This raises some questions since a State Attorney’s duties include representing the State Government in legal matters within jurisdiction and occasionally acting as chief legal advisory to city, state and county law enforcement personnel. With the language of this bill’s stipulations to law enforcement being “when certain serious crimes are being committed” in regards to the state attorney approving unwarranted surveillance, there’s a lot of open-ended specifications on these crimes. The new bill doesn’t allow room for “checks and balances” of police misconduct during these operations. Previous loopholes to citizen’s rights concerning privacy were established by Homeland Security legislation and temporarily suspended citizen’s rights in The Justice Department Domestic Intelligence Operations.
Currently it is legal in all 50 states to film law enforcement on duty so long as there’s no interference with their duties. Still there are many cases of “Obstruction of Justice” arrests and many still question the limits around incidents when police officers confront civilians documenting police interactions.
With the body camera initiative on police officers still in question, state representatives say a separate bill is being made to discuss that specific policy. This all seems to be a double-edged sword solution and given the justice department handling of citizens, many are still skeptical of their being real steps toward fixing the overall broken Criminal Justice System.
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