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Simon Glik
The City of Boston paid for arresting a man who filmed the police.
What happened
In 2007, on Boston Common, attorney Simon Glik openly used his cell phone to record Boston police officers forcefully arresting another man.
The officers arrested Glik himself. He was charged with illegal wiretapping, aiding the escape of a prisoner, and disturbing the peace. A judge threw out the charges.
The lawsuit
Glik sued with the ACLU of Massachusetts — Glik v. Cunniffe, decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in 2011 (655 F.3d 78). His § 1983 suit claimed First and Fourth Amendment violations.
The First Circuit held that the First Amendment protects recording police officers doing their duties in public, that the right was "clearly established," and that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity.
The outcome
In March 2012, the City of Boston settled for $170,000 in damages and legal fees. Two of the arresting officers were disciplined by Internal Affairs for "unreasonable judgment," and Boston created training so officers would not arrest people who openly record police.
No public incident video exists for this case — the record that matters is the court opinion itself, which became the landmark ruling other recording cases still stand on. (Some pages online misdate the settlement to 2016. It was 2012.)
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