NYPD Claims It’s Illegal To Film in a Police Station

Recording the police could be an efficient device for transparency and oversight, however a brand new report reveals how far the New York Police Division will go to maintain from being filmed.

Courts have typically upheld a proper to movie as long as residents do not bodily impede official police enterprise. However police departments are continually relitigating the query. In 2018, as an illustration, North Carolina police claimed {that a} proper to document the police didn’t embrace a proper to livestream the police. A federal appeals court docket rejected that argument in February.

This week, an article in Gothamist profiled “First Modification auditors” who movie in authorities buildings, together with police stations, to check the boundaries of what’s and isn’t allowed. One activist specifically, SeanPaul Reyes, posts his encounters with police in New York Metropolis on the YouTube account Lengthy Island Audit. He has been arrested a number of instances for filming.

The NYPD claims that whereas recording police could also be okay, recording inside a police station just isn’t. A division spokesperson instructed Gothamist that recording inside precincts is forbidden “as a result of it undermines the privateness of people that work together with the felony justice system and compromises the integrity of ongoing investigations.”

This query can be not settled in jurisprudence. In 2020, the Superior Court docket of Pennsylvania dominated that the First Modification didn’t shield filming in a police station foyer.

However New York Metropolis is completely different: After the NYPD banned filming inside police precincts in 2018, the Metropolis Council handed the Proper to Report Act, which codified an affirmative proper to document cops “performing of their official capability, with restricted exceptions.” The invoice incorporates no provisions that might stop filming inside police stations.

The regulation additionally required the NYPD to publish “the variety of arrests, felony summonses, and civil summonses during which the individual arrested or summonsed was recording police actions.” Gothamist reported that between 2021–22, there have been greater than 2,700 arrests of people that have been recording police.

Notably, these 2,700-plus folks weren’t arrested for filming the police however whereas filming the police. For instance, within the fourth quarter of 2022, 396 folks have been arrested whereas filming the police; the most typical offenses listed have been second- and third-degree assault (62 whole incidents), petit larceny (25 incidents), and resisting arrest (22 incidents).

Regardless of the regulation’s passage, police stay hostile to being recorded. Final 12 months, New York Mayor Eric Adams warned citizen videographers from standing too near police whereas filming, suggesting that “In case your iPhone cannot catch that image with you being at a secure distance, then you have to improve your iPhone.”

Chatting with Gothamist, former NYPD Lt. Eric Dym accused activists like Reyes of “maneuvering and manipulating the regulation” and stated they need to seek the advice of with officers on the scene earlier than filming. Earlier than he retired final 12 months, Dym had extra civilian complaints than every other NYPD officer, together with 52 allegations of misconduct; as much as that time, town had paid out greater than $1.5 million to settle lawsuits during which he was named.

The NYPD’s refusal to permit filming will not be authorized. “It is sort of a fragile stability that is determined by the scenario,” Stephen Solomon, editor of NYU’s First Modification Watch, instructed Gothamist. “However a blanket restriction sometimes just isn’t per the First Modification.”