Video of Eric Garner's death shook NYC. 10 years later, when is it OK to film the NYPD?

This month marks 10 years since a video of an NYPD officer killing Eric Garner went viral and launched a national outcry against police brutality. Now, with the spread of smartphones, filming police interactions is more common than ever.

As the anniversary of Garner's death approaches, here’s what you need to know about filming the NYPD.

Are you allowed to film the NYPD?

Yes. You have a First Amendment right to film the NYPD in public, as long as you don’t interfere with what they’re doing or break the law, according to Stephen Solomon, editor of First Amendment Watch at NYU.

“It’s an extraordinarily effective means of keeping public officials accountable,” he said.

Civil rights attorney Remy Green, who represents victims of police abuse from the Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street movements, added that filming police can sometimes change their behavior.

“Often when somebody is filming, the police will behave better,” Green said.

What are the rules?

Stay on public property. Filming alleged police misconduct from a sidewalk or street is usually permissible, according to Solomon. But you can’t zoom in with your camera through someone’s apartment window to film police who are inside, he said.

You’re also not allowed to interfere with what police are doing. Solomon recommends standing 10 to 20 feet away to avoid interrupting police activity, which is a low-level crime punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

You can film inside police precincts — at least for now. A federal judge ordered the NYPD to stop enforcing a ban on filming inside precincts after a man claimed the policy violated the Constitution. The man, social media personality SeanPaul Reyes, also known as “the Long Island Audit,” was arrested for filming inside two Brooklyn precincts. He sued the NYPD, and that case is ongoing.

But accountability remains elusive despite video evidence. In nearly half of NYPD misconduct cases in 2022, officials disciplined officers by revoking just one to 10 vacation days , or suspending the officer for one to 10 days.

In other cases, people filming police often can’t identify the officer by name, which makes it difficult for the NYPD or the Civilian Complaint Review Board — the city's police oversight agency — to investigate the incident.

NYPD officers are required to provide their name and badge number if you ask, though you should wait until they’re not in the middle of an arrest or police stop, Green said.

“You can have the worst misconduct in the world, but if you can't identify the officer, it's not going anywhere,” the attorney, Green, said.

The NYPD patrol guide mandates that police officers cannot prevent people from recording police activity, discourage them from filming or delete their footage. Officers are also not allowed to arrest people for recording police, noting their names or shield numbers, criticizing the police, refusing to leave the area or using “crude or vulgar speech,” according to NYPD guidelines.

What are the risks of filming police encounters?

Sometimes, the person filming alleged police misconduct becomes part of the story.

On July 12, 2014, 22-year-old Ramsey Orta filmed NYPD officers beating a Black man on a Staten Island sidewalk. A crowd of people are shown in the video pleading with officers to stop hitting Garner with a baton as he laid face down, arms behind his back.

“Don’t worry, I got the whole sh— on camera,” Orta shouted to the man as police arrested him.

About a minute later, a plainclothes officer is seen demanding that Orta stand further away.

“Back the f— up,” he yelled. “Film that sh— over there.”

NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo choked Garner to death five days later as Orta, Garner’s friend, filmed. The incident prompted a national movement against police brutality, and Garner's cries of "I can't breathe" becoming a protest slogan.

Orta claimed he was repeatedly targeted by the NYPD in the days and months after Garner’s death. Police arrested Orta two weeks later, claiming he planted a gun on a 17-year-old girl. He told reporters it was a setup , and that the officer who arrested him said, “Karma’s a b—, what goes around comes around.”

Months later, Orta posted two videos on YouTube claiming NYPD officers in Staten Island’s 120th Precinct followed and stopped him without reason.

What should you do with footage of police misconduct?

There are no restrictions on where people can use video they recorded themselves on public property, and people often share such videos on social media or with news organizations . You can also submit the footage to the CCRB.

You can file complaints of police misconduct to the CCRB by tagging the agency on Instagram or Twitter or by completing a complaint form online.

Correction: Due to an editing error, a previous version of this story misidentified a Black man who was filmed being beaten by police in a July 12, 2014 incident.