Court should affirm right to video police
This month, the Pulitzer Prize board gave a special citation to Darnella Frazier, who at age 17 thought to use her cellphone to shoot video of the scene she happened upon in Minneapolis — a police officer holding down a Black man with a knee to his neck.
The man, of course, was George Floyd, and his gasps of “I can’t breathe” to the unheeding cop, then-Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin, set off a seismic wave of protest, the tremors of which are still shaking our society and our politics.
The Pulitzer Board’s wisdom makes a Florida appeals court look even more lunk-headed than it did on May 5 when a three-judge panel of the court ruled, 2-1, against a Boynton Beach woman who was arrested for taking video of police officers while they were detaining her teenage son.
The incident took place in 2009. Sharron Tasha Ford, then 34, was summoned by Boynton Beach police to the then-Muvico Theater to pick up her son for allegedly sneaking in. She came with a video camera, thinking that would help protect him.
Officers repeatedly warned her to stop filming. She refused. They slapped cuffs on her, took her to jail and charged her with resisting arrest without violence and intercepting oral communications — that is, recording police officers without their consent — a third-degree felony.
Prosecutors declined to file charges against Ford or her son. The next year, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Ford sued to protect citizens’ right to turn on a camera when stopped by police. Her lawsuit against the city and the officers claimed false arrest and violations of her civil rights.
A federal court declined to take up the civil rights claims, and the Palm Beach County Circuit Court ruled against her on the false arrest. Now, so has Florida’s 4th District Court of Appeals, upholding the lower court’s ruling that police had the right to arrest Ford for “obstruction” of their duties. Moreover, the camera-wielding Ford had violated the officers’ privacy, the appeals court said.
The consequences would be awful if this panel’s judgment should stand. Police would have probable cause to arrest anyone who refuses their order to stop filming them.
The fact is, ordinary citizens have as much right as professional journalists to gather information about public officials. The First Amendment is not restricted to paid reporters and photographers.
The court ought to reconsider the case, this time with its full membership, and to come to the correct decision: that Ford had the right to video the cops, and that it’s out of bounds for police to arrest someone for merely refusing an order to stop filming in public.
No court should squelch this revolution that’s being televised.