Guardians: Please Stop Falling For These!

Every time I ask myself how many more times police officers will fall victim to First Amendment video vigilantes, the answer is: lots more!

Have our chiefs and sheriffs, unions and training bureaus seen these? Certainly our younger officers who consume vast quantities of social media have seen these videos and warned their shift mates!

I guess not!

We know most police/public contacts not involving an arrest are brutally boring, and the embarrassing encounters posted daily on YouTube are hand-picked for drama, but there are still too many.

The script is as repetitive as is is effective: the auditors enter or approach a public facility or loiter near a business, pointing cameras at everything and practically begging for someone to initiate contact with them. Once officers arrive they don’t seem to understand taking video from a public place is legal, or seem to feel they have to engage with these auditors and provide some sort of heavy-handed admonishment. The results are oftentimes unfortunate or worse case, disastrous.

As a profession we can do much better of warning each other of these lose-lose scenarios, and even better, promoting some easy best practices to avoid becoming a YouTube legend for the wrong reasons.