…but I think that procedure for any sort of arrest is that one has to identify oneself IMMEDIATELY AND CLEARLY as a police officer, otherwise as others have stated, you have no idea who this jacked-up guy pointing a weapon at you is/what he intends.
This cop didn’t…immediately would have been hitting his lights, which it didn’t look like he did. So at the least, he didn’t follow procedure.
Also, it seems pretty clear based on the squid’s interview (he acknowledged he deserved the ticket, and was ready to pay it) that they only went after the taping violation AFTER they saw it on the internet, which makes it look more like the department was more concerned with bad publicity rather than public safety.
If the cop had told him right then that it’s illegal to film people w/o their knowledge, I highly doubt squidly would have posted it on the internet as he did.
In a lesser vein, where I live (D.C.), we’ve been having this sort of public debate with our public transit system right now. It’s been sliding downhill in service for years now, and there have lately been a number of high-profile accidents, and the issue of operators texting (!) while piloting these vehicles has reared its ugly head.
Some people have used their cell phones to catch texting train/bus drivers, and posted the videos to youtube. This enraged the transit agency…at first, they tried to block this, threatening legal action, etc. but the bad PR overwhelmed them and now they seem to be taking action to stop employees from texting while operating these vehicles. But their first instinct was to say “how dare you monitor us!”