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PRECEDENTIAL
No. 16-1650
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RICHARD FIELDS,
Appellant
v.
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No. 16-1651
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AMANDA GERACI,
Appellant
v.
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Pepper Hamilton
217 Ryers Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19103
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________________
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I. BACKGROUND
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video also fills the gaps created when police choose not to
record video or withhold their footage from the public. See
Natl Police Accountability Project Amicus Br. 7 (noting that
[a] recent survey of 50 major police departments policies on
body cameras revealed that many policies either failed to
make clear when officers must turn on their body cameras,
gave officers too much discretion when to record, or failed to
require explanations when officers did not record) (citation
omitted).
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V. QUALIFIED IMMUNITY
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law at the time of our cases (2012 and 2013) gave fair
warning so that every reasonable officer knew that, absent
some sort of expressive intent, recording public police
activity was constitutionally protected. Accordingly, the
officers are entitled to qualified immunity.
* * * * *
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Two more recent decisions reinforce the trend. See Turner
v. Lieutenant Driver, 848 F.3d 678 (5th Cir. 2017); Gericke v.
Begin, 753 F.3d 1 (1st Cir. 2014).
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Professor, University of Pennsylvania Law School.
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