By: Audrey Wang
Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona signed a law on July 6th that forbids people to record videos within the measure of eight feet of police activity. The law is limiting efforts to improve and enforce laws, such as police brutality by the public. It takes effect this September. Many civil rights groups criticize this law, because recording the police’s actions helped the increase of public records of police actions, such as the killing of George Floyd and Eric Garner, both done by police.
Representatives in favor of the law, such as John Kavanagh, the bill’s sponsor, said there was little to no reason for bystanders to record police actions within eight feet. Kavanagh also said that the law would protect citizens from dangerous situations and from interfering with investigation.
The law allowed the police to question ‘suspicious’ people, arresting violators, and managing disorderly people. Potential punishments for violation can result in 30 days in jail and fines up to $500. However, there are some exceptions, such as if the crime scene is on a private property, a vehicle stopped by the police or others who are subjects of police contact. The subjects cannot interfere with police activity while they are under investigation. The exceptions do not involve journalists.
A law professor at the University of Denver, Alan Chen, said there were some good questions about the law, such as how people should react if an officer moves towards them, even though they were recording from eight feet away. Chen said, “it might deter them from actually recording or might make them back up even further than eight feet that the law requires, there’s certainly some First Amendment concerns here.”
The Supreme Court has not ruled if recording a video of the police in public during duty is under the First Amendment. Most federal courts agree that the action is a constitutional right, including the Ninth Circuit, which represents Arizona. Chen said that he expected the Supreme Court to hear a case on the right to record police in the next few terms.
There are some videos of police encounters that shocked the internet, and gained attention, have been used in courtrooms as proof, but they do not always end up with charges towards the police. George Floyd’s case is an example. Darnella Frazier recorded a video of a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on Floyd’s neck, killing him. Frazier was seventeen when she took the video. Her video changed the outcome of a court decision – it contradicted what the Minneapolis Police Department’s inaccurate description of how he died.
Related videos have surprised the world – the police were supposed to fight injustice and crime, not to kill innocent citizens. Eric Garner, who died in a police chokehold, was recorded by his friend Ramsey Orta in 2014. More videos taken by everyday citizens have continued to surprise the world.
This law makes it difficult to rule out police misbehavior and hold them accountable for and the horrific actions they did. The A.C.L.U. of Arizona wrote in a message on Twitter that it was “the use of the public’s most effective tool against police wrongdoing.”