Nineteen cops went back to school to learn about a new official New Haven policy: Citizens should no longer get arrested for using their cameras to record police actions in public.
The police Thursday released the new policy, General Order 311.
“It is the policy of the New Haven Department of Police Service to permit video recording of police activity as long as such recording does not interfere with ongoing police activity or jeopardize the safety of the general public or the police,” the order reads. “The video recording of police activity in and of itself does not constitute a crime, offense, or violation. If a person video recording police activity is arrested, the officer must articulate clearly the factual basis for any arrest in his or her case and arrest reports.”
Read the new general order here.
Police Chief Frank Limon drew up the policy after the Independent reported on several cases of cops arresting or threatening to arrest citizens for using camera phones from a distance as cops arrested troublemakers in the downtown nightclub district. In one case then-Assistant Chief ordered a citizen arrested and his videos erased; Limon released a separate internal affairs report Thursday concluding the Melendez violated department rules.
Meanwhile, Limon’s team has started making sure beat cops know about the new policy.
Assistant Chief Tobin Hensgen led a session about the new policy during training Thursday afternoon at the police academy on Sherman Parkway. (Click on the play arrow at the top of the story for a sample.)
Paul Bass Photo
Nineteen officers were there as part of a week-long annual in-service training program. Before and after the session with Hensgen they were being brought up to speed on motor vehicle stop policy.
Hensgen presented a PowerPoint and a video from the Cato Institute about the new omnipresence of cameras in public life and the need of officers to recognize people’s rights to use them. Hensgen noted that officers can order a camera put away or confiscated if the user is “interfering” with an arrest — but that the mere use of the camera can’t constitute “interference.”
Or, as a training bulletin he distributed put it, “Simply recording an incident as it transpires on a public way is not sufficient grounds to make an arrest.”
“If a citizen wants to exercise his First Amendment rights and photograph you while you’re in a squad car and uniform or on detail while you’re performing your duties, as long as they’re legal, you have no expectation of privacy,” Hensgen said.
Hensgen also introduced the class to a law proposed by New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney to give citizens a new basis on which to sue cops who violate their right to use cameras.
Kristen Fitzgerald, a motorcycle cop present at the session, said afterward that she found it helpful. “I never had a problem” with public using cameras, she said, and it’s helpful to have a clear policy in place. (She was the officer ordered by Melendez last fall to arrest a citizen who had used his iPhone to photograph an arrest. The internal affairs report found no wrongdoing on her part.)
(Click here to watch and read about some “greatest hits” videos of New Haven cops on the job.)
Hensgen noted that cameras can work in cops’ favor — by providing evidence of what citizens do wrong when they’re getting arrested.
After the session an officer asked him if cops have the right to take people’s cameras as evidence in those instances.
The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from having their cameras seized on the spot, Hensgen said. He suggested the officer ask the citizen photographer for permission to use the video. If the citizen refuses, the officer can take his or her contact information, then seek a warrant for the material.
Hensgen showed this video from an incident last fall to illustrate how sometimes police are unfairly portrayed by selective editing. In this instance — involving an arrest of a drunken brawler at Toad’s — a bouncer, not a cop, was ordering the arrestee’s friend not to use his camera; and the officer was indeed being interfered with as he tried to handle the case.
The class was not shown this video, of an officer on Crown Street grabbing a camera out of a citizen’s hand last Sept. 10. The officer threatened to include the photographer in a beating. “You don’t take pictures of us,” he declared. That incident remains under internal investigation.