Originally Posted by
FliesWay2Much
There was a pretty famous incident near St. Louis a few years ago. A 19 year-old kid was so tired of being pulled over and harassed by the local cops that he bought a camera for his own car. He taped a blatant incident of police harassment -- video and audio. The cop got fired and, I think, got some jail time.
IIRC, the department in question also tried to claim the officer's own camera footage was unavailable for some reason.
According to
this article, the teen in question had not only gotten an inappropriate traffic ticket previously (the reason he cited for having installed the camera), but had actually received
death threats on an online forum frequented by the STL cops.
Originally Posted by St. Louis Cop Talk Poster
I hope this little POS punk ....... tries his little video stunt with me when I pull him over alone- and I WILL pull him over - because I will see "his gun" and place a hunk of hot lead right where it belongs.
Originally Posted by
FliesWay2Much
So, I could be totally wrong, but my guess is that it's legal but the TSA and the cops would intimidate the daylights out of you. Fortunately, the kid in St. Louis had the guts to go through with it.
Indeed, he received a lot of intimidation, with officers publically making statements that they wanted to "tow the car and take the kid to jail," etc.
The only problem with taping at a TSA checkpoint, IMHO, would be the claim (valid or not) that it's against the rules due to the potential to capture and then disclose SSI.
More on-topic, there have been other recent cases where LEOs have reacted poorly when discovering they're being recorded. Wasn't there a guy taping an inappropriately-conducted arrest in 2007 at some point who was himself threatened and arrested for doing so? Can't recall the details yet...
... but the salient point here is that if you record the encounter, it will likely escalate things to the point where the LEOs totally side with the TSA and will end up running you in. Assuming your recording isn't destroyed and you keep your cool throughout the encounter, you'd have grounds to pursue action afterwards, if you don't mind the disruption to your trip and the arrest, etc.