You are legally allowed to record Police. You cannot interfere with what they are doing while recording, but you are allowed to record. That doesn’t mean they like it, but the law is the law. Unfortunately for one California man, The police do not always follow the law. Daily Beast reports that while attempting to record a traffic stop, Kwesi Guss was face down on the ground and handcuffed.
The incident occurred on May 5 in Richmond, California, near San Francisco. A driver involved in a high-speed chase stopped in front of a store, possibly to surrender to authorities. Guss, who had reportedly recorded police before, decided to record the incident. Surveillance video from the store was obtained by San Francisco Chronicle shows an officer pulling his vehicle onto the sidewalk in front of a man later identified as Guss.
After exiting the vehicle, police somehow encountered Guss and allegedly told him to “stay away.” Guss allegedly responded with “Shut up you bitch.” The officer then began pushing Guss, who is black, until another bystander intervened, attempting to place himself between Guss and the officer. A second officer then ran over, not to intervene but grabbed his arm and pushed him to the ground so the remaining first officer could handcuff him.
“I felt the asphalt cutting into my face,” Guss said, asserting that police claims that he resisted arrest were untrue and that he “wasn’t moving.”
Would he have been able to speak more kindly after the police scolded him? Sure. Additionally, the police should not have scolded him in the first place, not started attacking him, and not arrested him. Again, these are cops we’re talking about, so those choices may never have occurred to them.
