RCMP Officer Lies About Needing Permission to Film Police; Admits Police Parking Illegally is Wrong
The following video was shared with the CopBlock Network by Donald Smith, who frequently films the police as he travels within Canada, via the CopBlock.org Submissions Page.
In the video, which was taken in Victoria, British Columbia and uploaded to Youtube, Smith can be seen questioning an (unidentified) officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police about why he is parking his motorcycle on the sidewalk even though he would ticket citizens for doing the same thing.
Initially, the officer responds by explaining that he’s not breaking the law because police are exempt from that law. However, those exemptions are generally based on the idea that police can disregard such laws while responding to emergencies or, at the very least, while performing official police functions. Although the exact circumstances leading up to the conversation on the video weren’t given, the officer makes it pretty clear in his response that neither of those things are the case.
After some discussion of whether the officer should be giving tickets to people for parking infractions while he himself is illegally parked, the officer soon attempts to shift the subject by lying about the legality of filming in public. According to this officer, recording in public requires the permission of the person being filmed.
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Although it’s not terribly uncommon for cops not to know the laws they are supposed to enforce or for them to try and enforce laws even though they don’t actually understand them, the fact that this officer claims that it became illegal to film him in public without permission on January 1st (implying that a new law was passed) is pretty indicative that he is intentionally lying. Shortly after, the officer uses that horrible threat that police for some reason think bothers people filming them that he will also film Smith (without having asked his permission first).
(For the record, no such law was passed and it is completely legal to film anyone, including the police, in public view – even in Canada.)
Then the discussion returns to whether he should be parking his motorcycle on a sidewalk. While continuing to maintain he is exempt from such rules and clarifying that police officers can even park cars on the sidewalk if they feel like it, the officer then readily admits that such a double standard is wrong. Quite surprisingly, he then actually promises not to park on the sidewalk next time.
If you have a video, personal story involving police misconduct and/or abuse, or commentary about a law enforcement related news story, we would be happy to have you submit it. You can find some advice on how to get your submission published on the CopBlock Network within this post.
