The idea, said Sean Basinski, a lawyer who works with the operators, is to create a video record that can be reviewed and used in court when vendors are contesting tickets.
On Sept. 19, Mr. Basinski experienced perhaps both the perils and the benefits of such documentation. That afternoon he was arrested in front of the Midtown North Precinct police station on West 54th Street while using his phone to record the police. He was charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing governmental administration, according to a criminal complaint. After his release, an onlooker gave him what Mr. Basinski said was an exculpatory video of his encounter with officers.
Courts have established a right to record police activity in public places, as long as it does not interfere with the officers’ ability to carry out their duties.
On Tuesday Mr. Basinski and about two dozen vendors held a rally across the street from the precinct house to protest his arrest and what they described as incidents in which officers directed people not to record them. As several officers watched, the vendors waved placards reading “Keep calm, camera is on” and “Respect our right to film.”
Mr. Basinski called his arrest a “symbol of what needs to change,” adding, “If this happens to me — a white guy, wearing a business suit, a lawyer, 6-foot-3, not easily intimidated — it can certainly happen to our members.”
Mr. Basinski told the crowd that his encounter with the police last month began after he emerged from the Midtown Community Court next to the police station, where he had been representing a vendor. As he left, he said, he saw that the police were confiscating the cart of a vendor and preparing to issue tickets. Mr. Basinski decided to record the events, he said, partly to document the contents of the cart so the vendor would have an inventory of what items to expect back.
A criminal compliant filled out by Officer Robert Browne said Mr. Basinski used profanity, stood between the officer and the vendor and refused to move.
“I tried to walk around the defendant and I observed the defendant shift in the same direction so that he continued to block my path,” Officer Browne wrote. “The defendant’s actions prohibited me from performing my lawful duty.”
A four-and-a-half-minute video provided by an onlooker does not show Mr. Basinski using any profanity. In the video he is standing several away feet from the cart while a uniformed officer repeatedly directs him to move.
“I’m not in your way,” Mr. Basinski responds in the video. “I’m not getting in anyone’s way.”
A moment later, when a plainclothes officer who says he is a lieutenant approaches, the uniformed officer points to Mr. Basinski.
“Everyone’s stopping and watching,” the uniformed officer says. “He’s getting in my face with a camera.”
Mr. Basinski replies that he is within his rights to record what is transpiring. He refuses to move or show any identification, saying he is a lawyer. When he asks the plainclothes officer for identification, that officer and a uniformed sergeant there instead arrest him.
Mr. Basinski said in recent days that he believed that he became a target because he was recording and refused to follow what he called unlawful orders. He said that he planned to file a false-arrest lawsuit in Federal District Court.
The police disagree with his account.
“The video does not capture the entire incident,” a police spokesman, Deputy Commissioner John J. McCarthy, wrote in an e-mail. “Mr. Basinski, along with an unidentified female and male, intentionally stood between the officer and a vendor to prevent the officer from issuing the vendor a summons. Although Mr. Basinski was instructed numerous times to move back, he was not given any orders to stop videotaping the incident.”
Mr. McCarthy did not say why the arrest occurred at a time when Mr. Basinski did not appear to be blocking the police.
At the rally on Tuesday, some vendors said that officers had told them that there could be repercussions for using their phones to record events. Among them was Maria Yunga, who said that she sold mangoes in SoHo.
Speaking through a translator, Ms. Yunga said she and others sometimes used phones to record the police while being given tickets.
“In many cases,” she said, “when we have tried to film or even just taken our phones out to start taking a picture, the police have warned us that they will arrest us.”
Yahoo Local News – New York Times
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=14956
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
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