Northbay Uprising - Information for the liberated zones of the San Pablo Bay

2011-08-31 "First Circuit Court of Appeals Rules that Citizens Can Videotape Police" by Tiffany Kaiser
[http://www.dailytech.com/First+Circuit+Court+of+Appeals+Rules+that+Citizens+Can+Videotape+Police/article22587.htm]
The filming of government officials while on duty is protected by the First Amendment, said the Court
The First Circuit Court of Appeals reached a crucial decision last Friday allowing the public to videotape police officers while they're on the clock.
The decision comes after a string of incidents where individuals have videotaped police officers and were arrested. Police officers across the United States believed citizens didn't have the right to videotape them as they conducted official duties, but issues like police brutality put the issue up for debate.
One instance where a citizen was arrested for videotaping an officer was when Khaliah Fitchette, a law-abiding teenager from New Jersey, boarded a bus in Newark. Two police officers boarded the bus as well to remove a drunken man. Fitchette began taping the police officers because of how they were handling the man, and a police officer instructed her to stop recording them. When Fitchette refused, she was arrested and placed in the back of a cop car for two hours while the officers took her phone to delete the video. Fitchette was then released, but she and her mother then filed suit against the Newark Police Department with the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Another example involves Simon Glik, a passerby on the Boston Common. He used his cell phone to tape police officers when the Boston police were punching a man. Citizens surrounding the scene were saying, "You're hurting him." Glik never interfered with the police officers' actions, but recorded the entire incident. The police officers ended up charging Glik with violating a wiretap statute that prohibits secret recording, even though the police officers admitted that they knew Glik was recording them. He was also charged with disturbing the peace and aiding the escape of a prisoner.
While all charges against Glik were dropped due to lack of merit, he still decided to join forces with the ACLU and file a civil rights suit to prevent a similar incident from occurring with others.
On Friday, August 26, 2011, the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which is New England's highest federal court just below the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled that citizens are allowed to videotape law officials while they conduct official duties.
The city's attorneys made the argument that police officers should have been exempt from a civil rights lawsuit in the first place in this case because the law is unclear as to whether there's a "constitutionally protected right to videotape police" conducting their daily duties in public.
"The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles [of protected First Amendment activity].," said the Court. "Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting the free discussion of governmental affairs."
The Court added that the police officers should have understood this all along, and that videotaping public officials is not limited to the press.
"Moreover, changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw," the Court continued. "The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status."
The Court concluded that police officers are to expect to deal with certain "burdens" as citizens practice First Amendment rights, but that there needs to be a healthy balance between police officers being videotaped while acting irresponsibly and the harassment of officers with recording devices while they're conducting their duties responsibly.


2011-08-31 "ACLU sues Baltimore police for deleting videos off cell phone" by Eric W. Dolan
[http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/31/aclu-sues-baltimore-police-for-deleting-videos-off-cell-phone/]
The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland (ACLU) on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore City Police Department on behalf a man whose personal videos were deleted after he filmed officers subduing and arresting a woman.
“Police officers doing their jobs in a public place are accountable to the public they serve, and camera phones have become an important accountability tool,” said ACLU Legal Director Deborah Jeon. “It is antithetical to a democracy for the government to tell its citizens that they do not have the right to record what government officials say or do or how they behave in public.”
The lawsuit alleges Christopher Sharp was detained and harangued by police officers after he recorded the arrest.
He handed over his phone to officers after being told to surrender it as "evidence." Once the cell phone was in the officer's possession, they deleted the video of the arrest and all other videos contain on the cell phone.
"I’m heartbroken over the videos I lost of my son and I doing things together,” Sharp said. “The videos were keepsakes of memories like his soccer and basketball games, times at the beach and the Howard County fair. It kills me that the police acted as if it was okay for them to could just wipe out some of my fondest memories."
"I used to trust police, but now I don’t anymore, because of how wrongly the police acted here, and because it seemed like this was just routine procedure for them."
During the 2010 incident at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, a 22-year-old woman allegedly punched another person in the face, and then punched a police officer and resisted arrest. She was charged with three counts of second-degree assault and one count of resisting arrest.
Although the video of the incident was deleted from Sharp's phone, another bystander recorded the arrest and uploaded it to YouTube. In the video, officers can be heard shouting, "They're taking pictures" and other officer later says, "It's illegal to record anybody's voice or anything else in the state of Maryland."
Maryland’s wiretap law prevents citizens from recording audio if subjects have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their communications.
Watch ACLU of Maryland's interview of Christopher Sharp below: