D.C. Police Policy on Cameras Should Earn No Praise

Earlier this week Legal Times reported that D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department had issued a seemingly civil rights-minded policy clarification reminding its officers that they are not allowed to confiscate or interfere with cameras or other recording devices belonging to citizens who are photographing or videotaping them while they are working within public view. The General Order from D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, which DCist also posted in full, reads that "The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) recognizes that members of the general public have a First Amendment right to video record, photograph, and/or audio record MPD members while MPD members are conducting official business or while acting in an official capacity in any public space, unless such recordings interfere with police activity."

Both the District of Columbia and the federal agencies located therein have a pretty terrible record of respecting the First Amendment rights of amateur photographers in Washington, D.C. (my former DCist colleague Heather Goss has done some terrific work on this topic), and there's of course a long history of police departments all over the country ordering people to stop taking photographs or video recordings despite very clear laws on this subject. So it wasn't super surprising to see technology news website Ars Technica pick up the story and append this glowing headline: "DC police chief announces shockingly reasonable cell camera policy." That praise quickly started to filter across the internet and spread to Twitter, as these things do.