Posted on 09/07/2014 2:36:36 PM PDT by She_is_my_ hero
SAN JOSE -- A San Jose resident who was one of several people recording the aftermath of an officer-involved shooting in South San Jose last month is alleging he was intimidated and threatened with detainment for refusing to surrender his cellphone or delete the images he took.
The allegations are contained in an Aug. 21 internal-affairs complaint filed by Andrew Payne and comes as the issue of recording police performing their duties in public has gained national attention in light of the civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri...
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
A lot of folks,are trying to make the cops look bad but the minute any one of the m feel the least bit threatened, they are on the phone pleading for help.
That said, I know nothing about this shooting.
This is life in a Police State.
Get used to it.
Your neighbors value the illusion of safety and security more than they do their own liberty, and of course they do not trust you with yours.
End result: cops are become Enforcers for the Beast.
Cops have made themselves look bad. The silence from the majority of the rest makes them complicit in this perception which is in-fact, a reality.
Notwithstanding the training they receive from DHS and the feds that train them to look at John Q. Citizen as a Domestic Terrorists.
What we see is endemic of the fruits of a militarized police force that now are nothing but enforcers for the state. Nothing more.
Try to take my cell phone away and I hope you have that taser set to stun. And are ready for the multi-million dollar lawsuit that I will win.
So few Americans know, much less insist on, their rights.
Most of us knew his was coming and we are so deep into the police state we will never come out of it. Cops can kill with almost any reason like reaching for your wallet.
Project much?
boycott this is the 19 yr old with mental issues fatally wounded carrying around a power drill.
If recording police officers is not a crime, then there is no lawful justification for an officer to demand that one stop recording, or to delete one already made.
On the other hand, if recording police officers is a crime, then the act of deleting such a video amounts to destruction of evidence related to a criminal act. Accordingly, anyone who deletes such a video is, knowingly or not, destroying evidence of a crime, and anyone who orders such an act under color of authority is forcing another to commit a crime, while under color of authority. Which is potentially a felony.
In either case, there is absolutely no justification for an officer to delete a video nor to order its deletion. If anything, the police have a case, if recording them is criminal, that they can lawfully seize the recording, but if it turns up erased while in police custody, one can presume that one or more officers in the chain of custody committed the criminal act of destruction of evidence, and this while acting in their official capacity.
Finally: why, exactly is it that private citizens can be tracked, monitored, wiretapped nearly everywhere they go, and must identify themselves to officers upon demand, while public servants can and usually do hide behind their badges, refusing to identify themselves when asked, and arresting those who film them? It smacks of obvious doublespeak.
There is a difference between being a defendant under arrest for a crime and being a witness to a crime. Rules against search and seizure are intended for defendants. But if one is a witness to a crime, he can be required to testify about it and to refrain from disposing of evidence on it, including cell phone pictures. That being said, it seems that the cops have no authority to require deletion of any photos.
In this day and age, any officer who stupidly demands pictures or videos be deleted immediately discounts the reality that the images or video are likely already uploaded to the cloud, including the video where they are demanding the video be deleted.
That is now their training. You couple that with lots of vets from Iraq and A'Stan become cops with military skill sets and the 'gifts' of militarized hardware from the feds, cops now treat their beats as war zones like Fallujah.
With fed training manuals that teach them that Constitutionalists and Conservatives are domestic terrorists - it goes to figure kill first, deal with consequences later are the policy.
Now the push is on to 'federalize' all the police under the guise of 'stopping' another Ferguson. The Beast just wants an excuse to do that and inciting racial and civil strife is how they achieve it, to the applause of Joe Sixpack and even Conservatives who rah-rah cops no matter what.
They have no idea what is being created to be used against them by a federal beast.
“That said, I know nothing about this shooting.”
In a “split-second” situation the shooter (er cop) had to decide whether a cordless drill was an uzi. The uzi won and he killed a 19 year old girl who was mentally unbalanced. Another murder by cop. Some female “louie” who said she was “protecting her officers” decided to threaten a bystander who was filming with his cell phone. Then they SJPD hauled the girls parents in for “questioning” before they even knew whether their daughter was alive or dead. Just another day of “protecting and serving” doncha know! Lawsuits are sure to follow.
My question is this: Is it a crime to record or photograph police officers while they are questioning or arresting someone? If yes, why?
Look at the inverse.
The reason we have a ‘militarized’ police force is because our country is turning into a war zone.
Sure, much of the time the militarized part of the police is misused, but there is little doubt that ‘better hardware’ was needed to combat the growing violence and mayhem.
That violence and mayhem wouldn’t be there if our nation wasn’t getting so corrupted.
From the trash service up to the President of the United States, there is massive corruption.
We, as a country, have made ourselves look bad.
LEO need to follow the service academy code of honor: Thou shall not lie, cheat, steal — or tolerate those who do. As far as I am concerned, a cop who remains silent is more guilty than the cop who did the dirty deed.
“That being said, it seems that the cops have no authority to require deletion of any photos.”
Seems? I guess you had better pick up a copy of the Bill of Rights and read them over.
Recording the police in the act of ‘doing their job’ is the ONLY reason my youngest daughter had her bogus assault case against a cop thrown out of court and dismissed.
It was a bogus charge levied at a twenty year-old they beat the crap out of and arrested because they forcibly entered her older sister’s home without a warrant and had to cover for the fact they had no reason to be there.
The recording of the event (where the cops magically ‘lost’ their own audio evidence despite repeated attempts to acquire it in Discovery) is the only thing that kept an innocent college kid from going to prison.
Since the system is hopelessly corrupted from the cops on up through the judiciary - recording cops acting like Gestapo and getting it up on the net is about the only thing holding an institutionalized iron fist by Enforcers for the State at bay.
Who is watching the Watchmen?
Educate yourself.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.