I’ve been busy at work lately, and as a result, haven’t had much time for posting. The little hiatus though has given me a chance to think of some things to talk about. One topic has been nagging me ever since New Year’s Eve.
I worked New Year’s Eve voluntarily this year. (I know, crazy eh?) The service was offering to anyone interested for a call-out shift to bolster the usual numbers for New Years. Seeing that I’m a junkie for call-out, I accepted and we went around putting ‘fires’ out and passing ‘band-aids’ out all night as per usual on such a busy evening. At one of our many house party calls, we attended to backup another car who had an arrest. The officers had asked us to watch their prisoner while they were inside dealing with the incident and I stood outside watching the guy who was sitting in the back of their car. A few minutes later, one of the party-goers began video recording me with their cell phone. I stood there for a while, then realized that someone was video taping me while standing around near the porch area. I approached him, told him to stop and he tried to lie about what he was doing. He put down the phone and left after I confronted him about it. A few minutes later, the arrest began doing something stupid in the back of the car. Needless to say, the arrest was taken out of the back of the car and sorted out. While we were doing this, the citizen began recording again from just outside the house. I didn’t notice as I was dealing with the arrest, but my partner confronted him a second time and he eventually was led back into the house.
The irony in this story is incredible. In my previous job, I was a researcher and organized research studies on police, private security and the like. I never video taped officers, but I audio taped them with their permission. I did however read many studies on the proliferation of video recording devices and how they are reversing the stereotypical Big Brother analogy from state-derived surveillance to civilian surveillance. Now, more than ever, anyone can have access to video or photo technology and without much effort, post it to a world-wide audience. The prevalence of this type of technology has changed our notions of surveillance and social control greatly. Not only are citizens observed more easily, they observe the observers just as well (or better!).
While I would be the first to defend civil rights and the Charter Rights of the individual, I’m starting to feel that for many civilian amateur videographers, its not about ‘being a voice’ for the people, human rights or whatever. Sadly, these videographers are only out for one thing, fortune (and with that, maybe a little fame too). Recent publicized video recordings such as the Vancouver Airport video, the downtown Calgary video, and others have garnered sensational media attention. In some cases, these videos have ‘earned’ a significant windfall of cash for the camera person. (In the Vancouver case, it was several thousand dollars from each tv station).
Another problem arises with these videos: they are still only a snapshot of the incident. They do not show the circumstances that lead up to the video being started, the TOTALITY of the incident (ie. what lead to the arrest, the dealings with the arrestee, what was said, etc). Usually what occurs is the video is misunderstood and it becomes a media event.
In the end, with all that said, I don’t like being video recorded without my knowledge. Too often it seems there are those out to make a quick buck from a short video taken out of context. There are those that say, “Well, if you’re not doing anything wrong…you have nothing to worry about.” I don’t need someone else to tell me, because I know I do the right things at work. However, I would never want to be the scapegoat of a media circus, bent on making stories sensational in order to sell their product.
Tags: cell phone camera, police
