1.- You can record from a public space and in a public space. This means that if you can see an altercation at somebody's driveway from the PUBLIC street, that is kosher. If you need to wiggle though bushes, that is not kosher. If you are in a private business or property, you may be asked to leave... malls in California get weird.
2.- A safe distance to do this is about 20 to 30 feet. Translation from across the street. You might have to move in order to keep your view.
3.- Don't ever get behind a police officer. They don't like it. It is not just against police procedure to have you, a perfect stranger, behind him or her, no idea what your intents are, but I almost guarantee a confrontation. Even those of us with a perfectly good I cannot sue the county media card are given a very long glare when we do that... mostly by accident, we know this.
4.- DO NOT demand anything from an officer and if you must get close to get a name tag, badge number, I recommend you learn how to use a zoom in that phone camera.
5.- This might be like a no brainer, and while you have a perfect right to photograph children in public spaces, unless they are central to the story, we tend to avoid it. It is our editorial choice, I admit it, but we do it for kid's safety. And we still have those debates when they are part of the story...
6.- KEEP YOUR HEAD ON A SWIVEL. It is extremely easy to develop tunnel vision. If you are recording a traffic stop... whatever, but if that traffic stop, like in this case, becomes a tactical situation you need to have full situational awareness.
7.- As they recommended... shoot landscape. Please... context matters. And this is a personal beef of mine...
8.- Take notes... as soon as it is over, especially a critical incident, write down what you saw, or record it, or what have you. You will be amazed how many details you forget. We record everything, so I always have MP3 to rely on. But I do not expect all to have a recorder. That said, that phone... if it is an i-phone I recommend you get a full copy of twisted wave. It is my backup to the backup recorder. It is extremely good and easy to use.
Lastly, if you do this long enough, you will have to balance privacy rights, like what to do when injury or death happens, and the right of the public to know. Things like Marathon bomber, I would have run those photos, but we have had incidents where at times we debate the blood and gore, though I do not go out of my way to find that.
I need to clarify what I wrote about children. We do photograph them, and when we rarely run the photos, we tend to use photos from the back... so you cannot recognize the young person.
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