Arizona makes it illegal for bystanders to record cops at close range

Most insane part of this article was the below quote from the bill sponsor:<p>&quot;Kavanagh said it is important to leave this buffer for police to protect law enforcement from being assaulted by unruly bystanders. He said “there’s no reason” to come closer and predicted tragic outcomes for those who do, saying, “Such an approach is unreasonable, unnecessary, and unsafe, and should be made illegal.&quot;<p>He is just happily excusing cops visiting &quot;tragic outcomes&quot; on people who get closer than 8 feet to cops. The lengths that people will go to too justify police just killing people is insane. How about we don&#x27;t allow police to just wantonly murder or beat whoever they want?<p>This same guy is an ex cop and &quot;sponsored legislation that would prohibit oversight boards of police departments unless those boards were two-thirds sworn police officers&quot; After the 2020 election he also said: &quot;&quot;Everybody shouldn’t be voting...Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.&quot;<p>Seems like a really great guy that very much deserves to be in power &#x2F;s<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;John_Kavanagh_(Arizona_politician)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;John_Kavanagh_(Arizona_politic...</a>

Seems like a great way to prevent recordings by having one officer move towards onlookers and force them an arbitrary distance away

If I was cop, I would certainly want to know that there is a physical boundary in law that bystanders cannot cross. For my own safety, and for theirs. I see nothing unreasonable about not allowing people to cross this boundary. The law does not prevent recording. It says you cannot record closer than 8ft. Why would somebody need to get closer than 8ft to an officer doing their job, when you have no involvement in the situation at hand? Adding more people to the situation simply increases the stress of all involved.

&gt; The new Arizona law requires any bystanders recording police activity in the state to stand at a minimum of 8 feet away from the action. If bystanders move closer after police have warned them to back off, they risk being charged with a misdemeanor and incurring fines of up to $500, jail time of up to 30 days, or probation of up to a year<p>What exactly is wrong with this? Previously, couldn&#x27;t cops just claim you were interfering regardless of distance or number of warnings?

8ft is 2.4m, it&#x27;s not that long, it&#x27;s the lenght of a small car. With current modern resolutions and zooms, you can even read the name of cops on their plaque from that distance.<p>I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s going to prevent much recording. In fact, the recording are probably be of much more quality: instead of close ups that doesn&#x27;t show much actions, we will see the a bigger context. Most useful videos are from at least 8 ft away.<p>I understand the author of the law doesn&#x27;t have a great background in the US and cops have terrible reputation in this country. So it&#x27;s probable there is an abuse path I don&#x27;t see here.<p>But if I haven&#x27;t been given that context, the law would not have seen excessive: in a law enforcement context, you don&#x27;t want every body to park too close to the hot spot. Also, there is this annoying tendency of people with a camera to put it in your face, or to not mind their surrounding.<p>Given an arrest can be tensed, 8ft sound like it make sense. What am I missing, as a French person not understanding all the weird american social details ?

I&#x27;m sure this state rep is a scumbag in general and all that, but what the law says is:<p>* bystanders can&#x27;t record within 8 ft of the police questioning a suspect, arresting someone, or dealing with a mental health case.<p>* the person police are interacting with is exempt and can record unless that interfere with the police operations. I.e. no guarantee you can hold your phone while handcuffed.<p>* the driver and passengers of a car pulled over are also explicitly exempt.<p>I think the opposition to this is a knee jerk over reaction comes across as just ... not rooted in reality.<p>If you insist on getting up in arms about Arizona&#x27;s contempt for the first amendment, I encourage you to go burn a flag and dare them to arrest you for violating <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.azleg.gov&#x2F;ars&#x2F;13&#x2F;03703.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.azleg.gov&#x2F;ars&#x2F;13&#x2F;03703.htm</a>

Top 25 Most Dangerous Professions (Fatal Injury Rate per 100,000 Workers)<p>1 Logging workers (70)<p>2 Aircraft pilots and flight engineers (60)<p>3 Roofers (50)<p>4 Construction helpers (40)<p>5 Crossing guards (38)<p>6 Garbage collectors (31)<p>7 Farming supervisors (29)<p>8 Delivery drivers (28)<p>9 Ironworkers (27)<p>10 Farmers (25)<p>11 Cement masons (22)<p>12 Agricultural workers (21)<p>13 Construction supervisors (20)<p>14 Highway maintenance workers (19)<p>15 Grounds maintenance workers (18)<p>16 Mining machine operators (18)<p>17 Supervisors of mechanics (16)<p>18 Power lineworkers (15)<p>19 Construction workers (14)<p>20 Construction equipment operators (14)<p>21 Maintenance workers (13)<p>22 Heavy vehicle mechanics (13)<p>23 Crane operators (13)<p>24 Landscaping supervisors (12)<p>25 Police officers (12)<p>For what it&#x27;s worth, most of us have little education on the subject of policing. We&#x27;re taught a lot about how a biological cell operates, how to structure English grammar, and who fought the War of 1812, but absolutely nothing about how police function, when policing was invented, by whom, where, or to what end[0]. We go through our adult lives believing about police what we absorbed from children&#x27;s cartoons and, later, TV procedurals or action movies. This leaves us with an impression of the field that is naive, if not outright fantasy.<p>0. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.versobooks.com&#x2F;books&#x2F;3906-the-end-of-policing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.versobooks.com&#x2F;books&#x2F;3906-the-end-of-policing</a>

The slippery slope keeps getting steeper and steeper... they continue to pass new laws to make the person recording a criminal act into a criminal, but do nothing against the person committing the criminal act in the first place that is on film!<p>See Ag-Gag laws: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ag-gag" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Ag-gag</a>

The Ars headline is one of the few for this story that I&#x27;ve seen that has specified &quot;for bystanders&quot; vs making it sound like it was also illegal for the person involved (e.g. someone pulled over in a car or someone else in the car with them) to record.<p>I probably wouldn&#x27;t support the law - especially if the &quot;cop walks towards someone recording&quot; bit counts as &quot;being within 8 feet of the activity&quot; - but let&#x27;s report things as written.

I&#x27;m not American so maybe there&#x27;s some Very Cool Constitutional Reason this isn&#x27;t challenged, but is this something people can class action the state over? Seems like the kind of thing that would get steamrolled in court

Previous discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32025858" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32025858</a>

The notion of policing without consent feels so alien to me. As a UK citizen I used to take this for granted, but wonder if the social contract in the UK will be broken in favour of the US in the future. I hope not. I feel for the people of Arizona.

I hope that the strikedown of Miranda Rights will not be as much of a shock to people as Roe was. They are going to have to back-edit thousands of episodes of Law and Order.

8ft should be the required distance for everything unless the person is involved.<p>Police doing an arrest have every reasonable reason to ask people to &#x27;stand back a bit&#x27; and 8ft seems about right.<p>The moment there is some kind of interaction of consequence, the &#x27;spot&#x27; becomes an issue of civic concern, conflict, violence etc.. Cops may have to draw weapons, fight, god knows what in order to do their jobs.<p>You can watch&#x2F;film or whatever from 8ft.

I think it fair to say the US cops are rather paranoid and some prone to roid rage, so this is sensible, last thing you want is to be on your hands and knees dealing with a suspect whilst worrying about members of the public who might be to close to the action for their citizen policing media content.<p>Most if not all of the camera footage of George Floyd being murdered was taken from over 8ft away!

I was held at gunpoint after getting too close with my camera (which wasn&#x27;t that close actually, much more than 8 feet, more like 30-50) while recording an arrest in Mesa, AZ. I was the one who actually called the cops on the dudes that were threatening a guy with a bat. Would prefer to leave it at that as it wasn&#x27;t a good experience.

What&#x27;s the policy on 8&#x27; selfie sticks?

This doesn&#x27;t seem that unreasonable. You don&#x27;t need to get closer than 8 feet to record police misconduct, and getting closer than 8 feet to an active arrest is definitely pretty goddamn close. The 8 foot perimeter seems perfectly reasonable.

It seems like a reasonable law.

So, what does &quot;close&quot; mean? 1000 ft with a telescope?<p>I can understand not interfering with the immediate official duties, but this seems like it will be overturned on 1a grounds.

8 feet seems reasonable... I don&#x27;t think you&#x27;d be able to capture much action any closer to be honest.<p>Then again, laws like this are a slippery slope.

I don&#x27;t know what the answer is here but I have sympathy with police trying to do their job with hostile bystanders recording their every move and uploading to to YouTube in edited contextless hatchet jobs intended to ridicule or undermine.<p>Of course there are bad cops where video has provided useful evidence of their behaviour but for ordinary professional police officers it must add a very unpleasant dimension to already stressful situations.<p>I don&#x27;t know the law at all but I would hope that any liberal enabling of filming is constrained by dissemination that identifies individuals without very good reason.

I was going to reflect on how a gun that resembled an iphone might affect this conversation. I did a quick search and saw that they are easily available. So now as a Police Officer when someone takes a phone out of there pocket you have to immediately assess the risk. Am I going to be shot or recorded? Being in law enforcement is getting more dangerous by the day. Damn.