[Brananarchy]

25 feet is actually pretty far. You could be on top of a two story building or across the street and still be "too close". Obviously neither of those cases would interfere with an officer's duties.

To me this law is clearly overreaching, and seems intended to scare people off from trying to see what their "officers of the law" are doing.

[yencabulator]

25 feet is a distance under which running at someone with a knife is a very dangerous attack. Decreasing the chances of that happening to the officer (while they're e.g. arresting someone else) is the purpose here.

[everforward]

So the operative theory is that someone willing to commit a very illegal assault on an officer is going to suddenly care about a minor charge for being too close to the officer?

If that’s really the goal, Louisiana _really_ needs to work on their public education and maybe check the water for heavy metals and what not. That’s stupid on a level where I’m worried if they’re doing alright down there.

[yencabulator]

No, the theory is to change the average behavior to remove excuses for the bad people.

[everforward]

What excuses are they using, and how does the average behavior feed into that? That doesn't make any sense to me unless Louisiana has a very weird legal system that operates on the average behavior rather than a codified set of restrictions and exceptions to those restrictions (they don't).

The law doesn't deal in excuses. If everyone decides to charge an officer, that doesn't suddenly make it legal. More importantly, these are tried by jury, so anyone that skates on an "excuse" doesn't have an excuse, they have the support of a jury of their peers who do not believe they are "bad people".

This is just fascists who don't like their fascism being filmed. They're a lot like street gangs in that regard.

[yencabulator]

You're so set on a line of thinking you're not really considering anything outside of your viewpoint.

If the average person, after being told so by the officer, stays 25 feet away, then that gives the officer a nice safety buffer to operate in. Anyone not following that rule now sticks out like a sore thumb.

If there are multiple people crowding the officer, leaning over them as they are kneeling on the ground, it's really hard for the officer to remain safe in case one of them decides to attack.

[everforward]

No, it's not, because that situation happens so rarely to not even be worth talking about.

Just checking some data, the FBI says 48 officers were killed in the line of duty in 2019. Of those, 44(!) were killed with firearms. So we're talking about 4 deaths that this maybe would have helped with. This data also includes prison staff, so there's a fair chance that it's really less than 4.

For reference, 20 people were killed by lightning in the US in 2019. So we're talking about an issue with a scope one fifth the size of "people being killed by lightning".

There were only 75 incidents of LEO's being assaulted and injured with "Firearms, Knives, or Other Cutting Instruments" in 2019 per FBI data. Again, this is not a substantial problem. Bouncers get assaulted at rates far higher than police, and yet nobody seems to mind.

> If there are multiple people crowding the officer, leaning over them as they are kneeling on the ground, it's really hard for the officer to remain safe in case one of them decides to attack.

Then call in backup? They love throwing on their LARP gear, give 'em a reason to use it.

[DaveExeter]

No, the purpose of this is to discourage people from recording police.

[trealira]

Ostensibly, it's to prevent attacks, according to the author of the bill:

“At 25 feet, that person can’t spit in my face when I’m making an arrest,” Fontenot said while presenting his bill in a committee earlier this year. “The chances of him hitting me in the back of the head with a beer bottle at 25 feet — it sure is a lot more difficult than if he’s sitting right here.”

But it's very easy to see how it will also make it harder to record videos of the police. I bet that's at least part of the reason why they're doing it, even if they won't say so.

(I assume that Fontenot is speaking in the first person because he's a former law enforcement officer.)

[yencabulator]

Yeah clearly a defensive distance threshold that's been taught all over the world for decades is purely a coincidence, surely.

Recording video at 25 feet is plenty good for evidence.

[DaveExeter]

You might be living in fantasy-land.

In the real world, the police officer will arrest you for recording him, charging you with:

1) interfering with official duties.

2) Resisting arrest.

3) Felony assault on a police officer.

Remember, in a criminal trial, you have to prove your innocence. How do you prove you did not do something that a police officer, testifying under oath in a court of law, says you did?

[nyokodo]

> in a criminal trial, you have to prove your innocence

No you don’t, at least not in the USA. The state has to prove you’re guilty. Granted, I gather the word of an officer will usually trump an ordinary citizen, but that’s a great use case for the filming of Officers! It’s hard to prove interference with official duties when you’re quietly filming an officer from 25+ ft away.

[yencabulator]

I mean, I am European, I'll give you that.

So, if I have a constant video recording where the officer is clearly at a distance, wouldn't that be great for my defense? Much better than if that same video showed me walking right up to them, within touching distance, with the video not showing where my limbs are at all times.

If you're worried about unlawful arrest, stay away from the cop and record them -- and if you do that, great, this law wouldn't affect you.