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Charges reduced for police officer who secretly taped colleagues’ racist remarks
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
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Unfortunately US two party laws were made as a knee-jerk reaction to Nixon's wiretapping; the US doesn't deal in "expectations of privacy" like more sensible countries do.
Making an audio recording should be no different to getting out a pen and paper and making a written recording. Keeping a personal record should not be a crime. It's what you do with the recording that matters.
But that's how things should be, the law is often not right in this area. As others have said, the whistleblower broke the law here.
That's going to be decided by the judicial system. It's perfectly legal to record officers while they are on duty. The debate will be whether being on the clock and in a police station is the same as operating in their official capacity. Which I think is a pretty easy argument to make in court.
Absolutely. Like I've hinted at, the US is kind of unique in this black and white one party/two party consent structure. Other countries deal in "expectations of privacy", which is far more nuanced, and dare I say it, more sensible.
It's legal for a member of the public to record an officer on duty. There is a question of whether they are considered on duty (sounds like maybe? It was senior officers formally training other officers, not some private locker room conversation) and also whether an officer can record another. It's perhaps a different legal dynamic between a member of the public and an officer, vs two officers.
How it plays out depends on the law. Like you say, he has a strong argument against a criminal conviction - and he shouldn't really be convicted of any crime either. But it does sound like he broke the letter of the law in that jurisdiction.