Baltimore Police have been prohibited from arresting people for videotaping them doing their job on a public street. Their response is to threaten to arrest people for loitering if they break out the cell phone camera.
When tech enterpreneuer Scott Cover happened upon a group of Baltimore Police standing over a handcuffed man near Cross Street market early Saturday, he pulled out his camera phone and started recording. Earlier in the day, he'd seen news reports of the Police Department affirming citizens' right to record officers performing their duties in public, and thought what was happening might - who knows - make for interesting video.
It's a scene that plays out regularly on Cross Street in Federal Hill as officers try to disperse late-night crowds. The officers will tell you that the patrons - with or without cameras - refuse to leave, and that everyone within earshot is an armchair expert on police techniques and seconds away from potentially inciting a riot. The bargoers will say the cops are often unnecessarily rude and aggressive, and don't want to be watched or filmed being unnecessarily rude and aggressive.
The officers on Saturday got Cover to stop filming, not by telling him to cease recording or seizing his camera. They told him he was loitering, and that he had to move along or risk arrest.
It's a caveat - some might say loophole - in the new general order publicly trotted out by police on Friday, three days before they're due in court to argue in a lawsuti brought by the ACLU that they are properly addressing citizen's right to record.
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