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Tipped off by blogs that there would be a big crowd at the Aug. 26 high-speed rail meeting, a Menlo Park police officer videotaped the crowd in the hopes of deterring violence among groups of protesters.
Police estimate that about 600 people gathered at the meeting convened by Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Menlo Park. When the Menlo Park City Council chambers reached its capacity of 170, the remaining 400 or so attendees and protesters filled folding chairs, pressed their noses to the windows, or milled around outside the building and listened in via loudspeaker.
While the meeting was a question-and-answer session with a panel of high-speed rail experts, members of MoveOn.org and other groups billed it as a health-care town hall meeting and urged supporters to show up — and they did.
An actual town hall meeting on health care held by Rep. Eshoo, D-Menlo Park, is set for Wednesday, Sept. 2, at Spangenberg Theatre at Gunn High School, 780 Arastradero Road in Palo Alto.
Taking video of a large crowd is a standard police practice, said spokeswoman Nicole Acker. If there’s a crime, the footage can be used as evidence, but mostly the presence of a camera encourages people to keep their cool.
“It’s a deterrent to keep people from acting out,” Ms. Acker said.
Police communicated with the heads of the various protest groups, which included the Raging Grannies, anti-reform “Tea Party” protesters, and a satirical group called Billionaires for Wealthcare, to make sure they knew what kind of behavior would and wouldn’t be OK, Ms. Acker said.
There was no violence and were no arrests. “Thankfully, nothing happened,” she said. “They didn’t disrupt the meeting, which was our goal.”
Taping a public gathering doesn’t go against privacy laws, Ms. Acker said.
“It’s a public forum, so there’s no violation of the expectation of privacy,” she said.
To MPPD Chief. So, since there were no problems you will be destroying the tape?
Everytime you are in a store, bank, mall, building, etc, you are on video and now with red light cameras you are on when you drive too. Who cares? If you are in public and not committing criminal acts, there is no issue. This tactic clearly worked, and everyone behaved. No beatings, no riots, no rights violations, just peaceful disagreement as it should be. Good work MPPD.
“Who Cares,” I care. There are plausible arguments to be made on both sides of this issue, and the one you apparently don’t care about is the position that this was an action that is uncomfortably close to police state tactics.
In the interests of not overreacting, I won’t make such an accustion. But I will join 1984 in his/her implicit demand that the tape be destroyed. How about it, Chief Goitia? City Council?
Nervous…thank you for our post. Thank you for not resorting to characther assassination. I greatly respect the manner in which you present yourself. I appreciate when we can disagree and have a civil discourse.
I was not trying to be flippant or offensive, but wanted to point out that we are on video a lot more than people realize. I am not for trading freedom for security, because then you end up with neither. I am also not a fan of the government invading my privacy. I do, however, think that when in public, especially at a public event, the expectation of privacy goes away.
Had this meeting gone south, the police would have had a place to start their investigation. Thankfully, it did not. I am not sure a small town PD has the time or money to keep tabs on us, but since nothing happened, I will concur with you in that there is now no reason to keep the tape.
I respect your points, but I still disagree in some regard, in that I think it is fine to video such events. Have a good day.
The problem is really what the Menlo Park police do with their recorded evidence.
This department has the questionable habit of stopping and detaining people, particularity minorities, with no real cause except for, perhaps, having strayed into the city on the day a crime occurred and then photographing them and saving the photographs in files for —– reasons. One can fill in the blank with many different possibilities but none of them seem to align particularly well with our Bill of Rights.
Well, Chief Goitia – we’d love to hear your response. If the city council won’t let you respond then maybe the city attorney can respond.
I am a 15-year resident of Linfield Oaks. I am middle aged and drive sedately. I still get stopped at least once every few months on little or no pretext. You guessed it – I am a minority. On one occasion the policeman was looking at my driver’s license with my address clearly shown on it and asked me “Where are you from?”. I do not for one moment believe that the Menlo Park police had only public safety in mind when they videotaped the meeting. I too would like to see a response from the chief as to what is being done with the tape.
Maybe they can show us the tape in a few years and I can see if I look any fatter 🙂
Folks can try emailing the Chief Giotia directly at PoliceChief@menlopark.org for a response as to what the plans are for the video.
Taking video of a large crowd is a standard police practice, said spokeswoman Nicole Acker. If there’s a crime, the footage can be used as evidence, but mostly the presence of a camera encourages people to keep their cool.
Put a camera up and you entice trouble.
Anybody have tape of this “Officer of the Menlo Park Police Dept.” ?
From the bottom of the Chief Giotia’s official MP web page – we are “…part of a team here in Menlo Park that helps to make this city an enjoyable place to live, work, and visit.”
Don’t forget to add “and be videotaped.”
By the way in light of the city budget problems perhaps the police dept can sell folks their pictures like they do at the end of rides at amusement parks. Oh never mind, none of the folks at the meeting were screaming or making weird faces – they were just sitting and standing and talking and being quite normal law-abiding citizens.
Yes, video recording us has become standard practice in a variety of settings. Especially the gathering of crowds. Yes, we are drifting into a fascist state. Slowly, to be sure. It’s like the frog in tepid water which is starting to heat up and our poor friend, rather than leaping out, boils to death. There is much videotaping in authoritarian countries. Oddly enough, the Brits. have really taken to street cameras. The nom de plume of 1984, “Brave New World,” is appropriate. Our civil rights and freedoms, although protected by the Constitution, are eroding. Crimes have been, and will continue to be committed by our law enforcement organizations, all in the name of “security.”
I am a refugee from a fascist country. My childhood was in a police state. Dear friends, citizens, residents. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I believe that videotaping protesters really helped the Iranian government identify and arrest anyone who opposes the current regime.
Martin Engel is spot on! Remember facism is national socialism. Our country is heading that way with soft socialism. It is done in in small increments so that the public won’t get upset. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama are taking aggeessive measures to erode our privacy and rights under the constitution.
We must repudiate this dangerous slide into socialism by voting the majority out of power in the mid-term elections and vote for candidates who are commited to Capitalism. A good guide to knowing who to vote for is to look at the Almanac recommendations and then vote for the other candidate.
Ayn Rand for Congress! Oh, I forgot, she’s dead – as dead as her foolish ideas.
Karl Marx for Congress, Vladamir Illyich Lenin for Senate, Saul Alinsky for President! Oh I forgot, they are dead as their foolish ideas.
Hank Lawrence Ooh, check under your bed for Reds. What a lot of nonsense. We live in a violent society and a videotape, like any police surveillance, is a useful tool for crime prevention. Are you also opposed to being taped while robbing a store? Who knows what store owners do with those tapes. Ooh–shades of Marxism.
Dear Maria,
In high crime places surveillance cameras are indeed warranted. But to have these cameras at peaceful political events to stifle healthy debate and to identify political foes for futher surveillance is chilling and beneath contempt.
The people on the left who seek to have greater government intervention in our private lives are seriously in need of a twelve step program in order to kick the Nancy Pelosi Kool-Aid habit.
Maria you’re so right. Why is it that President Bush (who’s election in 2000 was questionable) and crazy Cheney who started torturing people, a huge war in Iraq based on lies to the public about weapons of mass destruction, paid a crazy billionaire millions to send his paramilitary “consultants” to do jobs our military should be doing (in the process these goons from blackwater kill innocent civilians and make our servicemen even more hated by Iraqis) are finally not in power and people are NOW telling me to worry about facism and the government.
Please, I trust Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and President Obama completely. We’re lucky they have the stomach for even trying to clean up the mess created over the last eight years.
Hank, you must be either a masochist, a financial genius who survived the past two years without losing major capital, or were never in the market when it all went south if you think the unbridled capitalism of the recent past was a great success. Were you in a coma last fall when the capitalist system was bailed out by the government at the pleading of President Bush’s treasury secretary?