Prior Restraint

      The Indiana legislature never did quite manage to set pi to 3 and make it stick; but they appear to be convinced they can tie the First Amendment in knots with impunity.

      There's a bill working its way though the House that would make it a crime to get within twenty-five feet of a sworn officer making an arrest.  "So what," you might think.  "We shouldn't crowd them."  And not getting yourself too close to a fraught interpersonal situation involving armed individuals is generally held to be a good idea; I can't argue with that.

      But twenty-five feet?  The average city street is fifteen to twenty feet wide!  Under that proposed law, you can't drive past a sidewalk arrest; you can't walk your dog down the sidewalk if the police have a car pulled over on the other side -- and you sure can't stand across the street, holding up a cell phone (or a still camera, or a TV news-type camera), recording what's going on.  (And here's the deal: we're all The Press, even without that keen card stuck in our hatband like Clark Kent.)  If your house is close to the street, you'd have to stay off the front porch and keep the curtains drawn if police should happen to nab a suspect right outside.*

      It's already a crime in Indiana to interfere with an arrest -- even interfering with officers performing their duties can get you a ticket or a trip downtown and a date with a judge.  They're granted broad leeway in what might constitute "interference," too.  So what's the new law do?  Here's one thing it does: it makes any images you grab part of the evidence against you.  They're not going to be on the front page or the evening news.  It also constitutes a license to grab any "guilty bystanders" police deem to have committed the crime of being twenty-four feet away from an arrest.

      This is flag-waving, rah-rah stomping on the Bill of Rights to create a law police don't need and will find only too easy to abuse for their own convenience.  They can already arrest meddlers; the gawkers and lookie-loos might be annoying (pity's sake, stop staring and drive.  I've got dinner waiting!) but they don't rate arrest.  You're allowed to look at things happening in public spaces.  You're allowed to take pictures of them.  There is no special police veil, no magic night and fog for Johnny Law.  Quite the reverse.
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* BTDT.  When something kind  of awful -- and still a little unclear -- happened in the neighborhood a while back and police arrived to arrest at least one of the people involved, they sat the person down on the step where the walk leading up to Roseholme Cottage T's off the sidewalk.  Is it 25 feet away?  Maybe, maybe not.