Photographing and videotaping
anything in public view—including federal buildings and the police—is legal in
NYC as long as the documentation does not impede any law enforcement activity.
Nevertheless, plenty of people—including journalists—continue to be arrested
and harassed by camera-shy NYPD officers. Will Paybarah, a 24-year-old Brooklyn
resident, says this is exactly what happened to him in late March, when he was
stopped for running a red light on his bike and then arrested for trying to
videotape the officer with his cellphone. "When I tried to record my
interaction with the officer I was arrested... in 10 seconds flat," he
told us. You can see that interaction quickly play out in the video below.
Paybarah, a designer specializing in lettering and typography, told us he was
stopped on the morning of March 20th while biking west on Houston past
Broadway. He says he was stopped by "Officer Rich" of the 10th
Precinct, who was in an undercover cop car, after he (admittedly) ran a red
light. Paybarah took out his ID and immediately started taking video as the cop
approached him: "After those 10 seconds I was pulled off my bike, pushed
up against the metal fence, placed in handcuffs and put into the back seat of
the car. Other officers came. They joked saying they were going to 'handcuff my
bike to the tree.'"
The NYPD Patrol Guide Section
212-49 states that “Members of the service will not interfere with the
videotaping or the photographing of incidents in public places. Intentional
interference such as blocking or obstructing cameras or harassing the
photographer constitutes censorship.”
While in the back of the car,
Paybarah says he asked the officers why he was arrested for taking video. One
officer responded memorably:
I was told by another officer
while in the car that recording a police officer was illegal because people are
using iPhones as guns and shooting cops through the camera lens...I told him
that I have the right to be recording a cop and he said that there were incidents,
specifically in uptown Manhattan where a kid shot a cop with his iPhone.
Straight face. Very serious.
There are iPhone cases that
double as stun guns, and there have been calls for the "iPhone of
guns," but this is the first we've heard of an NYPD office being shot with
an iPhone gun.
Paybarah was jailed at Central
Booking for 13 hours that day, and though he was originally pulled over for
running a red light, he was also charged with resisting arrest, obstruction of
justice, and criminal mischief. He had his court date this week, and was
sentenced to one day community service (and he'll have the arrest purged from
his record if he isn't arrested again in the next six months).
Asked about Paybarah's
experience, NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman says, “New Yorkers have a
constitutional right to film police activity in public. Cell phone cameras
empower people to expose police abuse and hold law enforcement accountable when
it violates people’s rights." Last year the NYCLU released a free smartphone
app that lets users record police interactions and submit them to the
organization in real time.
Paybarah adds that he's an avid
biker (and used to be a bike messenger), but this is only the second time he's
had a run-in with the law: "The only other time I was pulled over on my
bike was for...get ready for it...Speeding. I was speeding on my bike. When I
went to court for the summons, a clerk looked at the summons and dismissed my
case."