Michigan Supreme Court ruled police officers can be videotaped when performing their public duties.
Rap concert organizers did not violate a police official’s privacy when they recorded the officer’s backstage comments and included them in a DVD, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled last week.
However, the 6-1 decision in Bowens v. Ary, Inc. was a narrow one limited to the event in question and stopped short of holding that police officers have no reasonable expectation of privacy when performing their public duties.
The March 18 ruling came as the latest step in a 10-year legal battle between rapper Dr. Dre, whose real name is Andre Young, and several Detroit officials, including City Councilman Gary Brown, who was the city’s police commander at the time of the July 2000 incident.
Brown sued Dr. Dre and the concert promoters, alleging that the recording violated the Michigan eavesdropping statute, which prohibits taping private conversations unless all parties to the conversation consent to the recording. Because Brown did not explicitly consent to the recording, the issue for the court was whether the conversation was a private one subject to the eavesdropping statute’s all-party consent requirement. Michigan courts define a private conversation as one in which a person reasonably expects to be free from casual or hostile intrusion or surveillance.
The Michigan ruling is among several recent legal challenges to citizen recordings of police conduct.
Last June, a federal judge in Boston denied several police officers’ motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit brought against them by a individual who alleged that the officers violated his civil rights when they arrested him for an alleged violation of Massachusetts’ wiretap statute. The man had visibly and openly used his cellular telephone to record the officers arresting a man on the Boston Common and allegedly using excessive force. In rejecting the officers’ argument that they were immune from liability because any First Amendment right that would bar arrest was not clearly established, the court in Glik v. Cunniffe stated that “in this jurisdiction, this First Amendment right publicly to record the activities of police officers on public business is clearly established.” The officers have appealed that ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston (1st Cir.).
Court ruling:
http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/docs/20110323_211541_michsupct.pdf
Link: http://www.rcfp.org/newsitems/index.php?i=11773