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The police chief in Wilmington, North Carolina, has publicly lambasted one of his officers. The officer recently pulled over a local attorney moonlighting as an Uber driver and told the driver that he could not film the traffic stop.
"Taking photographs and videos of people that are in plain sight, including the police, is your legal right," Chief Ralph Evangelous said in a Wednesday statement published on the department's Facebook page. "As a matter of fact, we invite citizens to do so when they believe it is necessary. We believe that public videos help to protect the police as well as our citizens and provide critical information during police and citizen interaction."
The statement concluded: "A copy of this statement will be disseminated to every officer within the Wilmington Police Department."
During the February 26 traffic stop, Jesse Bright began filming Sgt. Kenneth Becker when he and other law enforcement officers approached his car. Sgt. Becker, who appeared to be wearing a VieVu body-worn camera, told Bright that a "new law" forbids citizens from filming encounters with police.
"Turn it off or I'll take you to jail," Becker said.
"For recording you?" Bright retorted. "What is the law?"
The officers were unable to cite him the "new law," as it does not exist.
Source: ArsTechnica
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 14 2017, @03:22PM (1 child)
If they did build in dashcams the cams would auto-upload to the cloud "for your convenience"
I kind of like that idea WRT the cop demanding the flash chip or the entire camera so he can lose it, then the real interrogation begins.
"Sure officer I'll cooperate fully and you can have my camera but its uploaded live streaming to my youtube channel since I pushed that button, so its going to look incredibly suspicious of you in a court of law if anything happens, very premeditated on your part, officer."
People are already used to phone and home mics being live 24x7. Siri, Alexa, google now, all the same.
No recording LED might actually be a feature WRT angry cops. In fact installing a "map reading flashlight red LED" might be tactically useful WRT calming the cop while you're filming him. "Shut it down" "OK officer no problem see the light is off now"
(Score: 2) by fraxinus-tree on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:38PM
We are even better. A lot of modern fleet management systems here include (pretty cheap, it's EU w/ it's near total 3G/4G coverage) video upload feature so the cops are already used to it. Trucks, buses, taxis and a lot of unbranded cars have them installed. Sorry, officer, I cannot delete it and I don't know where the record is kept, but my boss looks sometimes and calls when we do something stupid.