(PDF) Massachusetts Appeals Court rules Boston police officers violated wiretap statute by surreptitiously recording drug deal with suspect, evidence of recording must be suppressed

I want to say I support legal smackdowns of warrantless wiretapping, but I’m a little unsure of this one.

• Citizens observing suspect behavior are encouraged to record videos, and those are key in legal cases. This recording was made on the undercover cop’s own phone, it seems in a public place. It seems a little strange to me that police are more shackled than ordinary citizens when it comes to recordings.
• Depending on how deep the cover was (for selling small amounts of drugs, perhaps not) I wonder how hard it is to contact a judge for a warrant. I’m picturing those tense TV dramas where an undercover is suddenly pulled to an unexpected meeting, and decides just in time to start a muted call (obviously, likely more dramatic than what happened here). I even wonder if the presence of his witness account should affect the legality of the recording. It’s just verifying his statement.