The pervasiveness of video has changed everything, and the ability of any 10 year old to upload a video to Youtube and turn Sgt. Friday into an international "star" has fundamentally altered the dark ugly secret of official misconduct and abuse.  So what do cops think about it?  The New York Times, finally figuring out that this is going on, decided to ask.

“People tape all the time,” said an eight-year veteran of the department, a female officer in Downtown Brooklyn who, like other officers questioned for this article, spoke only on the condition of anonymity because she is not authorized to speak to reporters. “It makes you uncomfortable, but that’s their right. You can’t stop them from taping.”

A search on YouTube unearthed dozens of encounters with New York police officers that often show the daily realities of policing at its most mundane.

A cadre of citizens have taken to regularly videotaping police officer in the performance of their duty.  For the most part, it's a crashing bore.  But they want to capture that one moment when an Officer Pogan does "the Great Shove" and nails Critical Mass cyclist Christopher Long.  Why?  For the pride of "the 1,784,775 views of the video." 

Several videos were made by a man calling himself Jimmy Justice, and they follow a similar formula: he confronts a police officer in the midst of some sort of apparent parking or driving violation. The traffic officer in the deli drove away from Mr. Justice with a smile, but others appeared to be more irked.

The unwitting star of a video titled “Traffic Cop Makes Illegal U-Turn” tells Mr. Justice, “Arrest me,” and encourages him to call 911. She finally concludes, “Step out of my face.”

In another video, “N.Y.P.D. Traffic Enforcement Sergeant Parks Illegally” (the titles of the videos are often benign compared to Mr. Justice’s hostility and obscenities that follow), Mr. Justice confronts a sergeant who parked beneath a no-parking sign to get money from an A.T.M.

“What was I supposed to do?” the sergeant says. “Stay hungry all day because of you?”

Hardly a top notch misconduct opportunity, but it's telling.  Most officers seem to take the existence of video in stride, recognizing that it's hear to stay and focused on them.  But not all:

An officer directing traffic in Brooklyn asserted that it is illegal to tape police officers. “If I know that he’s taking video, I’m going to walk up to him and stop him,” the officer said.

Now that might make for a more interesting video.  But the official PD word is otherwise:

That is not necessarily true, said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman. Filming itself is not illegal, but interference with a police officer’s work can lead to arrest, he said. “Interference beyond just merely being obnoxious,” he said.

As the articles notes, videos are similarly useful to the police in capturing crimes occurring, and may well prove to be of great help to the police in identifying people committing crimes and providing evidence against them.  And since no police officer knows for sure that he's not about to become the next international video star, the fact that officers know they may be on candid camera may not deter all misconduct, but will certainly have a positive influence on their choices.

And if you think Jimmy Justice is silly for videotaping such trivial misconduct as parking violations, just bear in mind that the cop might have given you a ticket had you done the same.  There's nothing wrong with keeping them honest.

An officer in his patrol car in Harlem shrugged off the cameras. “It’s a brave new world now,” he said. “They’ve got all kinds of things. You could be recording me right now.”

Exactly.