NEWARK — When she pulled out a cell phone to record two Newark police officers aiding a man who collapsed on a bus, Khaliah Fitchette was trying to help another rider.

A fellow straphanger said he would be late for work because police stopped the bus, so she recorded the incident as proof for the man’s boss.

Her decision seemed harmless, but the officers didn’t see it that way. Fitchette says she was dragged off the bus and handcuffed.

She couldn’t know it then, but her decision to record the officers in 2010 ended up sparking a major policy change in Newark, one that some officials believe will trickle down to law enforcement agencies around the state.

According to a settlement made public by the American Civil Liberties Union today, the city Police Department is one of the first police agencies in New Jersey to draft a written policy protecting a person’s right to film police officers in public.

The settlement was the result of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the Seton Hall Law Center on Fitchette’s behalf last year, accusing Newark police of illegally detaining her.

"We are pleased that the Newark Police Department has adopted a policy that clearly articulates and respects the constitutional rights of citizens to record police activity," said Barbara Moses, a Seton Hall Law professor who worked on the suit.

"We hope this policy prevents incidents like the one involving Khaliah Fitchette from ever happening again," she said.

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According to the new policy, police officers cannot prevent residents from recording them unless the recording somehow interferes with a law enforcement operation, or the person enters a restricted area.

Police officials have said Fitchette, now 19, was not impeding the officers’ attempts to aid the man who collapsed on the bus.

Implemented in November of 2011, the policy clearly defines scenarios in which police officers can and cannot interfere with a person’s right to record, an update Police Director Samuel DeMaio said was sorely needed.

"In my opinion, the officers really felt like they were doing the right thing," DeMaio said of the 2010 incident. "Now, we definitely have a policy in place for that and if someone did something like that again there would certainly be discipline."

The ACLU praised DeMaio for implementing the change before the city reached a monetary settlement with Fitchette.

"We’re really pleased to settle this lawsuit because it allows Khaliah to turn a page in her life and because Newark has really stepped ahead and taken a leadership role in what the law says," said Alex Shalom, policy counsel for the state ACLU.

None of the officers involved in the 2010 incident were disciplined, according to Shalom. A sergeant, Michael DiFabio, who ordered the arresting officers to charge Fitchette with obstruction justice was fired last year after he was indicted on official misconduct charges in providing his friends with scalped tickets to a high-priced Miley Cyrus concert in 2007.

According to the lawsuit, DiFabio told the arresting officers to charge the 17-year-old Fitchette as an adult.

While she’s glad the incident is behind her, Fitchette said her run-in on the bus that day has permanently altered her view of police officers.

"I’m definitely going to be more careful … I definitely understand that these are my First Amendment rights and I did nothing wrong," said Fitchette, now a sophomore at Cornell University. "But I’ll definitely be more skeptical about how I approach these things in the future."

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