Police update guidelines in light of court ruling

call,” Ms. Toler said, citing information from Assistant Chief Larry Scirotto. “And finally, as part of our procedural justice training that all officers have gone through, there is a section in that training regarding this topic.”

Mike Manko, spokesman for Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., said the county’s top prosecutor has been active on this issue.

“Approximately five years ago, District Attorney Zappala communicated to the Allegheny County Chiefs of Police Association, and the chiefs concurred, that police should allow citizens to record police activity provided the citizen isn’t interfering with police work or committing a crime while in the process of recording activity,” Mr. Manko said.

And Castle Shannon police Chief Kenneth Truver, who is head of the chiefs association, said, “The message from the 3rd Circuit is consistent with other case law which states that the public is generally allowed to videotape police when they are performing their actions in public.”

The 3rd Circuit case stemmed from two separate instances in Philadelphia. In the first, in 2012, a woman observing protesters at an anti-fracking event was recording the arrest of a protester when an officer pushed her against a pillar for one to three minutes and prevented her from recording the event. She was not arrested.

In the second, a student at Temple University in 2013 was cited for obstructing highways and other public passages for taking pictures of officers breaking up a house party across the street from him. His phone was confiscated from him, and he was detained.

Both the man and woman filed civil-rights claims against the city of Philadelphia and the officers, saying they violated their First Amendment rights to record public police activity.

The U.S. District Court judge presiding over the case dismissed those claims, finding that the plaintiffs’ act of recording was not sufficiently expressive as to be protected by the First Amendment.

The plaintiffs appealed to the 3rd Circuit. U.S. Circuit Judge Thomas L. Ambro wrote that the case wasn’t about the plaintiffs expressing themselves but about “whether they have a First Amendment right of access to information about how our public servants operate in public.”

“We ask much of our police,” the court wrote. “They can be our shelter from the storm. Yet officers are public officials carrying out public functions, and the First Amendment requires them to bear bystanders recording their actions. This is vital to promote the access that fosters free discussion of governmental actions, especially when that discussion benefits not only citizens but the officers themselves.”