Police as public officials
Police in general — and beat cops in particular — have long been hostile to being videotaped in the course of going about their jobs, and understandably so: they do dangerous work in which they have to confront actively hostile and dangerous people, and they don’t know who this is who is videotaping them or for what reason. I’d be jumpy about it, too.
OTOH, police in general — and beat cops in particular — should be trained explicitly on the occasional drawbacks to living in a free society, among which drawbacks is that citizens are free to photograph and videotape their public officials going about their public duties in public. That’s the way that particular cookie crumbles.
David Sirota has a particular good analysis of the situation. Read it here.
