Above is the video encounter with myself and the Londonderry police officer who claims audio recording him is illegal.
An unknown, because I forgot to get his name (major fail), Londonderry Police officer tried to tell me that audio recording police doing their public duty was illegal. At one point stating, “check yourself.” Since I’m already facing three counts of wiretapping, and have spent the last year caught up in court cases, I turned the camera off. I told the officer that he was wrong and left to seek the others who came to support Kelly and her TSA activism – see this video of the demonstration.
Lets assume you’re the owner of a business and you employ five people. One day you find out that one of your employees is threatening people to make sales. You didn’t approve of this tactic and quickly move on this information. You call in the employee and address the situation. You explain to them that threatening people is not how you conduct business and even though it might produce larger sales in the short term, it will ultimately destroy the company – ending both your jobs. Hopefully the employee will understand and adapts (or atleast respects) to your request. Though it’s possible they wouldn’t (adapt) and you’d have to fire them. Either way, in business, when you don’t agree with your employee (or with your employer) you have the option to end the relationship (on either side).
Let’s go one step further and bring police into the scenario. Police are paid for with tax dollars and tax dollars are collected from taxpayers. Essentially, taxpayers are the employer’s of the police and, just like any other business, the employer has the right to tell the employee if (and/or when) they don’t approve of their employees actions. Right? Yet, there is NO real course of action one can take to stop police from doing something you don’t like or want, like regular employers can. You can’t physically stop the police officer, nor can you fire a police officer and you can’t stop paying taxes either – we all know what happens if you do. So, what can you do?