The unincorporated U.S. territory of Puetro Rico, has one of the worst police violence records in the United States, that’s according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The DoJ report accuses the Puerto Rico Police Department of regularly: “…using force, including deadly force, when no force or lesser force was called for.”

The DoJ report says police officials reasons for the violence does not justify it: “Puerto Rico officials maintain that drug trafficking and social deterioration are fueling the wave of violent crime. However, increasing crime cannot be used to justify continued civil rights violations or the failure to implement meaningful reforms.”

One problem identified in the report was the use of swat teams for standard community policing. Puerto Rico has the second largest police force in in the United States.

A woman lay belly-down on the floor of the Pimlico Race Course, handcuffed and beaten bloody by Baltimore Police.  A man recorded the scene on his cell phone camera.  Immediately the police  grabbed the phone and erased the recording, including months of family recordings.

Now, thanks to the 1st Circuit of the U. S. Court of Appeals, which ruled that police business is public business, therefore can be recorded, the man who lost the recordings is now suing.

The American Civil Liberties Union is also suing: “It is antithetical to a democracy for the government to tell its citizens that they do not have the right to record what government officials say or do or how they behave in public.”-Deobrah Jeon, ACLU

On August 26, the 1st Circuit of the U. S. Court of Appeals held that videotaping police in the course of their public duties is “unambiguously” a free speech right protected under the First Amendment!

However, that is not stopping the state of Illinois from trying a man charged with eavesdropping, after he recorded an incident in which he was confronted by police on his mother’s property.

The man is facing five counts of eavesdropping, and could face 15 years in prison for each charge.

In the 1st Circuit of the U. S. Court of Appeals case Massachusetts police argued that their privacy rights were being violated every time someone recorded them on duty.  The courts ruled that while a police officer is on duty they are no longer living a private life, they are on public duty.  The appellate judges found that citizens have a First Amendment right to record government officials carrying out their duties in a public space!

Here’s something else to think about: If police claim they can not be recorded because it violates their privacy, and is a threat to security, then their own dash cams in their police cars are illegal!  In fact all security cameras are illegal by that reasoning!  Haven’t people tried to fight security camera use using that very reasoning, and lost?  What gives police the special right to be excluded from public video and audio recordings?