Then, as a cop, you arrest them. A court of law will see right through crap like that, and you'll be exonerated for recording the officer and convicted for pressing up against the officer.
What we don't want, here, is someone who isn't doing that jailed nonetheless, because they were 7.5ft away, recording police brutality, and the police didn't want that.
That's before you even get into "I think I'm 10ft away, but the cop says I'm 7ft so now I'm going to jail and will always have this arrest on my record even if charges are dropped"
While I hate to suggest we need to use technical solutions here instead of social and legal ones, it might be worthwhile building a video streaming app that uses the LiDAR available on phones that have it, and overlays distances to every person in the frame onto the stream.
“No, your honour, I was 9’7.5” away from the closest police officer when he moved towards me to confiscate my phone arrest me while the other officer used his taser on the handcuffed black guy for no reason. As you can see in this video on YouTube uploaded and timestamped at the time the incident unfolded.”
The ability to prove after the fact that you were a certain distance away won't stop you from being arrested and dragged to jail, which is probably the point. For a low level crime, by the time you are standing in front of judge with an opportunity to present evidence, a lot of time will have passed and most of the negative consequences of being charged with a crime will have already happened to you - the trauma of going to jail, bail money, hiring a lawyer, missing work, potentially losing your job, the stress and uncertainty, having a record and everything that comes with that. Even if you had that good evidence, those charges would turn your life upside down.
Sure, 1-2 officers responding to an incident are just going to arrest an angry crowd of 10, 20, 50 people while fearing for both their own safety and the safety of the public.
Go watch police cam breakdown/footage on YouTube. Crowds surround officer and start shouting, and even throwing things.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvDwWSl-sVE here officers try to restrain a felon, in felony possession of a firearm, that had tried to assault officers while a felon unlawfully possessing a firearm, as people surrounded them to hold their phones as close to them as possible to take footage, then as 3 of them try to subdue the suspect that continued, while armed, to try and resist then has to escalate to non-lethal violence of gasp punching the guy to try to get him to submit. At 3:42 an onlooker throws a full trash can at the officers that are actively trying to handcuff an ARMED FELON that is fighting tooth and nail to escape.
> Sure, 1-2 officers responding to an incident are just going to arrest an angry crowd of 10, 20, 50 people while fearing for both their own safety and the safety of the public.
… which has nothing to do with allowing citizens the right to film officers, nor with the point that I was making above: that, in that scenario, you can already arrest that person without needing an unconstitutional law to do so.
> video
This is exactly the sort of thing I want recorded. To one side, this is going to be "police brutality", and to the other, "resisting arrest". Recording it gives us evidence, and allows us the ability to decide on something more firm than the just what each side is going to claim happened.
Yeah, a trash can gets thrown; this thread isn't arguing for the right to toss trash cans at cops, and you're missing the point: that's separate from recording, and we already have laws that allow cops to arrest people that assault cops. So if you toss a can at a cop you already shouldn't be surprised when you get arrested¹. If the cops don't have the manpower to make the arrest, not being allowed your constitutional right to film isn't going to change that. The cops already have the (de jure) power they need here.
¹I'd also note that, here, cops need to understand their actions. While I disagree with the behavior of the people in the video, I can empathize & understand their point of view that this, to them, is police brutality. If you want to de-escalate a situation (which would help, if, as you argue, they can't make the arrest because they're being overpowered by the crowd), that starts by not doing things that enrage the crowd. Failing that, they just need backup, then.
That's not a realistic suggestion, though. If a cop is already arresting someone who's violently resisting, and then a crowd pushes in, are you seriously going to suggest he needs to ask the guy he was wrestling to "put a pin in this" while he arrests several other people for crowding?
There needs to be an effective way to make people aware and discouraged ahead of time from crowding in too close. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but "just arrest the whole crowd if you think they're interfering" is not it.
If you have “a whole crowd” who’re already prepared to risk an obstructing police charge, do you really think adding a potential “filming while too close to a police officer” charge is likely to change their behaviour?
Well, yeah. What does "obstructing" mean? As an ordinary joe, I would assume it means getting in their way or bothering them or trying to interfere, or even just moving in a way that could be interpreted as threatening. So it's a crowd of people who don't know they're risking charges, because who the hell knows.
But if the rule was "stay back 8 feet".... That's a lot less ambiguous. And also recently publicized. I would expect such a rule to change peoples' behavior.
