Last night the Tucson City Council voted 6-1 to repeal Ordinance 11746, which allowed Tucson police officers to establish restricted areas and administer penalties to individuals for “interfering with police investigations or enforcement activity.”
Adopted on April 21, the ordinance was passed unanimously by the council in response to a video TPD showed them of “First Amendment auditors” screaming profanities at Tucson police officers and filming them at a crime scene.
Based on the vulgarity of the video they were shown, the council quickly adopted the ordinance without much input from the public.
Since then, conversations have popped up on social media about the ordinance, with many claiming that the city council effectively prohibited filming police interactions with the public.
While the ordinance itself does include language intending to protect the right of citizens to film police officers, it still gives officers the ability to bring criminal charges against someone who is trying to film the police, which did not sit well with community members.
In countless cases of police brutality across the country, filming the police’s interactions with citizens is often the only way to gain justice when excessive force is used. By allowing officers to set a boundary size of their own discretion and inflict penalties on those who may want to get close enough to film an arrest, the community felt that the ordinance was a move to prevent filming the police.
The death of 27-year-old Carlos Adrian Ingram-Lopez (which was revealed by TPD in June but actually took place in April) was used as evidence for the department’s lack of transparency with the public and a reason for why citizens need to be able to film police without the threat of the ordinance.
The only council member to vote against repealing the ordinance was Steve Kozachik. At the meeting he said TPD has a need and a right to establish a crime scene, and that “interfering with that does not make us a safer community.”
“My sense is that overturning it might feel good because of all the political pressure, but it’s not in the best interest of our city,” Kozachik said.
Councilmember Paul Cunningham said he understands where Kozachik is coming from, but said now is the time for widespread conversations about community safety.
“On a philosophical level, when we passed this ordinance, we understood some of the needs,” Cunningham said. “But there’s also some places in this ordinance where some of the members of the community felt they had been left out, and part of that was because of the pandemic that we’re in.
While he admitted changes need to be made, Cunningham said institutions are built up over a long time and will need to be taken down incrementally. He believes change won’t happen immediately, it will be an ongoing process.
“Over the next year, we’re going to have a lot of discussions,” he said. “We’re going to have tense and very wide philosophical discussions about our society, about law enforcement, about our budget.”
But Cunningham left open the possibility for this issue to come back to the council. He said there was a possibility that a version of the ordinance could be passed in the future, but “now is not that time.”
Mayor Regina Romero said the council needs to listen to community input about topics such as community safety and the city budget.
“Now more than ever, it is imperative that elected officials maximize community involvement and transparency in the development of public safety policies and practices,” Romero said in a statement. “Mayor and Council decided to repeal the ordinance and seek additional community input and feedback on how to move forward.”
This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2020.
I think the Mayor may have jumped the shark on this one thinking it could be the basis to defund police and destroy morale.
Has she announced her resignation regarding the slander and defamation of a Tucson resident?
If one group gets to paint the streets, all groups get to paint the streets.
It’s called social justice. Don’t you just love it?
The mayor is much like Seattles, and Atlantas. More worried about uninformed public opinion than common sense and backing the one thing keeping total anarchy from destabilizing society. Evidently being a woman mayor precludes you from learning from your peers mistakes. Too bad…
Steve K. had been very responsive to issues in my neighborhood and as such I would vote for him again. However, I am disappointed in his stance on this issue and believe he is on the wrong side of history. Citizens have a right to photograph police and there are already laws about “interfering with police” without adding this vaguely defined ordinance. The City Council was right to repeal it.
Thank you for calling 911. Your current wait time for law enforcement assistance is five days…BEEEEEP!
Steve K has the same implicit bias that all white men have. When he says “our community”, he is not talking about the whole community. While I think he is generally a good guy, he needs to examine that within himself. You don’t have to spout thinly-veiled racist and sexist B.S. (like Mr. Thornhill above) to be part of the problem of racism. Clueless well-meaning white people are also part of the problem.
Having the right and the ability to record police behavior is the ONLY thing that’s resulted in any police reform at all. To that extent, the impact is that it does indeed somewhat enhance the safety of people of color who are disproportionately victimized by police violence. But for every abusive and sometimes lethal episode of police mistreatment of human beings in the course of their work, there are 10 or 20 or 100 others that are not recorded and no one ever hears about. Nevertheless, the videos that do become public have created a long-overdue breaking point. THINGS HAVE TO CHANGE.
So, yes, this is a welcome and necessary baby step, but the bigger questions remain. When will the mayor and council grow the cojones to stand up to the police? When will they take away the militaristic toys that the cops so clearly cannot be trusted to use responsibly? When will they ban the use of chemical weapons that are illegal to use on enemy combatants in warfare, yet are routinely used against unarmed citizens in our own community? When will police culture change from an attitude of dehumanization, domination and control to the attitude of “protect and serve” that they falsely claim for a motto? WHEN WILL THERE BE TRUE ACCOUNTABILITY?
Waiting………………………
The people filming George Floyd’s 8 minute 46 second murder could not assist because the police are brutal & may have killed others. We can re fund budgets with non violence forces that are truly proud to protect and prevent crime.
LOL
That’s 5 more days of freedom
“Steve K has the same implicit bias that all white men have. When he says “our community”, he is not talking about the whole community. While I think he is generally a good guy, he needs to examine that within himself.”
Why should he skinnyman? You just judged his heart, his head and his agenda. You sound just like our holier than thou Mayor and i reject it. You may be money ahead to take a look at yourself and question why you do this to “all white men” like you just did. It sure sounds racist.
Implicit bias, by definition (look it up, please!), implies no moral judgment whatsoever, of heart, mind, agenda or anything else. “Implicit” in this context means internalized and unconscious.
White people (including me) have implicit bias because it is drummed into our heads by our racist society from the time we are infants, by countless media messages, community standards, racist institutions, day-to-day interactions and communications, etc. We absorb it whether we like it or not and it definitely affects our behavior, whether we realize it and acknowledge it or not.
The way to address it is to be aware of it and how it affects our behavior and to take steps to counteract it. The morally necessary reaction is to be anti-racist.
Moral judgment only arises when people pretend that racism doesn’t exist, deny that implicit bias exists, or refuse or actively resist taking steps to counteract their corrosive effects on our society.