Posted on 06/28/2011 1:39:35 PM PDT by Do Not Make Fun Of His Ears
The Rochester woman whose run in with the law with her iPhone and made national headlines, plans to file a lawsuit claiming Rochester police violated her civil rights.
Donald Thompson, attorney for Emily Good, told News 10NBC's Ray Levato Tuesday they may sue the individual police officer involved in her arrest, the Rochester Police Department, "any or all of the above and that's something to be discussed and considered."
Good was arrested in her bare feet and pajamas while standing in her own yard one night in May while taping a traffic stop that happened in front of her 19th Ward home. Good kept recording even after an officer asked her to stop and go inside. She was charged with obstructing government administration.
Monday, the District Attorney's office asked City Court Judge Jack Elliott to dismiss the charges because a review of the evidence showed there was no legal basis to prosecute.
Thompson says, "Her stated reason for video taping in the first place was that three white officers were stopping a young black male. And she's obviously attuned to social issues and concerns. There's nothing wrong with monitoring the course of those proceedings to make sure the correct procedures are being followed."
Thompson says says the lawsuit will claim a violation of Good's civil rights under the guarantees of the First Amendment. He said they will either file it in state or federal court.
"There was no crime that she committed here," says Thompson. "There was no basis to arrest her. There was no reason to forcibly take her from her property. It's a violation of her civil rights."
"It was pretty far over the line," says Thompson. "That's why it went national. "
(Excerpt) Read more at whec.com ...
From all I have read, the man was released.
Excellent post, by the way. Thankful for men like your father.
SoldierDad, I’m likely with you; I certainly see the start of the video as a person too close to an active crime scene.
I also don’t have a problem with the police including part of someone’s yard in a crime scene, and asking people who live there to move away.
I think the cop was stupid to arrest her, and I think she’s a really good activist, with a good activist friend, who played this perfectly. It was a setup, and they scored big.
If everybody who ever won in traffic court could sue for having to drag their butts to traffic court, like people seem to think the standard should be here, we’d probably never give anybody a ticket.
I predicted in a prior thread that she’d get her case dismissed, and she did. I also predicted that in the end, she wouldn’t win a lawsuit. I’m standing by that prediction, but seeing how many good conservatives were taken in by her propaganda, I could lose this one.
After all, we still have freepers insisting she was arrested for filming the traffic stop, when the only reason to believe that is the woman put a title on her video saying that she was arrested for videotaping.
Even though she was never asked to stop, there is nothing on her own video where the officer mentions her stopping the video, the officer didn’t confiscate her video, and didn’t ask the guy who took her iphone to stop, or arrest him when he continued to film.
I tried this experiment, which everybody should try at work. Get 4 co-workers. Show two of them the full video, and two of them the video starting after the title.
You’ll be amazed at the difference of opinion at the end. Those who see the title will be looking for the cop to come after the woman, and will see it. Those who don’t see the title will see a woman being belligerant and interfering with a traffic stop, and might even clap when the cop finally arrests her.
The officer did not ask her to stop. Watch the video.
As surprising as it is that so many people fell for the propaganda video, what’s worse is how many watch the video and actually decide the guy should lose his job and his family’s business should be destroyed.
They want to put his family on the street, and leave him destitute, because he asked someone to move away from a crime scene, and when she refused multiple times, even when he warned her, he arrested her.
It’s like none of these people have ever in their lives made an error in judgment.
I thought the cop was wrong, but don’t think he was unreasonable. She had multiple chances to avoid anything more than a minor inconvenience — having to film from her porch instead of from the sidewalk. Instead, she provoked him to arrest her, as it seems clear she meant to (she had an activist friend to take her phone and “collect witness statements”).
Since she had also gotten herself purposely arrested a few months earlier, it would be absurd to argue that she didn’t understand the concept, or that she would never do such a thing. And yet here we are, shutting down the guy’s facebook, targetting his family business, and some saying he should be thrown in jail.
And he didn’t even raise his voice to her.
Thanks for the insightful post (one of just a few I’ve been pinged to tonight). I agree (and stated so before now) that the officer could have used a different tact, which may have led to a different outcome (again, depending upon the intent of Ms. Good, and her reaction). But, and I’ve said this before too, given the way he approached her behavior I can well understand this outcome. I suppose it is possible, given how some on FR who have held out support for this woman, that her faux suit might go her way, though I seriously doubt it. Be careful bringing up traffic court and trafic tickets, though. There are some really rabid people on FR for whom that topic is also a highly charged one. I, like you, have wondered at the accusations that she was arrested for videoing the officers during the traffic stop, given that the video was never mentioned by the officer, nor did it stop taking place, nor did the video become the property of the PD, nor did the person who continued videoing become a target by the police. All facts completely ignored by those who seem to have nothing but hatred for cops. Your experiment sheds a great deal of light on this situation. I think it would be interesting to continue the experiment with a larger “n”.
Read the comments--The freeper mob here is vociferously demanding this cop be personally sued and fired over this petty incident. This behavior makes me think they basically hate cops and have anti-authority mental issues dating from childhood. I am a realist who recognizes we need police, law and courts to protect the population from criminals and illegal activity.
The sweeping generalizations here are coming from those who try to lump conservatives in with libertarians, and then conflating libertarianism with anarchy-based libertarianism, which no one here is arguing for.
I'll bet most of the know nothings on this thread are anti-cop libertarian types. How about you? You are not a libertarian?
Exactly. They are demanding perfection from police officers. It's a cruel libertarian arrogance I have seen before. Libertarians are hi IQ and childishly believe everyone can be like that. Their self righteous indignation spikes when Joe Average cop is not aware of all the legal nuances allowing video taping by civilians. How dare Joe Average Cop try to exert some authority and order over a situation taking place at night and in doing so order around a pest (Emily Good) on her own property
Also---
There are snot nose pothead pests who cruise around trying to provoke the police so they can gin up a lawsuit and become a hero to their internet friends. They have their automobile wired with microphones and cameras that transmit wirelessly to a remote computer that is recording any police confrontation. One of these pothead pests was on a FR thread a year ago and he had tons of freeper supporters
I did not know all that. Emily Good’s case gets weaker and weaker. Any incident at night can be hazardous to police because visibility is way down. People can sneak up on you.
What a lefty pest she is and freepers have been sucked in by her schtick!
While a competent attorney will name all plausible defendants in his lawsuit, it is EXCEEDINGLY unlikely that boilerplate qualified immunity doctrine will permit damages to be exacted from the occifer. Everybody knows this. Only the tax payers will pay, whether the suit is settled or goes to a jury verdict and all appeals exhausted. The occifer is less likely to personally lose even so much as a penny in this case, than it would be for the Great Lakes to dry up.
Watch the tape-—— http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXA-KA-pEKw
At no time does the policeman tell her to stop taping. She was hauled in (arrested) for not standing further back. For not obeying a simple police order. Notice how whiny and hysterical (faked in my opinion) she gets as she is put in the police cruiser. An actress. A scammer. A pest. A money grubber now suing the police.
Don’t bet on the taxpayers giving her one thin dime. Hopefully she and her bs lawyer will lose in court.
“You forgot shooting the family dog.”
O yea, cruelty to animals. They say serial killers are likely to have this trait. Then graduate to human beings.
LOL! Good one.
So, the cop can demand that a citizen do anything under threat of arrest if he says he “feels threatened”.
What kind of PUSSY cop is “threatened” by a skinny woman with an iPhone?
No, the real issue here is that the cop in question had a power hardon and didn’t want a “civilian” recording his actions.
I don’t know if people hate cops. What I’ve seen in the posts for this incident is that some freepers want to punish this one cop for all the sins of all the cops they have ever complained about. Like to make him an example.
I still can’t believe people here actually think this incident is an example of the worst of a police state; so I have to assume they are projecting onto this guy all the real issues they have seen, where cops have shot dogs, beat innocent people, or otherwise acted in a more obviously brutal fashion.
It’s the “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore” response. “TSA is conducting intrusive searches, and we can’t stop them, so let’s go after this cop for stepping on someone’s lawn and expecting them to actually obey what he thought was a reasonable order”.
No. I have not stopped beating your wife.
Have you seen pictures of Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme”? No threat to anybody, until she pulled out a gun and nearly assassinated the President of the United States.
On the tape, she says “you can see I’m not wearing anything, and I don’t have a gun”. Later, we see her when her friend takes over the video, and my daughter yells “she even lied about that, she’s not naked”. Because, you know, you can’t possibly hide a weapon under a nightgown.
Now, I don’t think the cop thought she had a weapon; I don’t really think he felt threatened, although I bet that is the standard reason given for asking people to move away from a crime scene.
Of course, by the time the conversation got to that point, she wasn’t alone, there was a guy standing next to her, and you can’t tell whether the cop really is just addressing her at that point, or both of them (the guy was her fellow activist, there to take the camera, film her arrest, and take witness statements afterwards. He specifically obeyed the police order when it came time to do so, so he wouldn’t get arrested. Listen for him to say something like “I’m moving back to the porch, you should come too” right before there’s a 5-second silence and then the cop says he’ll have to arrest her.
So you’re in disagreement with his department who have indicated that this wasn’t a lawful order,
otherwise they would have backed him up.
With that kind of attitude you would last 10 minutes as a cop. But you cruelly demand perfection from them such as this cop who was drawn into BS by this whiny (whining in her video arrest) leftist agitator who guess what? Is married to a university professor of psychology. You join those useless elitists in dumping on the men who help protect and keep law and order.
SHAME! on you and the other freepers on this thread
As best I can tell, the only fact in that regard is the the prosecuter withdrew the charge. The news article I read about that said the prosecutor didn’t make a statement, this article says the prosecutor dropped the charge but doesn’t quote the prosecutor.
Prior to the video being released, the case was being pursued, so it seems more likely the prosecutor decided it wasn’t worth the effort for the negative publicity.
On the other hand, I’m not in disagreement with their decision to drop the charge, and I don’t think he should have arrested her. My disagreement is with those who argue it was a clearly unlawful order, or worse.
Part of the problem with discussing this event is that there is very little fact involved, just a lot of propaganda released by one side, while the other has kept relatively silent. You really have to parse the words used in descriptions to see if they are describing fact or are an interpretation given by the activists (like the “arrested for videotaping” charge).
As to how his department feels; the three officers with him didn’t stop him. The processing officer didn’t reject the charge, so it obviously has some contexts in which it is a valid charge. He certainly had to write up an arrest report, and his commanding officer must have someone reviewing those, and nobody stopped it from going to the prosecutor. And the prosecutor didn’t throw it out when they got it, so they must have at least had to think about it.
I believe there is quite a bit of space to occupy between “she should be convicted” and “it was an illegal order and he should be fired”. As I said regarding traffic tickets, there are many times when the law decides a ticket was not warranted, but doesn’t find the officer did anything wrong by issuing the ticket. A LOT of people get arrested and later released. That doesn’t mean the arrests were all a sign of a nazi apocalypse.
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