Caught in the act - why citizens MUST retain the right to film police & government officials

Caught in the act - why citizens MUST retain the right to film police & government officials

Radley Balko, a civil libertarian best known for his work at Reason, Cato, and the Huffington Post, talks with John Stossel about the need for citizens to be able to film the police.

In one clip, they show how an officer intentionally throws himself into a bicyclist while proclaiming the cyclist intentionally rammed him.

In another clip, a policeman denies drawing his gun at a snowball fight when the video clearly shows that he did.

Should the police feel afraid to act if they are filmed? If they are doing their job correctly, why should they? At the end of the show, Stossel dicusses the corruption of Nixon's vice president Spiro Agnew and the corruption he and many other politicians were found guilty of. Isn't it good that we have a record of their corruption so that justice could be served? Shouldn't the same standard be applied to the police?

Stossel's final point: individuals deserve privacy, individuals who get public money (such as ACORN administrators) deserve less privacy, and people who receive government money AND who have the ability to forcibly control you - and the authority to hold a gun to your head - deserve to be held fully accountable and absolutely should be video recorded.

Caught in the act - why citizens MUST retain the right to film police & government officials Radley Balko, a civil libertarian best known for his work at Reason, Cato, and the Huffington Post, talks with John Stossel about the need for citizens to be able to film the police. In one clip, they show h ...