A police union is asking a judge to require the Las Vegas Review-Journal to take down a video posted with a story about Henderson jail overtime and corrections officer failures, raising concerns about constitutional press freedom. …
Here’s the video.
The newspaper reported that taxpayers have paid millions of dollars to run the city’s understaffed detention center and that corrections officers sometimes made mistakes and violated policy, records show. The exclusive jail surveillance footage and photos were posted with the story.
The Nevada Association of Public Safety Officers union, on behalf of Henderson officers, filed the complaint Wednesday, claiming that the Review-Journal broke a state law that says images of officers in possession of a law enforcement agency are confidential.
The lawsuit comes days after the union sent the Review-Journal and city officials a letter demanding the newspaper remove the pictures and videos of officers attached to the story. The letter, written by executive director Andrew Regenbaum, also demanded the city open a criminal investigation into the source of the video. …
I’m not sure why you think possessing a document is equivalent to possessing every copy of the document. That’s not how the law works.
When you buy a copy of a book, you own your copy. You can lock up your copy in a vault or you can leave it on park bench. But whatever you choose does not affect every other copy of the book. If you lock up your copy, I can still freely share my copy.
The same is true of images of police. If the police have a copy, they are required to keep their copy locked up. The copy in their possession is confidential. That’s all that the law says.
But the law doesn’t affect what I am allowed to do with my own copy. My copy is not confidential. I can do what I want with it. The police have no control over my copy.
The law, as written, makes no such distinction.
It does. Possession is well defined. It means what you have in your hands. It does not extend to copies in other hands.
The law applies to images in police possession, it says nothing about copies of those images that are not in their possession.
But the copies are in their hands and therefore in their possession.
In this case, not every copy is in their possession. The law does not affect the copies that are not in police possession. Like the ones possessed by the newspaper.
Ok. I see your distinction but that doesn’t make it ok. I am not a lawyer, but I do think that plain language is important.
I still say this law is unconstitutional as written
Also
Well you sure had us fooled!
My compliments to both of you for making it through eight rounds without ever a flood of insults. Wrong or right, that’s impressive. :)