Posted on 01/07/2012 4:45:29 PM PST by apoliticalone
“Although Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes says the city will abide by the court’s decision, Egan told King 5 TV that the Washington privacy act prevents the footage from being made public until the final disposition of related litigation. That is, until the officers can no longer be sued for what they did in the video.”
This is not a case of a city asking a court to tell it what to do.
Egan has an agenda, nothing he says should be taken at face value.
Look at it this way, what happens if the City releases the video and then they are sued under the privacy statute?
You seem to say that the City ignoring the public access law is terrible, but it should ignore the privacy law.
Both are the law. The city breaks the law if it unilaterally picks one over the other. Hence, the city went to the court and asked for a declaratory judgment.
The police have no greater an expectation of privacy than any other member of the public would have in a given setting.
Argumentum ad hominem does not help your case.
Calling a question “argumentum ad hominem” doesn’t make it so.
Should the city break the law? Yes or no?
Should a city prevent an attorney from having access to dash-cam footage, yes or no?
Bear in mind, without public access to the dash cam footage of the police officer who killed a Seattle woodcarver, we would not know what really happened.
It depends on the law. You seem to think the city can pick and choose which law to ignore.
Since there are conflicting laws, the court has to sort it out.
Under what conditions should institutional special interests have priority and more clout than we the people / the public?
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