Even with the fact that many instances of police brutality, mistreatment, harassment
are visible either on body camera footage or by citizens using their cellphones.
Even that fact does not mean that we get justice in the vast majority of
these cases.
But even so, man they really don't like it when you film them, and
your right to do so is already starting to evaporate.
A new bill was just signed into law in Arizona on Wednesday,
that will make it illegal to take video of police within eight feet of them.
It states specifically, it is unlawful for
a person to knowingly make a video recording of law enforcement activity.
If the person making the video recording is within eight feet of where the person
knows, or reasonably should know that law enforcement activity is occurring.
And if you do record police within eight feet,
you can face a misdemeanor charge, after they're warned once to back up.
No, as I said, our production this morning, okay, this is scary, I get it.
A lot of people are gonna be worried about this, but the good thing about it is,
that cops are now bound by this eight feet thing, and
if you are more than eight ft away, they would never abuse this.
They would never try to stop you from exercising your rights so
long as you're eight feet away Brett.
So it's bad, but I guess it could be worse because as long as you're eight feet away,
you'll be fine.
>> No, how many of these interactions with traffic stops are filmed by the person
being stopped in the traffic stop?
[CROSSTALK] That means you can't have a >> There are some exceptions,
including if you're the individual person, we will get to that, but
we know that a lot of these are a friend of the person who's being detained or
attacked or whatever, a bystander who comes across it.
My point being they're not gonna care about the eight feet, there's no sensor on
the camera that like afterward can be given to the court that no,
this confirms I was nine feet away at the point, they're gonna use this to stop.
They already try to stop all filming even without this law,
they are going to take this and they're gonna run with it.
>> Right, and what's to stop the police officer from just walking up to you and
closing the distance between where you're filming, especially in an incident
where there's multiple cops that have reported to the scene or
a partner that is going to essentially box you out.
That's exactly what's gonna happen.
And listen, I don't understand why they wouldn't be for more evidence.
There's a difference, there's gotta already be and
I hate when I speculate like this, but
there's got to already be some kind of ordinance regulation in place.
Essentially, I don't know, it's very stupid,
there's gotta be some ordinance in place, that if you are actually
interfering with the cops as they're trying to do whatever they're doing.
You get in trouble for that.
Like if you take your camera and you put it up in the cop space and
you touch the cops, like that's already illegal.
And I understand like there's situations where people swarm all the time
around cops.
And I see so many videos on public freak out that are just trying to get famous,
and kind of involving themselves and
somebody doesn't have anything to do with them or nothing obviously is going wrong,
but they're like, I should be able to film anyway.
That is an issue, but it's solution is not this.
>> Yeah, no, and look, I know some people are saying,
how could this possibly be constitutional?
Well, what does that have to do with anything [LAUGH] these days?
What is constitutional?
What are you even talking about?
They got a supermajority, they don't care.
Yeah, you're right.
There are some cases in which theoretically a person could be
interfering.
There are also a lot of cases where the cops are beating the hell out of
someone or killing them and need to be filmed.
This personally, I'm not gonna do this obviously, but
I imagine selling phone cases that just have a nine foot tape measure,
but again, it doesn't matter.
Originally, this was supposed to be 15 feet and then they compromised,
they brought it down to eight.
It doesn't matter.
They're not gonna let you film, they're gonna get in your face,
they're gonna assault you.
They're gonna do that.
Now, I wanna give more details just in case the law applies to situations in
which a police officer is questioning a suspicious person.
Conducting an arrest, issuing a summons or enforcing the law and
handling an emotionally disturbed person who is exhibiting abnormal behavior.
So, I guess everything is the situations, and here are the exceptions.
It makes exceptions for police activity on private property,
in which the person who is recording is authorized to be on the property.
But specified that an officer can order the person recording to leave the area
if the law enforcement officer determines that the person is
interfering in the law enforcement activity.
Well, thankfully, that's very specific.
So again, that couldn't be abused.
The law also says that a person who's the subject of police activity
can record as long as they're not being handcuffed, searched or
subjected to a field sobriety test.
And people in a vehicle that has been stopped by police can record if
the occupants are not interfering,
again, they will determine what counts is interfering.
And even if you're the person being interfered with,
now that they know they're allowed to stop you from recording if they're doing one
of those three things.
Do you think they might just start to do those things?
Again, this is not just ripe for abuse, it's designed for abuse.
That is the entire purpose of it.
>> But we compromise on the number of feet, and all we did in response is say
where you should reasonably know that law enforcement activity is happening.
Or if any of the things that you probably should be filming cops to make sure
they're not messing up with.
If any of those things are happening,
we still get that in our compromise situation.
It just went from 15 to 8 feet.
>> Yeah. >> Like that just specifically consider
reasonably expect law enforcement activity to be happening.
I'm being reasonable without any training, but
you police officers are probably gonna tell me actually, it's reasonable in this
50 foot radius to expect that someone else from law enforcement is gonna be here.
>> Yeah, it's just ridiculous.
Matthias is saying a super chat, so they can arrest journalists.
We'll look in advance of this, a lot of those organizations that stick up for
First Amendment journalistic rights.
They were pointing that out.
Yeah, they don't wannna be filmed.
The answer from a reasonable person has always been and should always be stopped
doing things that would be really damaging to you if the footage came out, but
that apparently is too much to ask of them.
And so instead they would rather shred the constitution.
They would rather throw people in jail rather
than just stop breaking the law themselves.
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