Is it legal to record conversations with police? If I am stopped by the police for questioning on the street, would I be within my rights to record the conversation on my phone to avoid any looseness with accounts of what was said on either side? Would the police officer be allowed to refuse my request to record the conversation? And what if my phone just happened to be on my body recording before any conversation was initiated? (I am asking this from the perspective of an Australian in Victoria - but I'm sure the answer from other jurisdictions would be interesting also.)
In New South Wales it is entirely legal to film police (or anyone else). However, as discussed (What is considered &quot;public&quot; in the context of taking videos or audio recordings?) audio recording is more restricted: you must either have the permission of all the participants in a conversation or be a party to the conversation. I do not imagine the law is any different in Victoria.
Is there any way I can defend myself against penalties when mistakes are made in my favor? Another option, in a similar vein to your suggestions, is to make a contemporaneous record of the conversations. Then send an email* to the public official detailing what was said and agreed, along with a request that they reply with any observations or amendments within a certain time frame. That way you have a date-stamped document properly addressed to the other party to use as evidence or leverage. *or a recorded delivery letter etc
This isn't about bullying at all, this is about Virginia being a "one-party" state. Virginia Law 19.2-62 outlines that: B.2 It shall not be a criminal offense under this chapter for a person to intercept a wire, electronic or oral communication, where such person is a party to the communication or one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception. However what is not said in the article is that the daughter didn't know that the recording device was in the backpack. This means that the mother did not get consent from either party being recorded (it isn't clear that a minor could give consent anyway), and is therefore in violation of 19.2-62. The (US) law has been quite clear on "two wrongs don't make a right", the mother was not getting satisfaction through other channels, but that does not mean she is right in violating the law in pursuit of justice. This is still very much in the early stages of this particular case, but I'm willing to bet that the mother will see very little if any punishment in this matter. As for why the DA doesn't prosecute the children (or their parents) for the bullying, this really depends on what kind of bullying is subject here. If the children are verbally bullying, this may not be a crime (yes, it is morally wrong, but may not be a crime). It isn't to say though that the children in this case haven't been reprimanded according to State law, at least the subject of the bullying has been moved to a different class as a result. Unless the bullying reaches a physical level, most State laws require the schools to deal with the bullying directly (through moving children to different classes, suspensions, expelling, etc), so the DA doesn't typically get involved until physical injury occurs.
It's illegal if the intent is to deceive. Under S50(1) of the Police Act 1996: Any person who with intent to deceive impersonates a member of a police force or special constable, or makes any statement or does any act calculated falsely to suggest that he is such a member or constable, shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or to both. Their intent would need to be proven. It will be fact-specific; in some cases far easier to prove than in others. The criminal justice system is overburdened and underfunded so it is no surprise that these trolling videos are given no priority whatsoever. Further complicating the matter is the need to correctly identify the individual to prosecute. Doing so would require a fair amount of police time, time that could perhaps be spent on more urgent priorities given the relative lack of harm these videos are doing compared to more serious crimes. However, in this video (Would You Help a Police Officer Having An Asthma Attack?) an S50(2) offence would seem to have been committed by the actor wearing the police clothing: Any person who, not being a constable, wears any article of police uniform in circumstances where it gives him an appearance so nearly resembling that of a member of a police force as to be calculated to deceive shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale. It does appear that both offences are being committed in these various videos, and the only reason people aren't being prosecuted is practical: there are more serious crimes to focus on, and the police would need to identify who exactly committed this crime--given these all happened at least two years ago, it would be challenging to say the least. They also seem to commit the separate crime of wasting police time, for example by approaching cops in the street and falsely confessing to crimes. Under S5(2) of the Criminal Law Act 1967, wasting police time is a criminal offence. Bringing proceedings in court requires the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) since those proceedings could have a chilling effect on the propensity of the public to report genuine matters to the police in the future. It is likely that while &quot;wasteful employment&quot; of police time was caused by these people, so committing the offence, it is likely viewed simply as &quot;part and parcel&quot; of the job and the officer likely didn't spend any time at all investigating the confessions (depending on their nature). Of course, even if the officer did spend time investigating the false confessions, the DPP would need to give their consent so unless the person has a demonstrated history of doing this (that would stand up in court) or the time wasted was of a particularly serious nature (e.g. the man who falsely claimed to be the Yorkshire Ripper), it seems unlikely consent would be granted.
The law 'doesn't care' how the call is recorded. What matters is whether or not you should inform / should have informed the participant(s) in the circumstances. In circumstances where you are acting as an ordinary member of the public, in the course of a purely personal or household activity, not in a journalistic capacity, regulated business or other circumstances where the rules may differ: In the UK it is not unlawful for a private person to record a phone call without the permission or foreknowledge of the other participant(s) - provided the recording is for 'personal use'. If you intend to share the content of the call with a third-party or make it public, then you must inform the person ahead of recording it. If you try to use a covertly recorded call as evidence in court, the court may or may not exclude it depending on the circumstances.
First, as Mark Johnson said. Second, the job of police and prosecutors is not to put people into jail, their job is to put guilty people into jail. If you go to the police and tell them that you beat up a person, then before they investigate, they know that either you are guilty of assault, or you mistakenly believe that you are guilty of assault, or you are a phantasist who enjoys confessing non-existing crimes to the police. The police will either investigate which one it is, and may prosecute you either for assault or for wasting police time, or they may decide based on your behaviour that there was never any assault and not investigate further. I suspect they will at least question you about details of the claimed assault, to decide whether the crime is real or not.
I'm no expert, but I had assumed this clause was present in case of the following situation. Joe is arrested for a robbery of a London bank. Joe says nothing under questioning. At trial, Joe's defense is that at the time of the robbery, he was in Sheffield drinking beer with his brother. On the basis of common sense, a jury could think: "Surely if Joe were really innocent, he would have told the police of his alibi at the time he was questioned, and saved himself a lot of trouble. Since he didn't do that, maybe a more likely explanation is that he wasn't actually in Sheffield, but that sometime between arrest and trial, he came up with the idea of faking an alibi in Sheffield, and convinced people to testify falsely to that effect. Yes, that does seem more plausible. So we are not going to give much credence to Joe's supposed alibi." So it really would be the case that not mentioning the alibi during questioning would harm Joe's defense at trial. The warning, then, is intended to keep Joe from doing this inadvertently. If Joe's alibi is genuine, but out of a misguided desire to exercise his right to remain silent, he doesn't mention it during questioning, he may accidentally increase his chances of being wrongly convicted. Everybody has an interest in avoiding this.
You acted illegally in assaulting your fellow student. When you are in public, a person can legally take your picture, and you are not allowed to assault a person because you do not like their legal actions. Any degree of force is excessive except in certain responses to illegal fource, and even the threat of force is excessive. You also have no right to demand that a person prove that they didn't take your picture, and certainly no right to enforce that demand with physical violence.