Citizens Taking Video of Police See Themselves Facing Arrest

Citizens Taking Video of Police See Themselves Facing Arrest
HAUPPAUGE, N.Y. — Aug 29, 2015, 4:30 PM ET
By FRANK ELTMAN Associated Press
Associated Press

Thomas Demint's voice is heard only briefly on the eight-minute video he took of police officers arresting two of his friends, and body-slamming their mother. "I'm videotaping this, sir," he tells an officer. "I'm just videotaping this."

What's not seen is what happened just after he stopped recording: Demint says three officers tackled him, took away his smartphone and then tried, unsuccessfully, to erase the video. They then arrested him on charges of obstruction of governmental administration and resisting arrest.

"I am 100 percent innocent," the 20-year-old Long Island college student told reporters earlier this month. "I didn't do anything wrong. I was just there to videotape."

Civil liberties experts say Demint is part of a growing trend of citizen videographers getting arrested after trying to record police behavior.

It's a backlash that comes as smartphones have made it easier than ever to make such recordings, which have become key evidence in high-profile cases of alleged excessive force, including the shooting of a fleeing suspect by an officer in South Carolina, the dragging of a Baltimore man into a police van, and the chokehold death of a New York City man on a Staten Island sidewalk.

"By all accounts the situation has gotten worse," said Chris Dunn, associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "People are more inclined to pull out their phones and record, but that is often met with a very bad response from police."

Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association, said he hears of "almost four incidents a week" in which police either harass, interfere or arrest citizens — not journalists — for shooting video. He notes this is occurring at the same time many police departments are deploying body cameras on officers.

"There is no reasonable expectation of privacy on either side," Osterreicher said. "Citizens can record police and police can record citizens when either is out on the street in a public place."

What makes the situation hard to define, civil libertarians say, is that no one is ever arrested on a charge of recording police because that has widely been upheld as protected under the First Amendment. Instead, they are being hauled into court on obstruction, resisting arrest or other charges.

A North Carolina man who says he "kept a safe distance" last spring while recording police taking his friend into custody at a bar was nonetheless booked on resisting and obstructing an arrest, charges that were later dropped.

A month earlier in Missouri, a man claimed he was arrested after recording the police response to a small protest outside the Ferguson Police Department. He says that as soon as he took a step onto a street that was blocked by police, he was booked on a disorderly conduct charge.

In some cases, the arrests are costing taxpayers money.

Earlier this year, the city of Portland, Maine, paid $72,000 to settle a lawsuit by a couple who were arrested after they filmed police questioning a suspected drunk driver.

In New York, a freelance videographer arrested after a Long Island police sergeant ordered him to stop recording the arrest of a suspect settled a federal civil rights lawsuit last year for $200,000.

Demint is also considering a civil case against police, who accused him of being combative and refusing to obey officers' orders to get back when he was arrested last year. His case is still pending.