Detained, Harassed, and Stalked for "My Safety"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hsp3viERts
It was a lovely day for a walk and good weather for photography. However I didn't expect to be getting this much exercise. The Forest Park Police Department utterly failed this audit AND made me fear for my safety! I don't think much else needs to be said. I will be following up with getting the name and badge number of the female who illegally detained me, and I'll be issuing a complaint. Stay tuned!
Thank you, have a nice day . . .
My aim is to gauge law enforcement response to lawful citizen activity in order to verify the condition of the social contract that exists between citizenry and government. Civil rights are frequently trampled on by law enforcement and it's our collective responsibility to make it known to police that any and all abuse of their authority will not be tolerated in a free society.
PHOTOGRAPHY IS FREE SPEECH!
"With the right to free speech expanding in all directions, it remains a partial, a qualified, right." ... "The act of making an audio or audiovisual recording is necessarily included within the First Amendment's guarantee of speech and press rights as a corollary of the right to disseminate the resulting recording" - ACLU v. Alvarez (2012)
FILM PUBLIC OFFICIALS!
"[T]he First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and the self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting
the stock of information from which members of the public may draw." ... "Freedom of speech and the other freedoms encompassed by the First Amendment always have been viewed as fundamental components of the liberty safeguarded by the Due Process Clause" - SCOTUS, First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978)
FILM THE POLICE!
"A citizen's right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment" - Gilk v. Cunniffe (2011)
PHOTOGRAPHY IS NOT A CRIME!
The U.S. Court of Appeals has held that "roughly ten feet" is a "comfortable remove" for anyone to film police as long as photographers do not "molest [police] in any way". “Such peaceful recording of an arrest in a public space that does not interfere with the police officers’ performance of their duties is not reasonably subject to limitation.” Gilk v. Cunniffe (2011)
YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO DUE PROCESS
If you have not been arrested for a crime or are not being detained as a suspect of a crime, you do not have to engage in any conversation with the police.
In order for a police officer to obtain a warrant for your arrest he must have probable cause, or "a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent and cautious person's belief that certain facts are probably true".
In order for a police officer to momentarily detain you for questioning and frisk your outer garments for weapons, also known as a Terry stop, "the police officer must be able to point to specific and articulable facts which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrant the intrusion."
Most states do not have so-called Stop and Identify laws, and a person is not required to provide identification to the police unless arrested. In Illinois, "there is no corresponding duty in the Criminal Code of 1961 for a suspect to identify himself or herself" - People v. Fernandez (2011)
