The Supreme Court chose not to take on a pivotal case to protect your right to record police, leaving six states with fewer constitutional rights.
By USA TODAY
The Supreme Court had an opportunity this week to protect your right to record the misbehavior of rogue police officers. Instead, the court looked the other way while cops who sought to seize such a recording are shielded from accountability. So much for First Amendment protections.
By declining to hear a case from a federal appellate court, the Supreme Court let stand a dangerous ruling granting qualified immunity to Denver police officers accused of snatching a computer tablet from a man who had used it to record them punching a suspect in the face and grabbing his pregnant girlfriend, causing her to fall to the ground.
In recent years, such recordings have been vital to a national movement against racial injustice and excessive police force. In a few cases, the recordings have been a key to holding police accountable for a person’s brutal death.
Take, for example, the brave bystanders who recorded Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes while Floyd begged for his life. Without their videos, Chauvin might never have been tried and convicted of Floyd’s murder. Nor would there have been nationwide protests that helped launch police reform efforts across the country.
Recent Posts
Is The Iran Nuclear Deal Dead Forever?
April 25, 2024
Take Action Now Trump blew up the deal — why hasn’t Biden taken the opportunity to fix it? by Bob Dreyfuss, Tom Dispatch One, erratic and…
Big Oil Wants To Limit Safety Checks On CO2 Pipelines
April 25, 2024
Take Action Now After a leak in Sulphur, Louisiana, experts and residents express grave concerns about the fossil fuel industry’s carbon capture…
Columbia, NYU, The New School…MIT, Tufts, Emerson… Berkeley, Chicago, Chapel Hill… Everywhere…
April 24, 2024
Take Action Now For decades, corporations have used taxpayer-funded fellowship opportunities to help them secure billion-dollar defense contracts.…
Is A General Strike In 2028 A Real Possibility?
April 24, 2024
Take Action Now The logistics of actually pulling this thing off. by Hamilton Nolan, How Things Work After winning a nationwide strike against the…