Those exceptions won't stop police from thinking you can't record them and using that as a reason to bust your phone followed by busting your lip. Him and his 5 buddies will go on to say that you provoked them and you'll never see justice.

In general, North American police are ignorant bullies who couldn't hack it through high school or college. Their maturity level is stuck in the past as well, usually never maturing past a 12th grade level.

Ok, so let's remove the ban and make it legal to record anyone.

Then you record a cop who doesn't want to be recorded. The cop beats you up, breaks your phone, and busts your lip. He and his five buddies say you provoked him, and you never see justice.

Problem solved?

It's partially solved.

You may have a chance to see justice because it won't matter if the cop and his 5 buddies say you provoked them with a camera. It's unambiguous that you can record them and there's no possibility of reasonable doubt if you're allowed to record them 100% of the time. There's no loophole they can use to say you can't record them due to privacy or safety or whatever other reasons they want to make up and they'll be in the wrong the second they take action against you.

Do you ever wonder why cops don't want bodycams on them recording 24/7? Their job is supposedly so difficult and dangerous (their words,) that you'd think they would want to show the entire world how difficult and dangerous their jobs are. Maybe people would agree with them about increasing their funding instead of calling to defund them if they had video proof of the difficulty and danger in their jobs instead of taking their word for it?

> they'll be in the wrong the second they take action against you

But like you said, they lied about you provoking them and destroyed the evidence showing that you didn't. Nobody will ever know that they beat you up just because you were recording.

I know why cops don't want body cams.

You quoted my conclusion without any context and ignored multiple crucial details:

> You may have a chance to see justice because it won't matter if the cop and his 5 buddies say you provoked them with a camera. It's unambiguous that you can record them and there's no possibility of reasonable doubt if you're allowed to record them 100% of the time. There's no loophole they can use to say you can't record them due to privacy or safety or whatever other reasons they want to make up and they'll be in the wrong the second they take action against you.

There won't be a lie they can spin because they won't have any justification for attacking a cameraman. Note I also said may and spoke of probabilities. Furthermore, I admitted it's only a partial solution so I'm not sure what gotcha you're going for here. I know it's not foolproof or perfect, it's merely better than what we currently have.

He could say you told him you had a gun, and brandished what looked like a gun. No reason to admit that it's really about the camera.

Cops can get away with literally shooting you in the back. Even outside qualified immunity cops can get away with a lot of things that are technically illegal. If it's a matter of testimony and it's five cops saying one thing and you saying something else, your chances aren't great.

But they already do that. There have already been cases of cops in the US arresting people for filming them. Not to mention cops have literally attacked journalists (not just "citizen journalists" but actual TV crews) at protests and destroyed their equipment.