
How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct - ingve
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/how-to-film-police-safely
======
danielfoster
It's great to see younger people get much-needed information on how to keep
the police accountable in a democratic society. I'm impressed with this
article's level of detail.

I was most impressed that the article emphasizes sticking to the facts. The
goal should always be good citizen journalism, not creating the next
WorldstarHipHop sensation.

~~~
ipython
Overall there have been a lot of great content from teen vogue especially over
the past five years, despite the connotations associated with the name.

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tmsh
Can I just say - the sources for good, actionable news are sometimes the
strangest of places these days.

I've started just reading:
[http://reddit.com/r/news](http://reddit.com/r/news) instead of newspaper
websites and it's nice - some affiliate tv news stations (the Minneapolis
newspapers...not so much) or student newspapers (I see you Crimson reporting
on the anthropology department) are getting it done and sometimes more
consistently than major news organizations.

Crowd-sourced news is coming of age.

~~~
xapata
Teen Vogue has been surprisingly adult in a time when adults ... aren't.

~~~
dmurray
It's also very reasonable with ads. For me the page has 3 or 4 ads that
interrupt the content, but don't masquerade as content, and they're all for
other brands owned by the same publisher (so hopefully not on a third-party ad
network). If all sites were like that I wouldn't feel the need for an
adblocker.

~~~
afturner
To be fair, ad blockers block more than just advertisements

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scarface74
Always share the video on social media. Don’t trust the cops or any part of
the justice system to do the right thing.

~~~
IanCal
Even if the victims don't want that?

~~~
x86_64Ubuntu
How often does that occur in police misconduct incidences?

~~~
jedimastert
It's usually because of fear of police retribution.

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drdeadringer
I recently found out about an app from the ACLU specifically for
recording//reporting (abusive) police activities.

The app itself, at least the California version, has a section regarding one's
rights and safety whilst filming police.

[https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-
po...](https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-police/aclu-
apps-record-police-conduct)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACLU_Mobile_Justice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACLU_Mobile_Justice)

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Sevaris
At this point people should be wearing helmets and goggles to protect their
heads and eyes from rubber bullets and canisters of tear gas. It's crazy that
the police can get away with severely injuring people. We've seen them
directly aiming and shooting at cameras at eye level, and aiming at peoples'
heads without any regard for safety.

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jasonv
I’ve wondered for years whether there has been an effort within police forces
to congregate at a national level and work out improvements in their own
processes, standards and relationship to issues seen with police practices.
Arresting people for filming police, for instance — is there a national body
that exists to align things across police forces? Are they all really acting
independently and without any coordination wrt improvements?

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aurizon
Do not wear a 'shoot me' sign. Live hidden video, (2 cams, one points front
and one points rear placed behind a plastic grommet it can see through - but
is not alone, or buttonhole - make sure cam can not be seen and can not be
blocked as you move, and blends in to clothing) stream to a friend-monitored
cloud(that the friend can view, but not erase in case the friend is also
grabbed). This will give you video your cloud keeps, even if you are frisked
flat on a wall. Google how to hide a cam with a grommet or other peephole.
Facing away you are nota threat. Learn the ways you hidden cam points and
stores video. Wide angle is good, but loses resolution in dimmer light. Use
best resolution, 4K etc. Make sure your video cloud is pass-worded and you do
not carry the PW in ur pocket. Battery life may be shortened, so an added
battery pack pluged into the phone will help. You may be able to encrypt?? You
can also use a tiny 4K cam instead of a phone because phones can be detected
via some police hand scanners and some forces have been caught using stingrays
that can detect and divert your video away from your cloud to their cloud. (I
am not sure how well stingrays can do this in the USA, in some foreign places
the police own this tech in depth - so be wary of risks and be able to silence
your emissions of the police forces seem to be manually scanning people with
sensing batons - again, this tech is costly and not universal, but it is out
there. Only the paranoid.....

~~~
gruez
If your threat model includes police stingrays, the could also jam all
cellphone traffic which makes cloud backups irrelevant.

~~~
yummypaint
This wouldnt be possible in the US, the police don't have the authority to
override federal legislation. The FCC has historically been extremely
agressive and successful in prosecuting use of jamming devices. I think it's
more likely that stingrays would be used to inventory who is at a protest etc
and put people on a list for individual targeting.

~~~
mvid
Jamming devices have already been in use in Minneapolis

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obblekk
I find it fascinating that teen vogue is running content like this. I wonder
what it says about our society that this is in vogue for teens.

Probably that we both have matured and have needed to mature. Reminds me of
hongkong students.

~~~
pmorici
There is quite a bit of anecdotal information floating around suggesting that
a large portion of the 'loot & riot' crowd are young people not necessarily
from the city coming into the city to cause trouble and are separate and apart
in their intentions and motivations from the protest crowd made up of people
who live in the area and have a direct interest in it.

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ncmncm
I keep seeing indications that Teen Vogue editors are more aware of their
responsibilities than one might expect.

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lordnacho
Why do I not see more drones in the protest videos? You'd think that would be
a safe way to film things, plus it's a little harder to confiscate than your
phone.

~~~
watwut
If you flight drone over protest and something hit the drone or you crash the
drone, the drone will fall on people under it.

~~~
ncmncm
Useful drones can be very light, and much less dangerous to people than, e.g.,
a tear-gas canister.

~~~
watwut
I don't recommend throwing tear-gas canister either.

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RickJWagner
I'm starting to wonder if we need some formal role for communities in this.

Bad cops must be held accountable. But also there must be _some_ way to compel
a belligerent person to go along with police (i.e. not resist arrest). Maybe
there should be 'community liaisons' or something that would be called out
when there is a troublesome situation.

~~~
bilbo0s
In fairness, _part_ of the idea of using professional cops and not soldiers,
was originally that professional cops were from the community and would be
better able to interact, or "liaise" with community members. It's just that
over the centuries we kind of forgot about that part. In the US we moved to
the current system where many of the police may not even live in the
communities they serve. Heck, they may not even live in the municipality at
all.

It's a better idea to try to make the cops community liaisons by going back to
hiring your police from among the people who live in your municipality. You
would get more familiar faces out there, and I think you'd get rid of the
weekend warrior types from the suburbs or whatever.

But there must be some reason they don't do that because that idea is just way
too obvious. Maybe they have data that shows more corruption if the police are
from the municipality being served? Or actually probably, the police unions
don't allow it? Or something. There's probably a reason.

~~~
allannienhuis
Police often don't want to live in the community they patrol because they
don't want to be recognized with their family while off duty by gang members
they interact with, making their families targets.

I have close family who had to move to a different city because of direct
specific threats to their family made by gangsters.

Organized crime changes the dynamics completely.

~~~
curryst
I would be shocked if that is effective (although I'm not an expert, so I'm
open to being shocked).

Tracking someone who relocates without creating a new identity seems trivially
easy even for unorganized crime. Facebook or Instagram alone makes a social
engineering attempt easy. Then there are the sites that aggregate public
record, which I would think could pick up on the move relatively quickly.
Lexus Nexus has terrifying amounts of information on everyone.

This is without even moving into the realm of things that require organized
crime. I would assume organized crime groups would have someone in the
government paid off that could run a query through driver's license databases.

That seems more like security theater than actual security. It's also of note
that organized crime exists outside the US, and other countries that do
community policing don't seem to have the same level of concern.

~~~
allannienhuis
I agree with you that organized crime is not a US-only problem. The example I
shared is not in the US - so you have at least one counter example to your
statement about other countries. Concerns and awareness about issues with
policing in the community where they live isn't isolated to just a few
individuals.

You seem to easily dismiss someone else's experience - why would you think
that you have enough information from a short anecdote to judge their
difficult decision to uproot their entire family, as useless security theatre?
How effective something like that is depends completely on the specific
circumstances, people involved, and the nature of the threat. I assure you
that the decisions they made for themselves were done with appropriate advice.

My point was that organized crime changes the nature of policing and the
relationship with police and their community. Organized criminals have a much
greater sense of power and immunity, so they are more likely to be involved in
confrontation with police and to take things further past the line
(threatening family is just one example) than an 'average' crook who commits
crimes out of desperation (for example).

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StellarTabi
It's always ethical to film police misconduct, in fact what's unethical is
that they're not already filming themselves.

Safety is important, protesters (and even journalists...) have been
livestreaming themselves innocently doing nothing (in contrast to other
media's hyper-focusing on "looting") then getting shot with rubber bullets.
One of them reportedly has permanent blindness in the left eye as a result.

Police brutality in response to a protest against police brutality is truly
disturbing.

~~~
samdamsamm
Tonight I witnessed a young girl get knocked out cold by a tear gas canister
shot into her face from about a 40 ft. range. She was holding her hands up.

There was nothing but peaceful protesters standing around, not blocking
traffic. No vandalism anywhere in sight. This was in Louisville, KY.

The police fired rubber bullets at the group of people carrying her away to a
place on the other side of the line of humvees blocking the street to where
the ambulance could reach her.

Everything most middle-income Americans think about our police forces is
wrong.

~~~
roenxi
> Everything most middle-income Americans think about our police forces is
> wrong.

That statement is a bit vague, everyone is going to substitute their own
interpretation in. The police don't target racial minorities because they are
racist. People who want power over others sign up for policing - and then go
after groups who have the least ability to fight back.

The middle income might know the symptoms, but they are missing the cause. The
cause is that if a fellow wants to hurl someone else to the ground, kick them
and keep them down without a fair fight then their best chance as getting to
that situation is to sign on to the police. This is an inescapable structural
pressure that needs constant attention.

~~~
fsloth
It's hardly inescapable. Police in the nordic countries acts and behaves more
or less as a service branch of the government rather as a bully. But they have
several years of training whereas US has only - what, a few months? I would
say it's about skimping costs in the wrong place. US system is weird that in
it's local search of frugal solutions it creates inefficient systems (like the
medical sector).

~~~
mtts
What’s the situation with Nordic police and minorities? Because in the not
really Nordic but reasonably civilized Netherlands the supposedly well
educated police force is also a known hotbed of racism. Members of the police
force in The Hague refer to themselves as “exterminators of Moroccan vermin”.
Ethnic profiling is rampant and on at least one occasion a man of color was
held down by a group of cops until he died as well.

At least part of the problem is cops themselves.

~~~
tokai
Police in Denmark are bullies too. Breaking basic rights, assaulting citizens,
covering for each other, lobbying against body cams and visible identifiers on
cops like numbers, etc. Profiling is legal and used extensively.

~~~
ficklepickle
Until we realize that tribalism is human nature, it won't change.

Racism is universal amongst humans. We are tribal primates, after all. We need
to admit the biases exist and address them head-on.

It stands to reason that having a bias against out groups once increased an
individuals chance of survival. Now it is actively harming society. If we
can't rise above our primitive impulses, we are doomed.

~~~
bsanr2
Bigotry is universal amongst humans. Racism is a systematic application of
that bigotry such that it can operate on an "undesirable" population with or
without the consent of the people supporting and maintaining that system.
Racism is not a natural sociological phenomenon; it is a deliberate effort to
twist the nature of human behavior and cognition towards cruel, cynical,
violent, and destructive ends.

We need to stop telling ourselves these lies about who we are and what we're
capable of.

------
mitchtbaum
Auditors need auditing too.

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jungletime
Long zoom lens is probably safest. Something like nikon p900 has a zoom of x83
and is about $500 on ebay.

Having just seen some videos of store owners getting whacked with 2x4s by
looters. Need a follow up article, how to safely and ethically deal with
looters.

[https://twitter.com/WHAM1180/status/1267031930308104197](https://twitter.com/WHAM1180/status/1267031930308104197)

