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The new hotness for law enforcement is trying to end the careers of police accountability activists. When approached by people filming them, officers from multiple law enforcement agencies have begun playing the zero-accountability hits, hoping that notoriously litigious artists like Taylor Swift and the Beatles will join forces to keep these recordings from being uploaded to social media sites.
The thought process is so simple a cop could understand it. When someone starts recording or livestreaming, crank up some music in hopes the copyright bots will recognize the track and shut the whole thing down. Even if it can't terminate a livestream, it might terminate a few pesky accounts with enough copyright strikes.
One law enforcement officer straight up admitted to the people filming him that he was playing music in hopes of keeping the video from making it past YouTube's copyright cops, much to the eventual dismay of his fellow officers. The Alameda County Sheriff's Department has learned from this Streisanding, and has since made it official policy to forbid the playing of copyrighted content for the sole purpose of thwarting the recording of officers by members of the public.
Let me see if I got this straight.
An officer sought to play copyrighted music during the course of his job at the direction of his Chief to prevent the auditor's video from being played on online platforms. Are they stupid? Is he stupid? He is a government employee illegally using copyrighted music as a tool against the public. Does he not realize that since he was using the music in the course of his duties as a government actor, he would have to seek permission from the artist in order to legally use it since he was using as a policing tool and not for general free use.
He could play the music for his own entertainment and that wouldn't be illegal, but when he uses it as a tool for the purpose of thwarting youtube recordings, it becomes a tool like a radar gun or tazer. Using intellectual property as a policing tool requires that the police first seek permission or license from the owner of the intellectual property.
For anyone interested, 18 USC 242 specifies that "Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law" is a federal offense punishable by one year in prison. (Under certain circumstances, it may be punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and particularly heinous violations might be punishable all the way up to a death sentence - but those circumstances probably don't apply to the situation in question).
I don't know of a single time when this law has been used to punish cops, but IMO it's time we started using it, especially for situations like this one.
Soooo…intentional suppression of rights under color of law. Got it.