELIEVABLE.
Time to fund the ACLU conditionally “if” they start pushing back on these fascist actions.
God, I don’t want to be more disgruntled than I already am====but I already am. Best country in the world though.
This from my state that is championing the use of more traffic cameras, to catch and fine speeders. But likely it’s more about the revenue they can rake in. Because that always comes up as an excuse to keep the ones they already have. Plus, many state police vehicles are equipped with cameras themselves. And many an abuse has been recorded, and discovered, before such tape were “lost”. So apparently, it’s only legal for the state to tape itself and others, breaking the law. Just not the average citizen, who is still encourage to take an active role in preventing crime. JUST DONT RECORD ANY OF IT!!
Smell that? That is a long hot summer coming. People are angry, out of work and are about to go on a rampage. In other words its going to be a fun and interesting summer. Stock up on bullets now!
Yeah, if you see a cop is breaking the law – for fucks sake do not try and collect evidence, your life may depend on it. Just a reminder, these guys are hired for their brain power.
How many cops does it take to push a black guy down a flight of stairs? None, he fell.
Nothing like a vid, to help sort threw the BS from the PD.
Glad to live in Wisconsin where only one party being recorded needs to consent to the recording.
>> Mextli said, on May 24th, 2010 at 10:38 am
>> I guess they are basing their actions on this, “Under Maryland law, conversations in private cannot be recorded without the consent of both people involved.”,
Thanks for posting that clarification (and reading the article!). It was helpful to understand this.
I support that kind of privacy law but always assumed it didn’t apply to public settings.
Using Greg Shipley’s interpretation, every parking lot security camera is illegal too. Or a million other situations with CCTVs or cell phone cameras.
i don’t know why they are in oppose of using camcorders!!
I doubt this is really a MD law about protecting bad cops. It much more likely to be a law protecting politicians, behaving badly in public (or in private) from “taped” and then exposed. This thing with Fergie would never be allowed in the US. When Clinton got caught in his affair with Monica, because another woman taped a phone call about that damn dress she wore (whatever). It all came out about the consent law, that practically no one had ever heard of before. And then a bit later, when someone taped a cellphone conversation of a congressman. Things really hit the fan, here. Yeah, it ain’t the cops they’re protecting. It’s the politically powerful and connected. It’s only Ok for them to spy on us, not us to spy on them. That’s why it’s a Maryland law. Because of Wash. DC.
Video recordings often show that police lie when they file charges against people they’ve arrested.
Here is the solution. The penalty for falsely charging someone with a crime is a bullet in the head.
Lying about your own criminal activity, in this case beating an innocent person, will result in a bullet in the head.
This won’t stop the simple minded, corrupt, incompetent losers who are drawn to police work from committing crimes but it will reduce their numbers.
I think it should become mandatory that all police arrests are captured on video before they are admissible and if the cop does not record the arrest then the “suspect” should be free to go. this would stop a lot of the abuse on arrest cases. and would likely lead to less harassment arrests as the cop would still need to video everything and harassment would lead to disciplinary action against the police.
I wouldn’t be too quick to vest all my legal rights in a video recording. The video equivalents of Photoshop are becoming inexpensive and easier every day. The best option is a police force and court system that respects the law above all else and laws that are just. I know, what quaint, outdated notions.
You can fix the faked video problem with check-sums or encyption in the video stream. It works for source code repositories.