Contributor Opinion by Temperance Blalock: The Creeping Police State Speeds Through A Red Light
Jun 4, 2010 10:14 - 5 Comments
One recent morning, as I prepared to cross the street in downtown Rockville (in a marked crosswalk, on a WALK sign, so there’s no question about the legality of my actions), I watched a Rockville police car sail through a red light right in front of me. While I’ve grown wearily resigned to the apparent dispensation granted to motorists to violate traffic laws outside a narrow scope, although the city pays lip service to “pedestrian rights”, it’s still rankling to see law enforcement do it with impunity.
For awhile I’ve contemplated buying or borrowing a video camera, and then just standing at any given intersection and recording the red-light runners, for my own sense of futile revenge if for nothing else. And I admit that I have harbored fantasies about uploading some of the more egregious cases to YouTube, particularly the ones where it’s law enforcement that’s breaking the law.
So, imagine my horror when I ran across an article on Gizmodo, and then started Googling further on it and discovered that is now apparently ILLEGAL to record law enforcement in public in the state of Maryland. Now, I always knew that it was illegal in this state to surreptitiously record a second party without disclosure, but I didn’t realize the broad application to that law meant that it is also illegal to record a second party with full disclosure of the act of recording. In an era where 99 percent of citizens carry a cell phone with an attached digital camera, where most phone interactions are preceded with “this call is being monitored for quality purposes”, where the average person is recorded dozens of times a day with implied consent out in public, and where municipalities rely on red light cameras for both traffic enforcement and revenue generation, the lines have become too blurred to define “consent” in these archaic laws.
It’s time for citizens to start demanding a lot more of our government, including re-defining the current laws about recording citizen/law-enforcement interactions. We should demand of political candidates that they disclose how they intend to legislate on these matters, and we should demand much more transparency of law enforcement, so that citizens do not feel that their only recourse against potential police corruption is to record the interactions. The police are already recording us via web dash cams, and the public should have equal rights to do the same.
Debate Sparks Over Video Recording Of Arrests
Maryland Wiretapping Law Needs an Update
By Temperance Blalock
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Wow. Just - WOW. I did not know any of this, I’m definitely not happy about it, and I’m more than happy to share it around. Thank you for bringing this to people’s attention.
“It’s time for citizens to start demanding a lot more of our government…”
Citizens need to demand LESS government - period! City government, county government, state government, federal government - the regulatory morass is suffocating liberty and the civil society.
Fresh Air recently ran a program about corruption in the Philadelphia narcotics squad. A couple of Daily News reporters won the 2010 pulitzer by showing, among other things, how these cops routinely disabled merchant security cameras immediately upon entering a store.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126386819
What are they doing that they don’t want anyone watching?
Recording police activity has been standard practice for some time. While MD police haven’t been in the spotlight like the LAPD following the Rodney King beating, the actions of several officers were investigated after a video from College Park was made public in March. Public involvement in our govenment is encouraged, and the additional supervision provided at no cost to the taxpayer should be seen as a benefit. Naturally, the film will be biased, but the resulting “view” of the events will be judged by a vast jury of peers. Let’s campaign to change this rule.
Maryland and Illinois have laws on the books making it a criminal offense to videotape police officers under any circumstances. There’s a case in Illinois right now where a citizen is being prosecuted for doing this. I find it outrageous that you or I can be jailed for videotaping a public servant engaging in his or her official duties on a public street. Videotaping should only be prohibited when it would compromise public safety, for example, if its an undercover officer or a sensitive anti-terror training exercise. Obviously, you also don’t want people to interfere with law enforcement activities by getting in the way of officers or refusing a lawful request, but there are already laws on the books to cover that.