A new Arizona law will make it illegal to record police closer than eight feet and activists and civic groups are worried what could happen in future police encounters without quality video to show what really happened.
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed House Bill 2319 on July 6, 2022; the bill passed along party lines and places restrictions on the public’s ability to record police activity.
“As an organization, we’ve fought so hard for body worn cameras, but we know they tend to get turned off, we know there have been situations where parts of the video are not shown,” said Kiana Sears, president of East Valley NAACP in East Valley, Arizona. “We are absolutely outraged, this is something we won’t stand for, we stand against it. We understand this has been passed and we are here to push back,” Sears went on to say of the law.
The law takes effect on Sept. 24, and, if violated, is a class-three misdemeanor punishable up to 30 days in jail.
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The law prohibits a person from knowingly making a video recording of law enforcement activity within eight feet, with certain exceptions. The bill describes law enforcement activity to include questioning a suspicious person, an officer arresting someone or an officer handling a situation involving an emotionally disturbed or disorderly person.
Sears sees the law as a dangerous slippery slope, pointing to the effectiveness of video in other high-profile police encounters such as those involving George Floyd, Daunte Wright or ongoing cases like Patrick Lyoya’s, all of which, left officers facing charges and/or sentenced to prison.
“Not one of these egregious crimes would have been addressed if it not for video,” Sears said.
Republican and State Rep. John Kavanaugh co-sponsored the bill and said, “Police officers have no way of knowing whether the person approaching is an innocent bystander or an accomplice of the person they’re arresting who might assault them,” as reported by The Hill.
Bruce Franks Jr. is the spokesman for Mass Liberations Arizona, a nonprofit focused on police accountability and ending mass incarceration. Franks does not buy Kavanaugh’s reasoning for co-sponsoring the pro-police bill.
“I really wish I had a more politically correct term, but that’s just dumb as hell. A person holding a cell phone videotaping, the justification for the law is we don’t know if they’re an accomplice or going to attack the police,” said Franks.
John Fullinwieder is co-founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality, a national organization that united mothers who lost children to police violence and promotes police accountability. Fullinwieder stresses the importance of bystander video compared to police video and the difference it makes when prosecuting police who engage in misconduct.
“I have been working on police issues in Dallas since the 1970s and ever since cell phone video has become available, I don’t think I’ve seen an indictment without it,” Fullinwieder said.
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