RCMP All Pissed Off A Private Business Told It To Get A Warrant If It Wanted A Copy Of Parking Lot Camera Footage
from the lol-omg-cry-more dept
Say what you will about the general politeness of Canadians and the genteel nature of their secondhand Britishness, but never forget their cops can be just as petty and vindictive as our cops.
Law enforcement entities everywhere have a massive sense of entitlement. Officers and officials tend to think that people should comply with whatever they say, never question any assertions they make, and give them whatever they ask for without providing the proper paperwork.
The fact is that people aren’t obliged to give cops things they’re only supposed to be able to obtain with warrants. Voluntary consent eliminates this obligation, and that’s fine as long as it’s actual informed consent.
But cops tend to get all shitty when they’re unable to obtain stuff without warrants. Rejected requests for consent are often treated as inherently suspicious. Reluctance to cooperate (without the existence of court orders compelling more) is viewed as obstruction and, sometimes, results in criminal charges (or at least an arrest) even when the person being badgered by cops is completely in the right.
This report of a Canadian bar’s refusal to voluntarily relinquish its parking lot recordings contains plenty of statements from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and others in the law enforcement field. And every single statement makes it clear Canadian law enforcement believes they’re owed whatever evidence might be available and should never be inconvenienced (even momentarily) by demands officers go get a warrant they could easily obtain within minutes.
A shooting happened outside of the Cactus Club Cafe and the RCMP asked anyone in the area to come forward with any recordings they might have of the area the shooting took place in. The RCMP approached the club and was told it needed to obtain a warrant if it wanted copies of the club’s parking lot footage.
As the owners of the restaurant chain pointed out in its statement to Canada’s Global News, this is standard operating procedure for the company.
“The process of requesting a production order before releasing surveillance footage is a standard practice put in place across all of our locations. This protects privacy and ensures we’re following the law.”
Which is, of course, the way it should be. The company should comply with court orders but it should not feel obligated to hand over footage obtained by its cameras without one.
Everyone else — including the national association representing bars and restaurants — appears to feel the Cactus Club is in the wrong.
“The general protocol is for people to give up, not just restaurants, but people to give up video to help and assist the police in a manner that’s fairly quick,” said president and CEO Ian Tostenson.
Totenson heads up British Columbia’s Restaurant and Food Service Association. But rather than advocate for the rights of the private companies he represents, he has chosen to present the Cactus Club as some sort of scofflaw, even if all it did was ask to see a warrant before handing over recordings that can only be obtained with a warrant or consent.
That demand for the proper paperwork was apparently a first for the RCMP, which seemingly feels it shouldn’t need to seek warrants when there’s [checks article again] suspected criminal activity occurring. Here’s just one of the statements made by British Columbia’s “visibly upset” public safety minister.
“It’s the first time it’s crossed my desk that there has been a refusal to initially comply with police request for video,” Mike Farnworth told Global News in an interview Tuesday.
Well, that’s a shame. Too many private entities are being far too compliant. There’s no legal obligation to consent to warrantless searches of any private property, including recordings created with privately-owned cameras. Just because most people turn over footage voluntarily doesn’t make the Cactus Club wrong. It just means most people don’t care about their rights, much less the precedent they’re inadvertently setting — the sort of low bar that ensures law enforcement officers will be easily offended (and pettily vindictive) the moment anyone provides the least bit of (explicitly legal!) resistance.
And it’s not just the RCMP. It’s also the mayor of Coquitlam, where this particular club is located.
“For a local business to insist that the RCMP get a warrant for information that they might have that could lead to an arrest is outrageous…”
It definitely is not “outrageous.” It’s exactly within their well-established rights. The RCMP has an obligation to obtain consent or a warrant. It failed to get consent. It did, as the article notes, secure a warrant and the footage investigators were seeking. Everything worked out. And one would logically assume it didn’t take much to secure the warrant, considering the strong likelihood the restaurant’s cameras captured footage of the shooting.
So, why all the shouting? Well, it appears that everyone from the RCMP official to the mayor to the head of a private retail association believes cops should never have to get a warrant when investigating crimes. Holy shit, what a statement to make, even implicitly.
And somehow, it gets even worse. The club’s decision to exercise its rights has been met with explicit retaliation by the BC government. Here’s more from the BC public safety minister, who apparently sees nothing wrong with punishing a company for asking to see a warrant:
In the most recent case, Farnworth said the province has since amended the terms and conditions of the Barnet Highway Cactus Club’s liquor licence.
“They must have video surveillance and they must provide it to the police or a liquor inspector upon request,” said the public safety minister.
A warrant is a “request,” you fool. And yet, this entity has decided to “amend” a liquor license of this one club to force it to comply with warrantless demands for private camera footage — something that clearly falls outside of its legal obligations. But now, it’s the law of land — a law that now explicitly singles out a single business with a compelled compliance mandate.
Hopefully, the Cactus Club will sue. This is clearly retaliatory. It’s now subject to mandates that don’t apply to other liquor license holders in British Columbia… just the one that did nothing more than ask the RCMP to respect its rights as a private business.
Filed Under: canada, privacy, rcmp, surveillance, warrant
Companies: cactus club
Comments on “RCMP All Pissed Off A Private Business Told It To Get A Warrant If It Wanted A Copy Of Parking Lot Camera Footage”
So essentially at every step of government they just showed that they put themselves above the law and are all corrupt.
Pigs is pigs.
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… and farmers is farmers.
And sometimes, it is difficult to tell the difference.
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That is deeply offensive and you should be ashamed of furthering such a derogatory stereotype. Actual pigs are much smarter and more friendly than law enforcement and do not deserve to have their image and reputation slandering by being compared to the latter.
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Exactly. Pigs are intelligent and delicious, and police officers are neither. You may think I’m joking but this is actually why I don’t call cops “pigs”.
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That’s it. Pump out that anti-police hate speech.
Saying the quiet part out loud
When that many people in government freak out over the idea of law enforcement having to follow the law, going so far as to mandate surveillance that can be demanded on a whim they just gave away how much they loathe the law and rights of the public.
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Not just that. They essentially stated that anyone who doesn’t do what the cops want regardless of the law should be treated as a criminal.
It’s damn shame that the video recordings were deleted, don’t exist, and/or they forgot to turn on the cameras.
All of the above are apparently valid reasons for the police to fail to produce bodycam footage that would make an incident more clear, so we know they are valid and defensible claims.
So the bar is now required to maintain a surveillance system to which the RCMP has no-questions-asked access? What are we doing?
So, someone who could have just said, “No, we don’t have anything relevant”, if they indeed wanted to be obstructive, instead says, “Sure we do, please get a warrant”. So, instead of anyone taking five minutes to get a warrant, we get bullshit from multiple people and groups, inside and outside government. And we also get a highly retaliatory Special Condition attached to a business licence. Which seems like, if it were in the US, would be unconstitutional in procedure if not in fact.
Law enforcement is well aware of their responsibilities regarding obtaining warrants prior to demanding evidence, they have become lazy and belligerent, not unlike a tennage adolescent.
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And much like a spoiled small child they’ve gotten so used to never being told ‘no’ that they throw a massive tantrum screaming about the unfairness the first time someone actually does.
RCMP All Pissed Off???
Nothing in the article mentions any reactions from the RCMP. It’s all third parties getting pissed off on the RCMPs behalf.
Serving up Standard fare
It is standard fare that most incidents making the TV (or radio) news regarding a violent incident, especially those including gang violence, as well as most traffic incidents resulting in injury, the news anchor ends the piece with “Police are asking anyone who lives in the area or those with dashcams who were nearby at the time of the incident to share security footage with the police”. Occasionally, this is a reiteration of an officer’s actual request.
Interestingly, almost every time someone has shared with the TV news, video footage of a police involved incident, the standard response from the police is along the lines of “The video shown does not tell the whole story and is just one perspective. The incident is being reviewed (internally or by the Independent Investigations Office (IIO) ). We ask witnesses to share any additional footage with the police”.
Several years ago, following a tragic hit and run over 2 kms away on a perpendicular collector road, police came knocking on every residence asking us to review and share any security footage we may have.
The restaurant chain in question is also a member of “Barwatch”, an almost 30 year old program which collects digital personal ID of patrons to establishments, shared amongst the association members which works closely with police to bar “undesirable” persons or a “troublemakers” from entering any of the establishments. It also works closely with local police detachments and even Transit.
The program managed to put a serious dent in gang activity within the bars and restaurants. Today’s incidents are shootings on the street and their gun and run / drive-by nature has lead to much more collateral damage.
On the one hand, I applaud the restaurant for a policy demanding a warrant and would expect this to be the case, but given the near universal industry (and business) co-operation, why is this odd? Why not this time? Have there been other times perhaps where they called for police help and maybe been left hanging?
For the provincial liquor licensing authority and AG’s office to mandate the restaurant comply with such police requests for an incident OUTSIDE of their establishment is definite overreach. There’s no suggestion anyone involved attended the restaurant. Had the incident occurred within the premises, that would perhaps be a different matter, especially given the Barwatch membership.
There’s more to this story, but it’s rare that the news media ever follow-up on the stories. If there’s an arrest and charges years alter, it’s rare people even make the association back to original incident.
Fictional cops set a bad example
I must have seen hundreds of cops on TV or in films saying variations of, “You give us what we want or we’ll come back here with a search warrant and tear this place apart.” But the ones they’re saying it to are invariably scumbags, so it’s all OK.
gunna need another box of crayons!
if you can’t respect peoples rights or the the law….then you have no business enforcing it!
How much do the local law enforcement agencies pay for access to the private video produced by the doorbell cams?
This nation is based upon capitalism, why are the police getting something for free .. this some sort of socialism??? I think a few dollars every month ought to be enough for each household that allows access 24/7 to the doorbell cam. And then the homeowner would receive royalties, each time the video is viewed .. idk how about 50 cents. And if it is used on one of those funny video tv shows, that should be worth way more.
/s
If someone were to sue over you releasing footage of them, a police warrant for that footage provides a strong defense. If you release that footage of your own according, you would likely still win, but the case would be more expensive and there would be a very real possibility of your defeat. A warrant also ensures that you are only surrendering footage that is directly relevant to the case at hand (better for the police as well as those on camera). I don’t know the law in Canada/BC super well, so I can’t be too precise about the mechanisms involved, but warrants help protect any third parties surrendering information just like they protect the police themselves.
If you want bars and other third parties who may have footage of crimes to give you that footage willingly, it helps if you don’t pit them at risk unnecessarily just because they helped you.
But it doesn’t come as any surprise that police were more interested in power games than in actually handling the major crime they were supposed to be solving.
Taking bets there wasn’t even a crime. Just a drunk cop who saw a hot woman getting into her car at night and wants to get her license plate to sexually abuse and stalk her using official systems.