Police #2: Burning down the house

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, polishgenius said:

Bullshit in that it's not true/misrepresented, or bullshit in that it's a fascist piece of legislation that surely won't stand up to any legal scrutiny?

Bullshit in the sense it's a fascist/totalitarian piece of legislation.

[OldGimletEye]

2 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

They did do that, but in april and in theory only applies to crime scenes. 
 

Well at the very least how "crime scene" got defined does deserve scrutiny.

[Fragile Bird]

2 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

eta: misrepresented. My bad. They did do that, but in april and in theory only applies to crime scenes. 

Of course in this kind of situation it's still hideously open to abuse but yeah should have checked further before I posted.

Everything is a crime scene, people are filming because they see a crime scene unfolding. The ban covers everything you’d want to film. Someone being beaten? It’s a crime scene, why else would police beat them?

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Fragile Bird said:

Everything is a crime scene, people are filming because they see a crime scene unfolding. 

Yes this would be a key issue under legislation like this. The definition of "crime scene" could be defined very broadly. Under some interpretations of "crime scene" it could be illegal to film what happened to George Floyd.

[A wilding]

Given George Floyd was apparently being murdered, surely it was absolutely a crime scene?

In fact almost by definition it would be illegal to film police committing any crime.

 

[DMC]

19 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Everything is a crime scene, people are filming because they see a crime scene unfolding. The ban covers everything you’d want to film. Someone being beaten? It’s a crime scene, why else would police beat them?

It's like the exact opposite of the "good samaritan" law that underlies the series finale of Seinfeld.  I thought that was an absurd premise, even at 13 years old, but.....here we are.

[Ran]

Here is the ordinance (PDF). It opens with the note that citizens have a right to free speech and to record police activities. It's true that a "crime scene" is not given some limitation on what is reasonable, but in general there's only so much space that police can reasonably restrict with any expectation of maintaining it. There's no police officer who's going to try and cordon off a city block because there's a verbal or physical alteraction between a couple of police officers and someone they're detaining or questoning. The bigger issue would be if, after establishing a crime scene boundary, police attempted to block recording by physically standing in the way.

Per the article, this ordinance was triggered by so-called "First Amendment auditors" running around and getting in the face of police officers. The article notes that there seems to be some crossover between these people and the "sovereign citizen" people. There's this which provides an example video and more details.

Suffice it to say, whoever posted about this to social media is at best a person with good intentions who is misinformed about the details (since it doesn't prevent filming of police, just requires people to stay out of expressly defined crime scenes) and the triggers (it has nothing to do with George Floyd, protests, BLM, etc., but is instead a response to alt-right-aligned provocation), and at worst they are a bad actor deliberately misrepresenting things to incite upset.

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Ran said:

Here is the ordinance (PDF). It opens with the note that citizens have a right to free speech and to record police activities. It's true that a "crime scene" is not given some limitation on what is reasonable, but in general there's only so much space that police can reasonably restrict with any expectation of maintaining it. There's no police officer who's going to try and cordon off a city block because there's a verbal or physical alteraction between a couple of police officers and someone they're detaining or questoning. The bigger issue would be if, after establishing a crime scene boundary, police attempted to block recording by physically standing in the way.

Per the article, this ordinance was triggered by so-called "First Amendment auditors" running around and getting in the face of police officers. The article notes that there seems to be some crossover between these people and the "sovereign citizen" people. There's this which provides an example video and more details.

Suffice it to say, whoever posted about this to social media is at best a person with good intentions who is misinformed about the details (since it doesn't prevent filming of police, just requires people to stay out of expressly defined crime scenes) and the triggers (it has nothing to do with George Floyd, protests, BLM, etc., but is instead a response to alt-right-aligned provocation), and at worst they are a bad actor deliberately misrepresenting things to incite upset.

I appreciate that you're trying to combat misinformation, but the expressly written text of the ordinance would essentially give police the authority to restrict recording by citizens within a zone designated as under police authority. You even acknowledge that a limitation is not defined.

So I'd have to say that, at best, the Tucson City Council didn't intend to restrict lawful recording by citizens, but accidentally wrote the text so broadly as to restrict a lot of 1st amendment rights. At worst, they decided they didn't care and would leave it up to police discretion.

ETA: I also wouldn't classify a sovereign citizen adherent as automatically being alt-right. There is some overlap, but I have a Native friend who identifies as a sovereign citizen, and he's further left than me.

ETA 2: One could certainly imagine police classifying something like a protest as a "riot" and then closing down an entire city block or more to restrict on-the-ground recording. Hell, as written, it would even seem to restrict journalist recording as well. It's a terrible ordinance.

ETA 3: Okay, there's a fig leaf towards journalism towards the end, but that doesn't negate that the police still get to define what counts as interference with their duties and/or their safety.

[Ran]

17 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

would essentially give police the authority to restrict recording by citizens within a zone designated as under police authority.

If you assume the police will find some way to justify restricting a zone around a detainment or law enforcement action that is so large that the action cannot be filmed, then sure. But when they attempt to enforce this and judges get a look at this, lets just say neither left nor right-aligned judges are going to find this reasonable ("Did a drunk and disorderly call really need you to cordon off three city blocks and arrest five people filming in the area, officer?"). Presumably the assumption is that the police in Tuscon will continue to use their usual standards for what spaces to restrict when and how much to restrict them by. Most cases of arrests and police violence during arrests that I've seen tend to have other officers telling people to stand back and not interfere, but they don't go chasing people off the block. If they suddenly start increasing the area they restrict to foil filming, then there's a problem, but I see no great reason to assume this will happen.

I looked at the thread posted above and I note a number of people who attempted to explain to the poster how she either misunderstood the ordinance or was slanting it, and her responses are fairly aggressive and include blocking folks for the temerity to question her framing.

 Presumably the same standards that the police applies for restricting areas now are going to be expected going forward. 

 

 

[OldGimletEye]

22 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

snip

The ordinance probably just needs to ditch the "crime scene" concept and replace it with language that makes it illegal to film the police in very well specified and narrow situations like 1) substantially interferes with a lawful police investigation and/or 2) is likely to bring embarrassment or retribution to a victim of a crime and so forth.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

If you assume the police will find some way to justify restricting a zone around a detainment or law enforcement action that is so large that the action cannot be filmed, then sure. But when they attempt to enforce this and judges get a look at this, lets just say neither left nor right-aligned judges are going to find this reasonable ("Did a drunk and disorderly call really need you to cordon off three city blocks and arrest five people filming in the area, officer?"). Presumably the assumption is that the police in Tuscon will continue to use their usual standards for what spaces to restrict when and how much to restrict them by. Most cases of arrests and police violence during arrests that I've seen tend to have other officers telling people to stand back and not interfere, but they don't go chasing people off the block. If they suddenly start increasing the area they restrict to foil filming, then there's a problem, but I see no great reason to assume this.

I looked at the thread posted above and I note a number of people who attempted to explain to the poster how she either misunderstood the ordinance or was slanting it, and her responses are fairly aggressive and include blocking folks for the temerity to question her framing.

 Presumably the same standards that the police applies for restricting areas now are going to be expected going forward. 

 

I think you're placing entirely too much faith in the police and the judiciary, given ongoing events.

[Guest]

Just now, OldGimletEye said:

The ordinance probably just needs to the "crime scene" concept and replace it with language that makes it illegal to film the police in very well specified situations like 1) substantially interferes with a lawful police investigation and/or 2) is likely to bring embarrassment or retribution to a victim of a crime or so forth.

Right, and I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to something like that on it's face. But the ordinance as written is incredibly broad.

[OldGimletEye]

3 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Right, and I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to something like that on it's face. But the ordinance as written is incredibly broad.

Don't disagree and I think trying to define it by "crime scene" will likely always be overly broad.

[Ran]

1 minute ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I think you're placing entirely too much faith in the police and the judiciary, given ongoing events.

I think you're placing too little, and too little in the liberal-controlled city council (all of the members are Democrats). From the article:

Quote

The council will review the ordinance in a year to see if it’s working as intended and whether the boundaries police are setting up are reasonable for the circumstances.

 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

I think you're placing too little, and too little in the liberal-controlled city council (all of the members are Democrats). From the article:

 

I think that if we could take police or Democratic City Councils at face value (see Minneapolis), we wouldn't be where we are at right now.

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Ran said:

I think you're placing too little, and too little in the liberal-controlled city council (all of the members are Democrats).

I don't care if the council is composed of Vulcans and Jedis, the conceptual basis of it is just wrong and demonstrates why people feel like the government not only doesn't care about them, but actively wants to hurt them.

[OldGimletEye]

10 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I think that if we could take police or Democratic City Councils at face value (see Minneapolis), we wouldn't be where we are at right now.

Even if the Democratic council had legitimate reasons, the way the legislation is written certainly gets my civil libertarian hackles up. Of course, there are likely some compelling reasons in certain class of cases to limit the filming of police. But, the means to limit filming must be narrowly tailored to those legitimate interest.  And I don't think restricting filming by "crime scene" is as narrowly tailored as it could be.

[Ran]

8 minutes ago, DMC said:

I don't care if the council is composed of Vulcans and Jedis, the conceptual basis of it is just wrong and demonstrates why people feel like the government not only doesn't care about them, but actively wants to hurt them.

How does this hurt them actively? You know the situation that triggered this, you know the express intention of the people who created the ordinance, and none of it seems like a deliberate attempt to “actively” want to “hurt” anybody. Cynical fantasias of the wording being too broad leading to guaranteed abuse that will not be rectified by authorities or courts are not reality.

For all we know, the Tucson police has expressed guidelines that they have to follow when deciding on purpose and size of area restrictions, and the city council’s ordinance operates with that knowledge.

 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

How does this hurt them actively?

It's not about the language it's about the intent behind it.  Which is stay out of police business or else.  That's not what public safety should be about.

[Ran]

To provide some more context, here's information on the chief of police in Tucson, his approach to policing including having the police department adopt measures advocated by Campaign Zero, and how Tucson is dealing with protests.