Doug Ducey, the governor of Arizona, signed a law that would prohibit anyone from recording videos within eight feet of police activity. According to John Kavanagh, a state representative and the sponsor of the bill, the new law would protect people from dangerous situations. However, the law is coming under fire from many news outlets, who say that it is a violation of free speech.

In the past few years, video recordings of police activity have turned out to be very helpful. Darnella Frazier’s recording of the police officer Derek Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd uncovered the truth behind the Minneapolis Police Department’s inaccurate description of his death.

Alan Chen, a law professor at the Univeristy of Denver, also had questions about the new law. How should people respond if the police officer approaches them? If people are cited and fined when police approach them, they might stay even further than eight feet away.

Kavanagh responded to these criticisms, saying that an early version of the bill stated that people had to stay 15 feet away from police activity, and the law had improved. He wrote, “I can think of no reason why any responsible person would need to come closer than 8 feet to a police officer engaged in a hostile or potentially hostile encounter. Such an approach is unreasonable, unnecessary and unsafe, and should be made illegal.”