Arkansas Has No Right-to-Record Statute and No Buffer Zone Law

Take the absence first, because it is real and provable. A full text search of the Arkansas Code Annotated for "law enforcement activity", the statutory phrase Nevada used to write its express right to record, returns three sections and none is about recording: a definition in the Title 12 uniform crime chapter, a prepaid wireless public safety charge section, and an exceptions section in Title 21. Searching "video record" returns nothing at all. Arkansas has neither an express right of the California or New York kind nor a 25-foot approach offense of the sort several states added after 2023.

The permission a person actually relies on is the wiretap statute read the right way round. Ark. Code § 5-60-120(a) makes it unlawful to intercept a wire, landline, oral, telephonic or wireless communication and to record or possess a recording of it unless the person is a party to the communication, or one of the parties has given prior consent to the interception and recording. A driver or bystander recording a conversation he or she is taking part in is a party, so the offense does not attach. Subsection (b) makes a violation a Class A misdemeanor, which is what makes the party exception worth understanding rather than guessing at. Subsection (c)(1) runs the same rule the other way: it is not unlawful for the act to be committed by a person acting under color of law, which is the statutory basis on which an officer's own body and dash cameras record you.

The risk, then, is not the recording but the obstruction charge, and Arkansas has drawn that offense narrowly. Under Ark. Code § 5-54-102(a)(1) a person commits obstructing governmental operations by knowingly obstructing, impairing or hindering the performance of any governmental function. Subsection (b)(4) makes the ordinary case a Class C misdemeanor, and subsection (b)(1) raises it to a Class A misdemeanor only where the obstruction is by using or threatening to use physical force. Subsection (c) then lists four things the section does not apply to. Two of them matter to a person holding a phone: subdivision (c)(3) excludes any means of avoiding compliance with the law not involving affirmative interference with a governmental function unless specifically set forth in the section, and subdivision (c)(4) excludes obstruction, impairment or hindrance of what a person reasonably believes is a public servant's unlawful action. Standing back and filming is not affirmative interference, and the section names no recording conduct anywhere in it.

The neighbouring offense is narrower still. Ark. Code § 5-54-104 makes interference with a law enforcement officer turn on knowingly employing or threatening to employ physical force against an officer engaged in official duties. It is a Class A misdemeanor, or a Class C felony where deadly physical force is used or threatened, or where the person is assisted by one or more others and physical injury results. A camera cannot satisfy the physical force element, so the interference statute does not reach filming at all.

Two cautions remain. The party exception in § 5-60-120 covers a conversation you are in; it does not authorise planting a device to capture a conversation between other people, and doing that is a Class A misdemeanor. And § 5-54-102(a)(4) makes falsely identifying yourself to a law enforcement officer an offense, so answering a question with a false name while recording creates the very charge the recording was meant to guard against.

Obstructing governmental operations is a Class C misdemeanor under Ark. Code § 5-54-102(b)(4), which by § 5-4-401(b)(3) carries up to 30 days and by § 5-4-201(b)(3) a fine of up to $500. Where physical force is used or threatened it becomes a Class A misdemeanor under § 5-54-102(b)(1), up to one year and a $2,500 fine. Interference with a law enforcement officer under § 5-54-104 is a Class A misdemeanor, and a Class C felony where deadly physical force is used or threatened or where the person is assisted by others and physical injury results.

On the recording side, a violation of Ark. Code § 5-60-120 is a Class A misdemeanor under subsection (b), which is the exposure for recording a conversation you are not a party to and for which no party consented. Because Arkansas has no buffer zone statute, there is no distance offense to be cited for, and a charge arising from filming has to be argued against the affirmative interference test in § 5-54-102(c)(3).