As the mid-summer heat scorches much of the nation, a different kind of pressure is mounting on city streets. From Los Angeles to Dallas, students, political activists and journalists are no longer just subjects of public discussion. They’re becoming targets of surveillance, executive intimidation and, in some cases, victims of law enforcement’s excessive force. Across the country, including here in Texas, numerous protestors have been arrested, journalists shot with rubber bullets, and students intimidated or silenced, often for doing something as simple as holding up a phone to record the police. We are seeing in real time the effects of ambiguity: when everyone is confused about what the law really means, the people enforcing it start making those decisions for all of us. The question then becomes how these vague laws enable authorities to silence people for exercising their rights.
On June 15, 36 protestors were detained in Los Angeles in just one night for curfew violations, many while documenting excessive police force. One ABC7 reporter was shot with a rubber bullet live on air while filming. Meanwhile, in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott preemptively deployed the National Guard ahead of the June 14 “No Kings Day” protests, a pushback against state-sanctioned militarism and creeping authoritarianism. As students, many of us assume that our constitutional rights will protect us. We believe that our phones can serve as pillars of accountability and perhaps justice. However, Texas state law paints a far more worrying picture.
Several circuit courts such as the Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth, among other courts, have all ruled in favor of a general right to record police officers while performing their official duties in public spaces. This is because the specific text of the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech and of the press, and the Fourth Amendment, which safeguards citizens against unlawful searches and seizures. But Texas law enforcement doesn’t always uphold these protections in practice. And recently, neither do campus or municipal police forces.
Texas Penal Code §38.15, for instance, criminalizes anyone who “interrupts, disrupts, impedes or otherwise interferes with” the duties of a public servant on paper. Sounds reasonable, until you realize how malleable that phrase becomes during a protest. Officers have used it to arrest people merely standing nearby with phones. When a bystander is documenting from a sidewalk, holding a phone steady, and still gets cuffed for “criminal interference,” the law is ultimately used to protect police from scrutiny, rather than protecting them from harm or physical interference. Officers have used it to arrest people merely standing nearby with phones and have used other laws as pretext to prevent filming. Even at UTD, professor Ali Asgar Alibhai was “violently arrested” while filming a peaceful campus protest, per the lawsuit he filed against the school.
Here at UTD, protecting political expression has lately become a necessity. Whether this means organizing walkouts, painting rocks or rallying against immigration raids, we as students are an integral part of a generation that understands the value of documentation. In fact, many of us have unintentionally become de facto journalists that cover news in real time, often before it even hits the press. But consequently, we also face increased risks. Campus police aren’t bound by the same transparency expectations as city departments. Bodycam policies are becoming opaque, arrest records are becoming hard to access and the concept of police discretionary authority, choosing when to keep their bodycams on or off, has become incredibly vague and broad.
Campus officials and municipal officers are often active manipulators of legal ambiguity. In late 2023, UTD’s administration abruptly removed the student-painted Spirit Rocks, which were once a symbol of free expression, citing similar ambiguous “safety concerns.” The same tactic is used in policing. When protests heat up, legal ambiguity becomes a legislative safety net to suppress free speech. This makes filming police crucial, because documentation cuts through that ambiguity, creating an undeniable record when law enforcement attempts to change that narrative.
In a world where law enforcement is increasingly equipped with bodycams, drones, facial recognition and AI surveillance, the smartphone remains the last resource available to American civilians. It serves as our way of fighting back. Recordings often deter misconduct in the moment, since officers know their actions may later be scrutinized by a court, the press or the public. Videos of police encounters have been used as critical evidence in trials and exposed abuses that otherwise might have gone unnoticed.
Multiple federal cases make clear that the right to film exists, but how and when it’s exercised can shape whether you walk home or get arrested. Courts across the country have decided on cases such as Glik v. Cunniffe (2011), Turner v. Driver (2017), and Fordyce v. City of Seattle (1995), all of which decide that the First Amendment protects our right to record public officials, including the police. Courts have recently held that bystanders cannot interfere with police operations, must stand at a reasonable distance and must not obstruct active investigations. But the definitions of ‘reasonable’ and ‘obstruction’ can be manipulated easily, through states like Texas’ police-favoring legal system, leaving students as collateral damage when police scramble to hide their actions.
You have the right to record public officials in public spaces, including police officers performing their duties, just as long as you are not “interfering” with their work. You do not need consent to film these interactions, and authorities cannot legally force you to delete your footage without a warrant, due to Fourth Amendment restrictions. On a college campus, these rights still apply, but campus administrators may interpret what counts as “interference,” which can then affect how these rights are enforced in practice.
While we can’t change state law overnight, we can resist through knowledge, education and a refusal to be silenced by selective enforcement. We can write, record, speak and hold our police, campus security and university leadership accountable, because, when the camera becomes a threat, that’s when we know it is doing its job.