Ramsey Orta, who filmed Eric Garner’s confrontation with cops. Joe Marino/New York Daily News
Let no one forget: If not for the fact that a bystander with a camera phone captured Eric Garner’s confrontation with cops — and that the video then found its way to the Daily News — Garner’s death might have ended up like most all of the other approximately 1,000 complaints of chokeholds filed at the Civilian Complaint Review Board over the last five years: unsubstantiated allegations of police abuse.
Instead, the officer who placed Garner in an apparent chokehold had his gun taken away and was placed on modified duty; another police officer was placed on desk duty, and four paramedics and EMTs were placed on modified duty. Moreover, the CCRB is revisiting those 1,000 “unsubstantiated” chokehold complaints, and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has pledged to overhaul police training.
It all happened because we could see, with our own eyes, a deeply disturbing, violent encounter between cops and an unarmed man.
Yet, amazingly, the constitutional right of the bystander who recorded Garner’s death to have done so is not acknowledged in New York. In fact, the NYPD routinely arrests and threatens to arrest people who are filming them but not interfering with police activity.
They did it to me. This unconstitutional practice needs to stop. That’s why, last week, I filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to confirm and enshrine this right to film or record the police.
Last September, I was arrested for attempting to record EMS personnel interacting with a homeless woman on the Upper West Side and the police officers who were nearby. I was standing about 30 feet away from the EMS personnel and about 10 feet away from the police, and I wasn’t interfering with police activity — but that didn’t matter to the officer who arrested me.
I was kept in custody for about 25 hours. During these hours, when they were transporting me between buildings, my ankles were in shackles and my hands were cuffed in a position that, due to breast cancer surgery, caused me to experience severe muscle spasms. Despite my pleas, the officers would not cuff me in an alternative, less painful position.
Unfortunately, my arrest is not unique. I know of many other instances in which police arrested or threatened to arrest camera-wielding onlookers, ordered them to stop filming or attempted to delete the videos.
Last February at the Crown Heights-Utica Ave. stop in Brooklyn, Shawn Thomas was arrested and then beaten simply for filming the cops with his small camera. Realizing they had screwed up, the cops tried to destroy Thomas’ two videos while he was in police custody. Luckily, Thomas recovered the videos and posted them online. Recently, the charges against him were dismissed.
My complaint describes six other instances in which the cops arrested or otherwise prevented onlookers from exercising their right to film them. And those are surely just the tip of the iceberg.
A lawyer for the city told the New York Times that “bystanders are allowed to film police officers as long as they’re not interfering with the officers’ duties and/or police operations.” But cops are clearly not following this policy, and so far it has been difficult to bring the NYPD and its misbehaving officers to justice.
In other states, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Florida, courts have explicitly recognized that citizens have a First Amendment right to record police officers.
Those rulings do not cover New York. In filing the lawsuit, I hope to officially establish a constitutional right to record police — so that New Yorkers don’t need to rely on a policy that can be easily changed. I also hope to require the NYPD to train its police force to respect bystanders with cameras — and to make it easier to sue the police when they abuse their authority.
The video of Eric Garner’s death perfectly illustrates why we need a constitutional right to record police officers.
We need it desperately.
Goodman, a retired legal secretary, lives on the Upper West Side.