Phone conversations with law enforcement can be recorded without their consent

Appearances might not be as important as actual issues, though - I think it is okay to do it this way. Doctors in the UK sit on ethics boards looking at other doctors' behaviour.

I would think it would be good to say that not more than 50% can be ex-law enforcement though, to ensure a reasonable mixture.

I'm not sure I can support throwing out review boards because they look improprietous by conducting reviews. Seems a little backwards.

It is very common for a city/town to have at least one councilor on the police review board for their term, and while not perfect this is close to "elected". I already need to vote for school board trustees and a bunch of other positions I know/care nothing about, don't make me vote for all board compositions too.

As someone who was a reddit junkie who got guilty pleasured by youtube into watching tons of police bodycam videos...

People generally have no idea what it like to be a cop and what is and isn't legal. For instance, just about every single person who resists arrest now also yells that they cannot breath. Then the cops ask if they need medical, which of course they say yes, simply to make things more difficult for the police (and waste taxpayer money to have an ambulance come out).

In a vacuum it looks bad. But in the context of every single criminal doing the same extreme heel dragging, you start to see what is going on.

Is the tradeoff with the potential positive influence worth it? Are there ways to mitigate the potential negatives?

OK, that's quite clear. The article was less so.

That doesn't mean they have to be on the board. You can easily bring cops in when needed.

The experience from Oakland/SF is that the review boards gets controlled by anti police activist who make policing near impossible.

I get your point, but I think some kind of civil rights lawyer would be better than some beaten up criminal.

In Louisiana, the literal parish (county) level government used to be called "police jury" (and still is in some more rural parishes)

people on the citizen review board don't know what it means to police

If regular people are hearing what an officer is doing and need to be explained by a former cop, "yeah, <horrific behavior> is just part of the job" then what is even the point of having a citizen review? Isn't that the very class of behavior the board exists to stop?

There was no water break ban as such. And no one in Texas will forbid employees from drinking water in the scorching heat unless it is to make a political point.

That seems about as realistic as immediate dismissal from your job if you forget to unmute yourself on zoom.

ALL enforcement of laws in normal situations rely on officers/departments personal reading of a situation.

The exceptions are Grand Juries and indictments.

This assumes sane body camera policies are in place, like immediate dismissal if the camera/mic is turned off/covered, during any part up to or during an arrest.

I think every single copy would be fired because of this. I've yet to see any body cam footage during an arrest where the camera wasn't covered up at some point. And since you are the one proposing clarity and specifics here, you've just demonstrated by having these specifics in place don't always help.

After all, can you, with 100% accuracy, measure with just your eyes 25.1 feet? What's the cop going to do? Break out the measuring tape? Where do they measure from? Also, how do they prove the intent part. After all, that's subjective. If I'm recording but my intent is not to do anything that is listed in the law, it doesn't apply to me.

So, lots of lack of clarity in between lots of bad specifics.

This assumes sane body camera policies are in place, like immediate dismissal if the camera/mic is turned off/covered, during any part up to or during an arrest.

Assuming fantasies is rarely helpful when judging the effects of legislation.

This isn't an either/or scenario.

Right, it's already illegal to interfere with police.

we can all agree that someone loudly "recording" shoulder to shoulder with police officer disrupts their ability to resolve situations

Sure. We can also agree that throwing rotting sea slugs at anyone eating a hamburger is disagreeable. But absent evidence of it (a) happening and (b) going un(der)punished, any legislation to ban it is performative.

Performative legislation isn't bad per se. Ideally, it would have no effect. But given almost any increase in legal surface area brings rise to unintended consequences, the result is a net negative.

are disingenuous protesters who abuse recording excuses to disrupt law enforcement

Again, do you have examples of people recording police disrupting law enforcement where those recording weren't punished (sufficiently)?

Both of these things are wrong

If one is occuring more frequently, and moreover going more-frequently unpunished, then tipping the scale further in that direction is counterproductive.

If police abuse is running rampant while nobody can find unpunished instances of disruptive recording of the police, then these rules are more likely to further the abuse than facilitate legitimate law enforcement. (To say nothing of the wasted political capital, given the myriad of problems Florida has to deal with.)

Your personal take is that of someone who hasn't been bullied or abused by officers of the law, I'm assuming. Consider that some people have, and they may want police accountability, with no desire to sow chaos.

As someone who works in emergency services, frankly, "so what?". If you can't tune that out as background noise, you're not going to be able to do your job effectively. Otherwise, what, you have police who can only do their job in ideal circumstances.

Like when I teach EMTs and paramedics, and we cover things like extricating patients from vehicles. "This is great. The vehicle is level, you're in an apparatus bay at a fire station, you have great lighting, no noise, it's not pouring rain..."

More often than not, I see police escalating situations with people of interest and bystanders, rather than the other way around.

What does that mean?

I thought you can only use deadly force if you fear for your life. A cop approaching you, or even physically grabbing you and moving you to a new location won't kill you.

Using deadly force against police officers in the middle of doing their duty is a recipe for being beaten and then murdered, even if you were technically within your legal rights to do so.

No, you must retreat to your designated free speech zone.

As Breonna Taylor's boyfriend Kenneth Walker can tell you, it is not wise to do so.

That's the usual phrasing of trespass laws, and remain here means "remain after approaching". I can't see any judge siding with a cop following someone and requiring him to stay 25 feet away.

The remainder of 33 is really important. If the first responder needs to move in the direction of the videographer in order to perform their duty, then the videogrpaher should move.and give them space. If the movement is not necessary, then they would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the videographer was remaining in place to harass the responder or otherwise was impeding to their duty.

It is not a crime to be within 25 feet of the first reaponder, it is only a crime if all elements of the statute are met.

Not completely. It also means to disband something that currently exists, then recreate it, effectively reestablishing the board. You are paying attention to only one possible reading, which is the one not consistent with the truth. Citizen review boards exist in Florida. These currently functioning boards will have their power stripped immediately and members will be replaced with captive appointees. This is not creating citizen review boards, this is destroying them

Congress gets "reestablished" every two years. The English government gets "reestablished" every year when the Prime Minister asks to form a government in the Monarch's name.

So it could just mean when the current term is up and the new appointees are sworn in.

Florida’s website is a bit confusing to navigate, but I think I found the actual text of the law.

https://myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?B...

I think it is under bill text/enrolled.

I don’t find the word re-established in there. So, I think that’s just the wording that the newspaper picked. Regardless of any difference between establish or re-establish, it doesn’t really make sense to put too much weight on subtle implications of the newspaper’s wording.

Re-established in this case means, dissolve the existing boards and reconstitute them with the appointees. Review boards already exist in Florida.

Well, regardless of what it sounds like, they do exist. The wannabe autocrat is weakening them.

No, it means that the boards have their power stripped until their membership is replaced by the new, captive appointees that can be relied on to not be independent of the agency they are notionally overseeing, at which point their powers are restored.

That's what “required to be re-established” means.

No. My city has an independent citizen review board. This law means "yours will be dissolved and we will make anew one appointed by cops."

You can beat the wrap, but you can't beat the ride.

Well, unless you're poor, then likely you can't beat either.

Yeah there's definitely all the usual problems of having to fight an unlawful arrest. Its expensive, or you likely get poor representation from a court appointed lawyer, and it can take a ton of time that most people don't have to spare.

Unfortunately its up to jurors in these situations. If we fundamentally disagree with a law as written and can't get representatives to throw it out, just toss out the case. Jurors aren't legally bound to decide whether the facts as presented meet the law as written. Jurors are empowered with deciding whether a peer should be punished. In the case of a law that you disagree with for whatever reason, you are well within your rights to go not guilty and avoid punishing a peer for something you don't think is worth punishment.

Oh thanks, yeah that clarification is an important one!

The or remain addition ruins it, though I also don't see that holding up in court with any reasonable jury. In that scenario, if I start more than 25 feet away and stand my ground if a cop approaches me only with the intent of making me move or stop filming, I've truly done nothing wrong and the cop is intending to infringe on my rights.

Will a judge or DA see if this way? Almost certainly not. But if I were on the jury I'd throw that shit out, I don't really care what the law says as written if its a law I don't think is constitutional or reasonable. Juries are there, in part, to act as a check on the legal system.

Their line helpfully tells you in advance "this call may be recorded." Great! Looks like permission to me! Record I shall! If they object to the call's being recorded, they ought to take that up with whomever controls their phone lines.

If you're calling a corporation (or they called you) then it's the corporation that's the legal entity being recorded... Not the person on the other end of the phone.

But the company has said that the call may be recorded.

Just say it while you are on hold. They don't make any effort to ensure you hear their notification, so why should you make any effort to ensure that they hear yours?

If they announce it then you don't have to.

I don't think Google Fi is a VoIP service? At least, not any more one than any other cellular provider in these days where "WiFi Calling" is widespread.

Last I knew, they used T-Mobile for their cellular connection.

The first, iirc, police force was in Glasgow in 1800

They were a thing in Imperial Rome [1]. I believe they got the idea from the Egyptians, who seem to have invented civil policing (or the Chinese, depending on how you categorise police).

Otherwise, what we today consider police work would have been handled by an army.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigiles#Police_force

Yeah, like that’s a preferable system. Basically, the powers of a police officer on steroids.

Also, IIRC, constables in England were not paid in money, they were paid in opportunities to dispense violence (which many men find rewarding for its own sake) without incurring legal liability and in opportunities to stick it to their enemies as long as the enemies were sufficiently low in rank.

"legal liability": if you beat someone up in Medieval Europe, the big danger is not the authorities' sentencing you to jail, it was getting sued by your victim.

England before 1780 or so was organized for the benefit of the artistocracy (barons and higher ranks). You can see just from the fact that constables were not paid a salary that they probably were a net harm (more of a menace than a help) to the common person, but they were a net benefit to the aristocracy because they generally kept commerce humming along at an faster rate than it would have without the constables and because any constable that messed with an aristocrat would be harshly punished. (The aristocrats specialized in military violence, but it was tedious for them to moderate disputes between commoners, so they farmed some of that work out the the constables, who of course were commoners.) When historians say the world's first police force started in England in 1810 or whatever year it was, they mean the first force with a monopoly on violence that was a net benefit to the every class of society including the commoners.

And you don't think self-organizing communities built around their well-being will ever decide to do anything against those that go against its well-being? What if they end up making a defacto police force anyways, what then?

Also an anarchist, though not the kind you probably are ("anarcho capitalist" vs "anarcho space communist"). Either way, I don't have a rainbow happy view of human nature, and as such I don't think you can get away from having bad guys that require some sort of police or enforcement.

What exactly is the difference between your "self organizing communities" and the cities and towns we have today? Nobody is forcing you to live in a city, you are free to move to any other city in the country.

Also an anarchist! Totally agree. Oh how I dream of it!

It's been very frustrating watching so much police violence, corruption, etc. being openly reported internationally and nothing changing, at all. In Australia (and from what I've heard of the US) there's not much of an effort to try and suppress news of or spin better PR over the horrific stories of police brutality and corruption any more. Like they're not even bothering to keep up pretence and plausible deniability any more. It feels like we're unfortunately a long way from re-evaluating the police even very strictly within the current political frameworks we have. Gotta try to stay optimistic and active, though!

I don't understand how it's a 'very weird take' on its meaning. Is it any weirder than people finding comfort in it?

It's just hilarious (and confusing) to me that it's just as easily a condemnation rather than praise; no leaps of logic required. At all. Other such slogans are usually a bit more obtuse and harder to challenge than 'yeah, that is exactly correct, and it horrifies me', hence the confusion. I suppose it is a very effective thought terminating cliche.

Several countries had armies enforce legal codes.

We do that now. The division of the army responsible for that is called "the police".

Great post, but I feel an aside on the England situation is in order. Prior to police forces, for anything too big for the Shire Reeves or Justices of the Peace to handle, the solution was "send in the army". This came to head at the Massacre of St Peter's Field (often called the "Peterloo Massacre", for example on its wiki page) where several hundred protesting workers were killed in a cavalry charge in 1819.

The massacre caused such public outrage that, among other things, London set up the Metropolitan Police (a.k.a. "the met") 10 years later. They were deliberately designed to be a non-militarised force: they wore visible uniforms, but they were black instead of the army's red; they carried truncheons instead of swords or firearms (this is also why most police in the UK to this day do not carry firearms); they were deliberately "civilian" not "paramilitary"; and they were "answerable to the public" in the words of Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel (under whom the force was set up). The preventative instead of reactionary nature of policing definitely fits into this context too.

I’m imagining the alternative is going to be some kind of AI powered robo cops. Not sure I like that idea any more than the current one.

I want my government to follow a different ruleset than I have to

That's the definition of tyranny and authoritarianism. The same rules that apply to them should apply to us. To suggest otherwise is to accept there are special classes of people who are more deserving of freedoms than common men. The government people are just fallible, corruptible men. They are not a superior class of people who have a unique capacity for the lawful application of violence. They're just humans like us. They deserve to have exactly the same freedoms we ourselves enjoy, no more and no less.

I'll go out on a limb and say that not many people know what SovCit means and therefore it wouldn't be a typical discrediting / slandering title. Are cops liars? Absolutely. I think this wouldn't be an effective lie.