{"id":299,"date":"2012-12-03T10:24:07","date_gmt":"2012-12-03T15:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/citizens-can-video-on-duty-police-supreme-court.html"},"modified":"2012-12-03T10:24:07","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T15:24:07","slug":"citizens-can-video-on-duty-police-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/12\/citizens-can-video-on-duty-police-supreme-court.html","title":{"rendered":"Citizens can video on duty police —Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nThe Supreme Court has declined to review a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals\ndecision that struck down an Illinois law prohibiting audio recordings\nwithout permission,\nechoing last year’s\n\nFirst Court decision that you can record police on the job.<\/a>\nLet’s remember it’s not just police:\n<\/p>\n

\n

\n“Gathering information about government officials in a form that can\nreadily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment\ninterest in protecting and promoting\n

‘the free discussion of\ngovernmental affairs.’<\/blockquote>”\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThat means all elected or appointed or employed government officials, from\nCounty Commissioners and City Councils down through sheriff and\npolice departments to the Animal Shelter.\nPolice are employees, not elected or appointed, so these rulings would appear\nto apply to other governmental employees.\n<\/p>\n

\nRadley Balko wrote for Huffpo 27 November 2012,\n\nSupreme Court Inaction Boosts Right To Record Police Officers<\/a>,\n

\n

\n\n<\/a>\n<\/p>\nThe Illinois and Massachusetts laws have been used to arrest people\nwho attempt to record on-duty police officers and other public\nofficials. In one of the more notorious cases, Chicago resident\nTiawanda Moore was arrested in 2010 when she attempted to use her\ncell phone to record officers in a Chicago police station.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n

\n

\nMoore had come to the station to report an alleged sexual assault by\na Chicago cop, and says she became frustrated when internal affairs\nofficers allegedly bullied her and attempted to talk her out of\nfiling the report. Moore was eventually acquitted.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which\nis planning a police accountability project in Chicago that will\ninvolve recording police while they’re on duty. The organization\nwanted to be sure its employees and volunteers wouldn’t be charged\nwith felonies.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe 7th Circuit Court found a specific First Amendment right to\nrecord police officers. It’s the second federal appeals court to\nstrike down a conviction for recording police. In August 2011, the\nU.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit ruled that a man wrongly\narrested for recording cops could sue the arresting officers for\nviolating his First Amendment rights.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n<\/a>\n
\n\nCook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez\n<\/small>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\nThat decision also found a broad First Amendment right to record\non-duty government officials in public: “Gathering information about\ngovernment officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to\nothers serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and\npromoting ‘the free discussion of governmental affairs.'” And in\nfact, in that it strips police who make such arrests of their\nimmunity from lawsuits, it’s an even stronger opinion. Of course,\nthe police themselves rarely pay damages in such suits \u2014\ntaxpayers do….\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nAnd don’t we have better uses for our local taxes than defending them from such lawsuits?\nSince our local officials no doubt have nothing to hide,\nwe can hope such lawsuits never occur here, because local officials will not try to\nstop citizens from recording them on audio or video.\nAlso note these Circuit Court rulings go beyond the Georgia Open Meetings Law;\ncitizens’ First Amendment right to record government officials appears to extend to anywhere\nand any time officials are doing their duty.\n<\/p>\n

\n-jsq\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court has declined to review a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision that struck down an Illinois law prohibiting audio recordings without permission, echoing last year’s First Court decision that you can record police on the job. Let’s remember it’s not just police: “Gathering information about government officials in a form that can […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[176,97,2,11,20,733,3],"tags":[8747,8736,372,1274,1275,1272,1273,8701,8699,1276,8702,8710,1271,12,7,661,8799,1270,652,8700,6,234],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aclu","category-activism","category-government","category-lake","category-law","category-media","category-transparency","tag-aclu","tag-activism","tag-atlanta","tag-boston","tag-chicago","tag-citizen","tag-first-amendment","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-illinois","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-law-enforcement","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-massachusetts","tag-media","tag-police","tag-sheriff","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta","tag-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-4P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}