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Police Charged A Woman For Recording Them Holding A Black Man At Gunpoint. Now, They Owe Her

A woman charged with a mis­de­meanor for record­ing Minnesota police offi­cers hold­ing two Black men at gun­point set­tled her fed­er­al law­suit against the city for $70,000, accord­ing to the Star Tribune. In addi­tion to mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion, the city also agreed to pol­i­cy reform with­in the police department.
Arizona recent­ly attempt­ed to make record­ing police encoun­ters ille­gal but they sure­ly weren’t the first to try. Some of these restric­tions don’t look like laws but instead a mis­de­meanor. Take Amy Koopman for exam­ple. Koopman, a white woman, went on Facebook live in 2018 to record an inter­ac­tion between Robbinsdale police and two Black men. She was only one of many peo­ple who crowd­ed around the inter­sec­tion, wait­ing anx­ious­ly to see if the police would fire at the two as their guns were drawn.

A woman charged with a mis­de­meanor for record­ing Minnesota police offi­cers hold­ing two Black men at gun­point set­tled her fed­er­al law­suit against the city for $70,000, accord­ing to the Star Tribune. In addi­tion to mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion, the city also agreed to pol­i­cy reform with­in the police department.
Arizona recent­ly attempt­ed to make record­ing police encoun­ters ille­gal but they sure­ly weren’t the first to try. Some of these restric­tions don’t look like laws but instead a mis­de­meanor. Take Amy Koopman for exam­ple. Koopman, a white woman, went on Facebook live in 2018 to record an inter­ac­tion between Robbinsdale police and two Black men. She was only one of many peo­ple who crowd­ed around the inter­sec­tion, wait­ing anx­ious­ly to see if the police would fire at the two as their guns were drawn.
“Three squad cars with three offi­cers out of their cars, guns drawn on what I could see at the time was one Black man,” Koopman said via CBS News. “Because what was in my mind [was] Philando Castile.”
Koopman talked to the offi­cers from a dis­tance and after she put her phone away, they charged her with obstruct­ing the legal process.
Her charges were lat­er dropped by a Hennepin County judge.

More on the case from Star Tribune:

A Hennepin County judge dis­missed charges against Koopman after find­ing that “no rea­son­able offi­cer could con­strue [Koopman’s] shout­ing as ‘phys­i­cal­ly obstruct­ing or inter­fer­ing’ in the per­for­mance of their duties.” Attorneys rep­re­sent­ing the city in the fed­er­al law­suit argued that Koopman’s claims were barred by the legal doc­trines of qual­i­fied and offi­cial immunity.

In a state­ment Tuesday, Jason Hively, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the city, con­firmed that Robbinsdale and its insur­er, the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust, agreed to pay Koopman $70,000 in exchange for a release of the city and its police offi­cers from her law­suit. He also con­firmed that the city agreed to non­mon­e­tary terms relat­ed to poli­cies, pro­ce­dures, and training.

“The City and Insurance Trust deter­mined that resolv­ing this mat­ter at this ear­ly stage would avoid the attor­neys’ fees and costs asso­ci­at­ed with going to tri­al,” Hively said.

The ACLU took on Koopman’s law­suit and demand­ed the pol­i­cy reforms must include Robbinsdale police acknowl­edg­ing that it is in fact legal to be record­ed by cit­i­zens. They must also be sub­ject to dis­ci­pline if they try to retal­i­ate against those who do so by slap­ping them with a mis­de­meanor like they did Koopman.

Koopman stands by her actions and said in a state­ment she hopes “this puts oth­er police depart­ments on notice that there are cit­i­zens who are film­ing them.” Boy, I tell ya. There are plen­ty of traf­fic stop videos I see come across my time­line and as soon as that offi­cer sees they’re being record­ed, they become tense and some­times hostile.

Video record­ing is pret­ty much the only way to catch evi­dence offi­cial mis­con­duct. Though, the proof itself isn’t enough some­times to bring about accountability.