Most Cop Block readers are probably familiar with the “Botched Paramilitary Police Raids” map project by the Cato Institute which tracks botched SWAT raids on an interactive Google map. Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been working on a similar project which aims to track government hostility to cameras. You can check out the project page here.

The map currently has over 60 markers on it. Each marker on the map represents one or more incidents where a person was harassed, detained, threatened, attacked, arrested, or charged with a crime for using a camera, incident(s) where a camera was seized, or incident(s) where government officials attempted to cover up video evidence. The events on the map all occurred between 2007 and the present.

Just to be clear, this map is absolutely not intended to be comprehensive. In fact, I am already aware of a number of events that have yet to be posted, but I decided to release the project in it’s current state since it is intended to be a perpetual work-in-progress. I will continue working on getting these events on the map and attempting to track down new ones. If you would like to tell me about an incident that I missed, check the project page for information about how to do so.

I will do my best to document any significant changes I make to the map. Updates about the map will be filed under the category “Map Updates.”

If you appreciate the work I’ve done on this project and would like for me to continue working on it, donations are much appreciated. You can donate to me here.

Lastly, I’d like to give a big shout out to Carlos Miller, David Packman, Radley Balko, and my fellow Cop Block contributors. Their research and reporting were invaluable to this project.