Bad cops, good cops, whatcha going to do, whatcha going to do when they're recording you?

Well, if police are smart, the last thing they want to do is make a bogus arrest that could cost their department or city some dough after a decision this week by the nation's highest court.

By refusing to hear an Illinois case, the Supreme Court let stand an appellate court ruling that concluded members of the public have a constitutional right to film, photograph or audiotape police officers doing their jobs in public. Similar rulings have been made by other courts.

Bottom line is, as long as you are not acting like a jerk and interfering with a police emergency or situation, you have the right to become Big Brother on Big Brother. And with an estimated 6 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world -- 331.6 million in the United States, the majority for devices with cameras -- the law enforcement community better get used to the public scrutiny.

"This is a landmark ruling for people who believe in free speech and public access," said Diop Kamau, executive director of the Police Complaint Center. The 20-year-old Tallahassee, Fla.-based group investigates police misconduct and excessive-force complaints on behalf of individuals.

"The police are the first line of government, but they do more to subvert the public's right to know than any other agency," added Kamau, a former Hawthorne, Calif., cop who left police work after he became disillusioned by instances of police misconduct that were either condoned or not dealt with by superiors.

"In my training of police departments, I instruct officers to expect and anticipate this (filming) and not to be surprised about it because the technology is out there and everybody has it."


Illinois' anti-eavesdropping law, which is likely to be significantly modified or quashed, bars citizens from recording police in public settings without their consent. Violating the law is a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Minnesota is one of 48 states that technically allow citizens to record police in public locations without their consent. According to the ACLU, which challenged the Illinois law, "Taking still and video photographs of things that are plainly visible in public spaces is a constitutional right -- and that includes the outside of federal buildings, as well as transportation facilities and police and other government officials carrying out their duties."

No one likes to be photographed or recorded without his or her consent or while working. But there is no longer any expectation of privacy in public for anyone. There are police surveillance and private cameras recording our every move on some streets and inside malls, shops and workplaces.

Yet it seems that YouTube and online watchdog sites are uploaded daily with videos of blatant police misconduct or intimidation against camera-clicking civilians and, in some cases, working journalists.

"It continues to be a serious problem," added Kamau, who regularly receives such complaints. He is looking into the case of a woman who was arrested and her cellphone confiscated while she was recorded police allegedly manhandling her husband during a traffic stop.


Other examples abound.

Mike Addison, an Illinois man, was arrested this summer for filming police who came to his mother's door in Robinson, Ill. He was charged with felonies that could carry up to 75 years in prison before media exposure and public pressure forced prosecutors to dismiss the charges.

In Boston, lawyer Simon Glik was arrested and his phone seized while he recorded police arresting another man. He won $170,000 in damages after a federal appeals court ruled he had a "constitutionally protected right to videotape police carrying out their duties in public." The city's police force now instructs its sworn officers not to arrest people openly recording them in public.

In Austin, Texas, a 34-year old Iraq War veteran is facing nearly 10 years in prison after he was arrested while filming a woman he believes was being mistreated by police at a gas station on New Year's Eve. 

Cops wrote reports maintaining that the veteran, Antonio Buehler, was interfering with the woman's arrest and spat at one officer when he was asked to move back. But recently, cellphone footage from a witness to the incident shows Buehler did not approach the police and was actually pinned against a truck by one officer.

Last year, Emily Good, of Rochester, N.Y., was arrested on trumped-up charges of obstructing justice after she recorded police searching a man's vehicle from her front yard. The charges were dropped a month later, though a civil suit is pending.

In 2008, Sean and Erik Ibarra, two brothers in Houston, received a $1.7 million settlement after an incident in 2002. They were arrested while filming Harris County sheriff's deputies conducting a drug raid next to their residence. One brother had guns drawn on him and was told he would be shot if he did not drop the camera.


Chuck Samuelson, executive director of the Minnesota ACLU, says most cops here are or should be aware of Minnesota's public-recording law, which allows just one-party consent. Still, he and I have seen some citizen shutterbugs agitate police into an arrest.

"There is bad behavior on both sides in some cases," Samuelson said.

Neither the Minneapolis nor St. Paul police department has a written policy "but every officer is told of the use of social media and that everyone out there has a camera and that there's a high probability that they will be photographed and recorded," said St. Paul police spokesman Paul Paulos. The clicking has benefits, he added, recalling a witness who caught a stabbing on his cellphone at the State Fair this year.

"We asked him for his cellphone," said Paulos. "There are a lot of times when people filming have helped police."



Reason magazine has put together common-sense rules on recording peace officers. To view them, go to:

The ACLU also has a "know your rights" site on recording in public: