For the First Time, Federal Court Explicitly Establishes Filming Cops as a Right
Jack Burns
TheFreeThoughtProject.com
February 28, 2017
here’s been an ongoing battle between police and the citizenry over who has the right to film in public. Disputes between police and the public have led to camera’s being confiscated by police, and citizens being manhandled, beaten, and arrested. Now, it seems, the courts are weighing in, and not on the side of police.
The court’s opinion comes from a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Phillip Turner vs. Driver, Grinald, and Dyess (2017). The plaintiffs are all officers from Ft. Worth, Texas. According to court documents, “Plaintiff-Appellant Phillip Turner was video recording a Fort Worth police station from a public sidewalk across the street when Defendants- Appellees Officers Grinalds and Dyess approached him and asked him for identification. Turner refused to identify himself, and the officers ultimately handcuffed him and placed him in the back of a patrol car.”
The Rest…HERE