Police officers in Santa Ana, California, began blasting copyrighted Disney songs from their police cruisers during an April 4 on-scene investigation after bystanders began filming them, believing the use of copyrighted music would cause social media companies to block the videos from being shared.
This isn't the first time cops have tried to deter citizens from making sure they comply with the apparently unreasonable demand of doing their jobs with dignity and respect — and it has to stop.
Tell police departments to ban the use of copyrighted material to keep people from filming them!
The development of the smartphone and social media platforms have blown the lid off the epidemic of police brutality and rampant misconduct against Black and Latino Americans — cops know it. We know it. Everyone knows it.
But rather than changing their behavior, institutional culture, or holding any of the badge-wearing perpetrators accountable for their actions, police are cooking up half-baked ways to stop videos of abuse and harassment from being promoted on social media in the first place.
We need our police departments to encourage transparency and accountability among their officers while serving the communities they've been sworn to protect. If cops don't want people filming them, then they should give us absolutely no reason to do so.
Demand cops stop using copyrighted music to keep videos of them from being shared!
