Of course they are, and that’s why the new law is so pernicious. It gives the police a delightfully vague fig leaf to justify illegal activity, to the extent that it becomes much more difficult to stand your grand. You can no longer say there is no law against filming the police, because there is. It’s just that a court might or might not decide it applies in this particular circumstance.

Charges dropped against CT priest who taped police
By DAVE COLLINS

HARTFORD, Conn. Connecticut prosecutors on Thursday dropped charges against a Roman Catholic priest who was arrested while videotaping East Haven police officers in an attempt to document alleged harassment of Hispanics.

Parishioners of the Rev. James Manship’s church also announced Thursday that they filed a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division seeking an investigation of East Haven police for alleged brutality and racial profiling of Hispanics.

Hugh Keefe, a lawyer for the police department, declined to comment on Thursday’s events. He said he wanted to see the complaint first.

Earlier this month, Keefe accused Manship of “creating a controversy where none needed to be,” and he said there never had been a formal complaint accusing town officers of harassing Hispanics. If a complaint was brought forward, he said, town officials would look into it and take it seriously.

Manship, pastor at St. Rose of Lima Church in New Haven, was charged Feb. 19 with disorderly conduct and interfering with police. He was videotaping two officers who were removing what they called illegal license plates from a wall of a food store owned by a Hispanic couple, who said the plates were for decoration.

The officers said in their reports that Manship was holding an “unknown shiny silver object” and struggled with one of the officers who tried to take it from him.

But a 15-second video released by Manship’s attorneys earlier this month shows one of the officers, before the arrest, asking the pastor, “Is there a reason you have a camera on me?” Manship denied struggling with police. The video goes blank just as Officer David Cari approaches Manship.

Or this:

South Florida model jailed overnight for videotaping police officers
March 6th, 2009

Update: Charges dropped against South Florida model arrested for filming cops.

Update II: After hurdles and barricades, police say they will now return camera to model.

By Carlos Miller
A South Florida woman was thrown in jail overnight and charged with an “eavesdropping” felony after she videotaped police officers with their knowledge in a movie theater parking lot Saturday night.

Although a judge dropped the felony charge against her the following morning, leaving her with a misdemeanor resisting arrest without violence charge, Boynton Beach Police have yet to return her camera, insisting that they still need it for “evidence.”

Adding insult to injury, she believes one of the arresting officers sent her an email bordering on sexual harassment, if not surpassing it, insinuating that she had lesbian sex with other inmates during her incarceration.

[snip]

But the officers seemed mainly concerned about the camera.

“They said ‘you can’t record people without letting them know’,” she said.

“So I said, ‘Ok, Tasha Ford is recording you’ and I continued filming them.

“I was filming them for my own protection,” said the mother of two who recently moved to South Florida from Washington DC. “I’ve seen the way cops interact with civilians down here.”

She said one of the officers, Robert Kellman, pictured right, was extremely antagonistic towards her and told her son, “since your mother is such a fucking asshole, I’m going to arrest you for trespassing’.”

or this in my part of the country:

Missouri: Police Threaten, Detain Motorist for Parking After Hours
A St. George, Missouri police officer is caught on tape threatening to invent charges to arrest a motorist for parking after hours.

Brett Darrow videoA motorist who refused to discuss his personal business with a St. George, Missouri police officer was threatened with arrest last Friday. Brett Darrow, 20, no stranger to unconventional encounters with police, caught a St. George Police Sergeant James Kuehnlein stating that he had the power to invent charges that would put Darrow behind bars. Update: Sergeant Kuehnlein was placed on unpaid leave Monday pending an investigation.

“Try and talk back… to me again,” yelled Sergeant Kuehnlein. “I bet I could say you resisted arrest or something. You want to come up with something? I come up with nine things.”

The incident began at around 2am. Darrow was to meet a friend who was working late and was going to pick him up. Darrow headed toward a 24-hour commuter parking lot in an unincorporated part of Saint Louis County in his 1997 Nissan Maxima. He put on his turn signal and entered the lot which, aside from Kuehnlein’s cruiser, was essentially vacant. After stopping the car, the police officer approached and began questioning Darrow about what he was doing. When Darrow declined to discuss his personal business, the police sergeant exploded. Although the video clearly shows Darrow driving properly and using his turn signal, the police officer insisted that Darrow had broken the law.

“Oh, while you were coming towards me you were swerving back and forth within the roadway,” Sergeant Kuehnlein said. “I might give you a ticket for that. You want me to come up with some more? When you turned in, you failed to use your turn signal, your right turn signal.”

Without the video, Darrow tells TheNewspaper that he would have stood no chance disproving the officer’s word in court. Twenty-eight percent of the St. George municipal budget comes from traffic citations. Darrow wonders how many of the tickets were legitimate.

“Looking into this guys eyes, he was crazy,” Darrow said. “I was really scared he was going to assault me. I just wonder how many other people have been arrested on these charges.”

After ordering Darrow against the car and searching him, Sergeant Kuehnlein released the motorist. Update: Website used by Saint Louis police contained threats of harassment and bodily harm against Darrow in June.

View video of incident below. Warning: Police officer uses graphic language.

The police of course were ashamed of this incident. Well, maybe not:

In the course of researching the incident, TheNewspaper learned from an inside source about a CopTalk posting dated June 29, 2007. A user calling himself “STL_FINEST” wrote the following item, presented unedited and in full:

in reply to “Who is this terd?”
I hope this little POS punk bastard tries his little video stunt with me when I pull him over alone- and I WILL pull him over – because I will see “his gun” and place a hunk of hot lead right where it belongs.

My apologies for the length of excerpted quotes. These stories have a personal significance for me because many years ago I was rather sympathetic to libertarianism. But unlike today’s flavor, back then in the mid-70’s this was the sort of issue that libertarians in my general circle of acquaintances considered important.

The argument that the constable involved was conspiring with me to pervert the course of justice by tampering with the evidence of a crime, and that therefore both of us ought to be arrested, did not help much if at all. Unfortunately, I have no memory of the guy’s serial number, which is a pity because as he filled in an evidence record for my mobile phone before returning it to me he almost certainly falsified his notebook later that evening, which is a disciplinary offence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper_v_Hart

though Malik’s statements are subsequent to the adoption of the law and so I think you’re right about that. As I understand it, the guidance is issued by the Home Office and ACPO and they’ve been working with photographers to draft it in such a way that it will not be oppressive.

#28 I think it is important that photographers stand their ground with the police where the police are acting unlawfully, as they usually are in these kind of cases. As for the provisions in the new act (that don’t actually mention photography of course) they haven’t been tested, no-one knows if they conflict with human rights legislation, and the police would be bound to act in accordance with the guidance they were issued (or the courts would deem them to have acted unreasonably).

As it is, Malik interpreting ‘reasonable excuse’ to include ‘responsible journalism’ is meaningless – it has no impact on the meaning of the law, and (more importantly) no impact on police behaviour. There are already many, many documented instances of police hassling photographers—including an MP. This is IMO, almost always a bad thing, and it will become much more common because of this legislation.

I’d have a lot more sympathy for this line of argument if the police didn’t already routinely harass and seize film from people photographing them. I imagine anyone who attends heavily policed football matches will have seen this first hand on several occasions. I certainly have. As it is, there have already been reports of arrests (though no charges that I’m aware of) under the new law during the G20 event. And of course the point (as far as the police are concerned) isn’t the conviction, it’s the prior restraint.

It could be argued any evidence of police brutality or misconduct is automatically “likely to be useful to a person preparing an act of terrorism,” because its dissemination may weaken popular support for the state and is therefore useful in propaganda.

So, I think any attempt to use this law to cover up police brutality would hinge on the interpretation of “reasonable excuse”—but frankly, it seems reasonable to suppose that Chris is right, as “reasonable excuse” ought to be broad enough to justify photographs of police that either are incidental (as Eszter mentioned) or are documenting an event (as in the case of police misconduct).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/08/g20-protest-police-apology-photographers

An apology after the event is better than damning evidence, isn’t it ?

Small solice she wasn’t Black or Brazilian or Irish or…..