The same general theme has been advanced by many police-advocacy organizations and their supporters, who argue, in essence, that the Constitution ceases to exist the moment a police officer feels unsafe. That rationale for the bill echoed the most common falsehood invoked by police attempting to cover up misconduct: that they feared for their safety. “Police officers have no way of knowing whether the person approaching is an innocent bystander or an accomplice of the person they’re arresting who might assault them,” he wrote. In an op-ed in The Arizona Republic, State Senator John Kavanagh acknowledged that he had proposed the bill at the request of “Tucson police officers” because of “groups hostile to the police that follow them around to videotape police incidents.” Although insisting that he respects “the constitutional right of people to videotape police officers performing their duties,” Kavanagh defended his bill as necessary. Although there has been prior litigation over the First Amendment right to record police, this appears to be the first time a state has sought to directly criminalize the act. In July, the state’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, signed into law a measure making it illegal to record video within eight feet of where “law enforcement activity is occurring.” In other words, the law allows police to arrest you for taking video of them, even if you’re videoing them as they break the law. Arizona lawmakers recently came up with a solution aimed at ensuring that fewer of these embarrassing videos contradicting police falsehoods get made. Yet there are those who think the problem is not the abuse of authority by law enforcement, but the existence of video documenting such abuses. Read: The problem with police-shooting videos That in itself raises certain dilemmas, such as how much weight to grant police statements and uncorroborated witness testimony. The spread of cellphone cameras has provided grim confirmation that police can be as dishonest as any other human being. Video, even if it does not ultimately tell the entire story, can provide uniquely compelling evidence in a way testimony or physical evidence from the scene of a crime cannot. And sometimes there’s video proving that they lied. Sometimes they gun down a 12-year-old without giving him time to drop his toy firearm, yet insist otherwise. Sometimes they say a man was responsible for his own death because he “physically resisted,” even though he had been restrained and begging for his life. Sometimes they shoot a man in the back and leave him facedown on the ground but tell the public something else.
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