Record On-Duty Police Officers



    The first amendment allows people many things. Some of the things that it allows for is our freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Those two items are very important when it comes to the recording of police officers. In last August a man named Levi Frasier pulled out his tablet and started recording police officers in Denver. It can be seen in the video that the officers are using excessive force when they punch a man in the face and then trip a pregnant lady which happens to be Levi’s girlfriend. The Denver police officers proceeded to violate Levi’s 1st Amendment in an attempt to confiscate his tablet and delete the video. The police failed to delete the video and Larry then was able to share the video to the local news station and all over social media. This is just one small example, police committing unlawful actions and infringing on people's rights is nothing new but now there is a way to publicize such examples. This is not to say that police as a whole are bad. This is just one of the many ways to acknowledge the problem and keep them in check as well as thread out all officers unfit for their duty.
    After reading this article I was personally very surprised at how the police officers thought they can just get away with trying to prevent Levi from recording. Also what I just about couldn't believe was that they actually deleted the video, that Levi was able to retrieve. When it comes to media coverage around this topic in general, we have definitely seen a spike in coverage. Part of this has to do with the modern-day world we live in with everyone owning a smartphone with a camera capability. This translates into everyday people, at any moment, becoming a source for news/journalism. Yet crazy enough after all this, I was somehow not aware of this specific instance. You can also tell from news coverage that it was not a heavily publicized event. part of that shows how much conflict new sources have to choose from (a lot). At the end of the day, our founding fathers had foreseen such possible issues and from this point on through this technology access, things can only get better, especially through awareness.

Source:
https://kdvr.com/2014/12/11/witness-who-shot-video-of-police-punching-suspect-arrested-sent-to-jail/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/05/eff-tenth-circuit-first-amendment-protects-right-record-police

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