To Protect and to Serve ... whom?

No First Amendment Right To Film Police - Law Officer:
(April 97, 2016)

 Lower federal courts have generally said that the First Amendment protects a right to record and photograph law enforcement in public view. Some restrictions may be constitutional, but simply...

... the author continues:

But that may have changed last Friday in the case, Fields v. City of Philadelphia. That case takes a different, more narrow approach.  There is no constitutional right to video-record police, the court says, when the act of recording is unaccompanied by “challenge or criticism” of the police conduct. 

REFERENCES:

• Fields v. City of Philadelphia
• Glik v. Cunniffe

I'm as staunch a supporter of Law Enforcement Officers as anyone in this room, and I completely understand the stated argument that photographing LEOs during the performance of their duty may seem a threat to officers because their face (and often their name) may be publicized to a degree with which they feel personally uncomfortable.


It's a tough job.   I couldn't do it!

But the men and women who have chosen the Law Enforcement profession have accepted that obligation; although sometimes it seems as if they are often castigated for their lapses, rarely lauded for their accomplishments, and for their devotion to duty.

There's that word again:

DUTY!

When LEOs are 'at work', they refer to it as 'duty'.

The word, in several contexts, is synonymous with 'obligation'.

A 'duty', or an 'obligation', cannot be fulfilled anonymously.   Which is why I'm disappointed when police object to being photographed while doing their duty ... as if there was something wrong with what they do.

Back in The Day, if 'they' didn't know who you were ... if you didn't have a duty to perform ... you were not a Servant of The People; you were just some anonymous bully who sometimes arrested another bully.

So, when did policemen become ashamed of doing their job?
There was a time when the local policeman was known by name.   "The Cop On The Block" was often a neighborhood figure ... a foot patrolman, who had a pistol, a billy-club night stick, a whistle, and a call-box key.  (I'm channeling  Sean Connery in "The Untouchables" here.)

Ness: [looking at a gold chain Malone is holding] What is that?Malone: Ah, I’m among the heathen. That is my call box key, and that… is my St. Jude medallion.Ness: Saint who?George Stone: Santo Jude. The patron saint of lost causes.Malone: And policemen.Ness: Well, which are we, gentlemen – policemen, or lost causes?

... and if we have this day moved beyond the cop on the block, then our society is much the poorer for it!