As the incidence of police violence increases, one of the best things you can do to protect yourself is to document things.
Not just in writing, but on tape.
In some states, it is illegal to tape a conversation without giving notice to the other person.
However, it would be advisable to take that with a pinch of salt. It’s always better to have tapes.
If you have tapes from beginning to end, of course, you’re bullet proof. A cheap camcorder is enough to keep you sleeping peacefully. That, and plenty of friends in high places, whom you keep regularly informed.
It doesn’t mean they might not try bullets anyway, but it does mean that any such caper will result in international headlines and footsteps right up to their doors.
I mean, not every cop can be bought off even at the highest levels.
And when that begins, see the rats jumping ship themselves and throwing each other over board.
I recommend recording police — openly, secretly, or both — at every opportunity. However, note that in Chicago, being recorded (or listened to) may not stop harrassment or false arrest on bogus charges. It happened to me. While I was in the midst of a cell phone conversation with my co-worker. The cops (who were called on me by some paranoid while I was in the midst of a job involving door-to-door canvassing) didn’t like me politely asking questions: such as: “what’s going on? Am I being detained?” and warned me that if I didn’t stop asking questions they were going to haul me in. On what charge? I asked. The reply was, pretty much whatever they feel like throwing at me. They ordered me to shut off the phone; I refused, and instead, I demanded their badge numbers. That’s when they jumped on me, snatched my phone (which I didn’t get it back for two days) and threw me in the car.
My co-worker heard everything that had transpired, yet the punks had no concern about that. ON the way to the station, I reminded them that they would be personally liable for violating my civil rights. “Yeah,” one of them jeered. “We all got rights. Rights, and lefts, and ups, and downs.”
That was before the IL eavesdropping law was overturned. They could have charged me with that, I supposed, but they “only” decided to go with trespassing and the all-purpose “disturbing the peace.” Of course, the punks never showed up in court and the charges were dropped. Through a bit of spycraft, I did come up with their names and numbers while in the lockup. However, no lawyer I talked to would initiate any kind of action, since I wasn’t violated physically and false arrests here are a dime a dozen.
I replied to one lawyer, “Well, they were extremely unprofessional.”
“Of course,” he laughed. “They’re the Chicago Police Department.”
Eventually, I just dropped the issue. At that time, I considered legal interest too low and my time to be too valuable to spend much of it suing cops. Maybe I was wrong.