Courts uphold rights of citizens to record police in action

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, in a unanimous decision that many see as a victory for the First Amendment, has recently upheld the right of an attorney to sue police after the police arrested him for using his cell phone to make an audio and video recording of officers conducting an arrest on Boston Common in the fall 2007.

“A citizen’s right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment,” the court stated.

The Andover Townsman reports that the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, representing the Boston Police Department, argued that attorney that Simon Glik had violated Massachusetts’s wiretapping law which prohibits anyone from secretly recording another individual’s words.

The court, however, held that Glik had made no effort to conceal the cell phone with which he was recording the officers’ actions – and since he did not conceal his audio and video recording of the police, he could not be accused of “secretly” recording anything in violation of the statute.

“Simply put, a straightforward reading of the statute and case law cannot support the suggestion that a recording made with a device known to record audio and held in plain view is ‘secret,’” the court said.

Glik’s own right to sue had previously been upheld by U.S. District Court Judge William Young. The Townsman notes that earlier decisions by the courts upheld the right of citizens and the media to record police actions, provided such recordings do not threaten the safety of others or interfere with officers in the performance of their duties.

David Milton, who represented Glik on behalf of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said: “Police officers must be trained to respect the right of people to openly record their actions in public…. Simon did what we hope any engaged citizen would do, which was documenting what he thought looked like an improper use of force.”

Upholding the rights of citizens to record police action is not limited to Massachusetts. Two weeks ago, a Cook County jury acquitted a woman of criminal eavesdropping charges after she had secretly recorded an interview with two Chicago police internal affairs investigators.

The woman testified she decided to record the meeting when the investigators tried to talk her out of following through on her complaint of sexual harassment against a patrol officer who had come to her home on a domestic disturbance.