A Cop Admitted To Playing A Taylor Swift Song To Keep A ‘Harassing Protestors’ Video Off YouTube — It Didn’t Work

In April 2020, Steven Taylor, an unarmed Black man, was murdered by a white police officer in a Walmart in San Leandro, California. Officer Jason Fletcher was charged with felony manslaughter, and during his pre-trial hearing on Tuesday, the Anti Police-Terror Project came to support Taylor’s family at the courthouse.

The group, which is “building a replicable and sustainable model to end state-sanctioned murder and violence against Black, Brown, and poor people,” arrived with “Justice for Steven Taylor” banners. They were hanging from the walls when police officers interfered. “When they moved the banner to the stairs and again gathered to listen to the hearing, the officers then told them that people ‘could trip,’ despite the fact that no one was walking through the area,” according to Gizmodo. “Burch said the group felt compelled to film because the over-aggressive approach started to feel ‘concerning.'”

The sheriff’s deputy noticed that the interaction was being filmed, so he took out his phone and started playing “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift. “Are we having a dance party now?” policy director James Burch asked. “No, sir,” the cop responded. Another Anti-Police Terror Project member wondered, “Are you playing pop music to drown out the conversation?” He was doing something even more duplicitous, as explained by Verge:

Bystanders have a First Amendment right to record police, but police officers have allegedly tried to exploit copyright law to prevent people from sharing those videos, playing music that could trigger a takedown notice. While playing music in the background of a video isn’t necessarily against YouTube’s rules, it can set off the company’s automatic takedown system.

The officer freely acknowledges, “You can record all you want. I just know it can’t be posted to YouTube.” If YouTube’s “Content ID” system picks up a video using an unauthorized song from, say, the biggest pop star in the world, it will be taken down with a copyright notice. “We’d heard about this phenomenon but no one had captured it on video until now. Now not only do we have a video of a cop doing it, we also have the cop admitting why he was doing it,” the Anti-Police Terror Project wrote on YouTube, where the video (“Cop Plays Taylor Swift to Prevent Video Sharing of Him Harassing Protesters”) is active… for now. It’s also available on Twitter, just in case.

(Via Gizmodo and the Verge)