If you choose to record the police you can reduce the risk of terrible legal consequences and video loss by understanding your state’s laws and carefully adhering to the following rules. This advice is published by The Free Thought Project.
Police have again determined that it is illegal to record them making arrests even when you are not up close or in any way interfering. From such an event in Boston, things have spiraled way out of control, as described to me by STL photographer Ed Crim, who read of this travesty and has issued this invitation to protest:
"Carlos Miller, of Miami, Florida, has been charged with witness intimidation by the Boston Massachusetts Police Department because he urged readers of his web site, Photography Is Not A Crime (PINAC) to call the Public Relations Officer of the Boston PD and protest the arrest of a videographer whose only offense was recording a public arrest. If you believe, as I do, that a Public Relations Officer should be willing to talk to the public about police policy, take a look at the petition and help protect our rights as photographers."
There is a lot of ignorance of the U.S. Constitution out on the streets. Consider this video made by a driver who committed the crime of asserting his Constitutional rights at a DUI checkpoint. The written account of the incident is here. More on motor vehicle checkpoints here and here. It's clear from videos like this (there are many) it is clear that there is a big difference between the law on the books and the law on the streets.
These drivers really know the law, to the consternation of these border patrol agents.
Here's what happened to a group of people protesting a foreclosure. Note the extreme militarization of the police. They looked nervous, and they should have been, because they were surrounded by ordinary people fighting a fucked-up system by uttering truths to the police-soldiers. Amazing that it's coming to this.