The NYPD told a YouTuber and "First amendment auditor", SeanPaul Reyes, that he was not permitted to film in the public areas of precinct stations, then arrested him when he refused to stop doing so. Reyes took them to court and has won an injunction against the force: officers may no longer illegally order people to stop filming. You can't beat the ride, no sir, but you can file a lawsuit.
Reyes filed his lawsuit in July, after being arrested twice for filming in the public areas of NYPD precinct houses. An NYPD policy, announced in signage in every precinct in the city, forbids filming in station houses. To Reyes, who describes himself as a "First Amendment auditor," that rule was meant to be broken. "The police are there for accountability—if you do something wrong, they hold you accountable," Reyes told Hell Gate. "But how do the people hold the police accountable? There has to be some sort of transparency and accountability for how the police treat people on an everyday basis. That's why I record. I just want to show people how public employees treat people."
The judge put it like so:
"The Right to Record Acts do not carve out police precinct lobbies as places where individuals are not allowed to record," she wrote in her order. Consequently, according to Clarke, Reyes was "likely to succeed on his claims under the Right to Record Acts."
The ruling wasn't, then, on first amendment grounds, but instead a New York law flowing from it.
