[quote=Hellis]
There are videos of them teargassing news crews and taking down their equipment. There are witness statements of them shooting the kid in the back several times.
[/quote]

Al Jazeera crew got gassed and reporters from the Huffington Post and Washington Post were arrested for no cause -- the cops got pissed that they were being recorded and proceeded illegally (and on camera.) 

That cop should have known that not only have the courts ruled for the people doing the recording in every case of a person recording cops on duty that's gone before them, the press are doubly protected in most cases from interference. Before anyone goes, "Oh, well, the media must have been endangering cops" bear in mind that the reporters were sitting in a McDonalds. It's, quite simply, the Ferguson PD attacking the press, and it's a fundamental denial of the 1st Amendment.
 
It's not just Ferguson, of course. A lot of cops don't know that multiple federal courts have ruled on this issue the same time every time it's gone to court. They still try to stop recording. I suppose they realize, in their dim way, that they are being recorded and more of it is being exposed and they are in danger of being held responsible for their actions, but so far no one's taken US police forces in general to task for attacking reporters and private citizens exercising their 1st Amendment rights.