Photograph the Police. Fairfax County Police means Police brutality
Fairfax County Supervisor John W. Foust: Reward moral cowardice...send John Foust to Congre...
Fairfax County Supervisor John W. Foust: Reward moral cowardice...send John Foust to Congre...: As a county supervisor John Foust could have spoken out against the murders of unarmed, innocent citizens by the Fairfax County Police....
A Virginia teen ended up hospitalized with a concussion Tuesday after police struck him on the side of the head with a baton for video recording them.
A
Virginia teen ended up hospitalized with a concussion Tuesday after police
struck him on the side of the head with a baton for video recording them.
The
video shows the cop asking his age before attacking the 19-year-old man,
apparently figuring he can get away with doing that to an adult.
Devin
Thomas was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, your typical
contempt of cop charges.
Petersburg teen says video shows officers assaulting him
by Melissa Hipolit
PETERSBURG, Va. — A Petersburg teenager told CBS 6 he was assaulted by at least one local police officer outside an apartment complex on Tuesday while he was filming the officers with his smartphone.
Devin Thomas, 19, showed CBS 6 Investigative Reporter Melissa Hipolit the video he said he shot on Tuesday at Petersburg East Apartments.
It shows two police officers yelling at the person filming, telling them to get inside, and then the camera phone falls to the ground.
CBS 6 cannot tell what is taking place when the camera phone is on the ground, but Thomas said one of the officers began beating him.
Devin Thomas
Thomas sent CBS 6 News this photo late Thursday. (SOURCE: Devin Thomas)
“He just grabbed me and slammed me,” Thomas said.
Thomas showed us scars on his chin, ear, chest, and arm that he said are from the incident.
Thomas said he went to the hospital where he was diagnosed with a concussion.
“They hit me in the side of my face with a club, and I was bleeding really bad,” Thomas said.
Court papers Thomas showed up said police charged him with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, which are charges Thomas said are unwarranted.
“I did nothing wrong,” Thomas said.
Petersburg Police Department Spokeswoman Esther Hyatt confirmed they are investigating the incident.
A Lieutenant with the department told CBS 6 it involved a Prince George police officer.
Prince George Police said a complaint was filed Thursday about one of their officers allegedly assaulted a man for filming him.
Prince George Police also said they are investigating the complaint.
We showed CBS 6 Legal Expert Todd Stone the video, and he said Thomas’s actions were perfectly legal.
“Generally speaking, people in the public have a right to film the police as long as they’re not stepping into the crime scene and obstructing justice,” Stone said.
Thomas said he was not obstructing anything, and now he wants justice.
“They need to be stopped for real,” Thomas said.
The Right to Film Cops Is Important, but It's No Justice
By Natasha Lennard
It is an unavoidable fact of contemporary American life that we are being watched. Whether by government spycraft, consumer data hoarding, or networked surveillance cameras, a citizen in this era is subject to observation, with scant protection against it.
It's been a slightly different story for cops. Municipal police departments around the country, in states including Illinois, Florida, Maryland, and New Hampshire, have been able to go unwatched. More precisely, they have been able to arrest individuals for the mere fact of filming police activity in public. Under the pretext of protecting official business from public glare, cops across the US have carried out all manner of brutalities — from harassment, tobeatings, to sodomizing detainees stopped for mere traffic violations, to murder — with impunity, safe in the assumption that any recordings of their actions are in their own hands.
A federal court this week, however, ruled that cops can no longer maintain a monopoly over recording arrests and police action. Filming cops, the court ruled, is protected by the First Amendment. The ruling, which is only binding in the four states in the First Circuit District (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island) and in Puerto Rico, resulted from a case brought by a New Hampshire woman arrested for filming police carrying out a traffic stop. The case is now being returned to a lower court for trial.
"It is clearly established in this circuit that police officers cannot, consistent with the Constitution, prosecute citizens for violating wiretapping laws when they peacefully record a police officer performing his or her official duties in a public area," the First Circuit appeals court ruled.
The decision is a small victory in the fight against police brutality. It establishes as constitutionally protected the sort of activity that activists under the banner CopWatch have been carrying out in communities plagued by police harassment for years. CopWatch recordings have played an important role in revealing how cops regularly offer skewed or utterly false narratives when making violent arrests or, for example, shooting unarmed black teens.
To be sure, the assured ability to film cops does not spell the end of police violence nor their impunity. If filming cops were enough, there wouldn't be so many officers proven to have been abusive without criminal records and still serving on police forces around the country.
The NYPD officer who shot and killed unarmed Bronx teen Ramarley Graham in his grandmother's bathroom, then lied and claimed the 18-year-old had been carrying a gun, was found not guilty of manslaughter. Three officers who, in 2008, arrested Michael Mineo, pinned him down, pulled down his trousers and sodomized him with a baton were also found not guilty of the minimal charges they faced of hindering prosecution and official misconduct. The Fullerton, California cops who beat homeless and schizophrenic Kelly Thomas to death as he cried out for his dad walked free, despite graphic surveillance camera video of the fatal assault. The BART officer who shot Oscar Grant (again, unarmed) at point blank range as he lay on a train station platform spent less than a year in prison, though cell phone video of the execution was seen by millions.
That the Oakland cop, Johannes Mehserle, was prosecuted and convicted at all for killing Grant is perhaps evidence of the importance of filming cops. But the justice system's lenient treatment of Grant's killer, Graham's killer, Mineo's abusers, and many many more vicious cop actions sends a clear message that police brutality remains state-sanctioned. Filming cops is crucial, but borrowing from that well-loved anti-police protest chant: it's no justice, and it's no peace.
Despite court rulings, people are still getting arrested for recording on-duty cops
By
Radley Balko
The
Associated Press reports that police in Chicopee, Mass., have arrested and
charged a woman for allegedly recording her arrest with her cellphone
surreptitiously.
When
you see one of these stories, please remember that it is perfectly legal to
record on-duty police in every state in the country. That includes states that
require all parties to a conversation to consent in order for that conversation
to be recorded. Those laws all also contain a provision that the non-consenting
party has a reasonable expectation of privacy. So far, every court to rule on
this issue has found that on-duty cops in public spaces have no expectation of
privacy and that recording them is protected by the First Amendment. (The U.S.
Supreme Court has yet to weigh in on the matter.) In nearly all cases, the
charges are eventually dismissed. (The exception may be if you’re arrested
under some broad, catch-all law such as “interfering with a police officer” or
disorderly conduct. But even those charges don’t usually stick.)
But
Massachusetts is the one state where the right is still just a little bit
ambiguous. At one time, some of the state’s courts did allow for citizens to be
arrested for recording cops under the state’s wiretapping law (which, again,
required all parties to consent before a conversation could be recorded).
Illinois also once had an even more onerous law, but it was struck down by the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2012 on First Amendment
grounds.
In
2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit issued a similar
decision. The court allowed Simon Glik’s lawsuit against the police officers
who arrested him for recording them to go forward, again finding a First
Amendment right to record on-duty law enforcement. But in that case, Glik was
recording the officers openly. The court’s ruling applied only to that case,
leaving open the possibility that someone could still be arrested for making a
surreptitious recording of an on-duty cop. And that’s what happened in this
latest case.
If
this case gets to the First Circuit, I suspect this charge will also be thrown
out. It’s notable that the Glik decision didn’t even deal with whether there is
a legal right to record police in Massachusetts. It dealt with whether cops who
illegally arrest someone for recording them should be protected by qualified
immunity. In order to get into court against a police officer, you have to
demonstrate not only that the officer violated your constitutional rights, but
also that the rights violated were well established at the time. (Perversely,
this provides a financial incentive for police organizations to keep cops in
the dark about the latest court decisions with respect to constitutional
rights.)
So
while the First Circuit ruling in Glik didn’t apply to surreptitious recording
of police officers, it did find that not only is the right to record on-duty
police permitted, it’s a well-established right that police should be aware of
by now, and that if they violate that right, they can be sued for doing so. It
seems unlikely that the same court will then turn around and uphold a separate
arrest simply because the woman didn’t tell the police she was recording them.
If
I lived in Chicopee, however, I’d wonder why this woman was charged for
allegedly recording her arrest in the first place. Prosecutors have lots of
discretion about when to charge someone and about what charges to bring. They
are under no obligation to charge every person who breaks every law — it would
be impossible for them to do so. And there’s certainly no obligation to latch
on to the narrowness of a court decision that otherwise indicated a First
Amendment right to record police as an opportunity to charge someone for doing
just that, simply because she might fall slightly outside the scope of that
particular ruling. Just because the courts haven’t yet ruled that police and
prosecutors can’t do something doesn’t mean it’s something they should do.
So
if I lived in Chicopee, I’d want to know why Hampden County District Attorney
Mark G. Mastroianni charged this woman. Does he believe it should be illegal to
record the police? And if so, why?
DAWUD WALID: MORE TECHNOLOGY SHOULD BE DEPLOYED TO DETER POLICE MISCONDUCT
Metro
Detroit has always been one of the more notorious areas in America for police
misconduct and brutality. In my parent’s generation, there was systematic
brutality and racial profiling, from the Detroit Police Department’s notorious
Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets (S.T.R.E.S.S.) unit and routine
harassment of black men driving west of Wyoming St. by the Deaborn Police
during the era of Mayor Orville Hubbard.
Since
then, we’ve had numerous events ranging in severity and media scrutiny, from
the fatal beating of Malice Green in 1992 by Detroit Police officer Larry
Nevers, to Grosse Pointe Park Police suspending five officers last year after
it was revealed that a black man with diminished mental capacity was made to
make ape sounds while in police custody.
Last
week, dashcam video was made public regarding an incident in which a Dearborn
Police officer is seen kicking an unarmed Lebanese immigrant who was being
restrained on the ground. The man who was kicked multiple times barely speaks
English and has diminished mental capacity, similar to the gentleman who was
humiliated last year in Grosse Pointe Park.
These
incidents, spread across decades, makes one wonder if there’s a greater law
enforcement culture issue at hand.
Sure,
there are many honorable officers serving in our region and being in law
enforcement is never an easy task. However, the reflex in which police chiefs
have to defend their officers, seemingly at all costs, helps perpetuate actions
such as what took place in Dearborn.
But
thank God for technology.
We
can lawfully take smartphone video of officers in action, and many police
vehicles are outfitted with dashcams, which pick up audio and video of police
interactions.
All
officers, as public servants, should be mic’d at all times while on duty.
Officers’ interactions should be public record, except for detectives
investigating sensitive cases and/or taking official statements of witnesses to
crimes. Every sheriff and police officer’s car in Michigan should be compelled
to have dashcams.
For
many people, behaviors do not change without consequences. Greater
opportunities to scrutinize the behaviors of law enforcement officers may serve
as a deterrent against police misconduct.
Apple Helps Cops Hide Police Brutality / Stop Phone Filming
May
12, 2014 by Jack Blood
Here
is the link to the patent which Apple holds for this technology.
The
rapid emergence of smart phones with high definition cameras leads to
consequences for law-breaking cops.
Recently,
law enforcement throughout the country has been trying to pass laws that would
make it illegal to film them while they’re on duty.
But
Apple is coming out with a new technology that would put all the power in a
cop’s hands.
Apple has patented a piece of technology which
would allow government and police to block transmission of information,
including video and photographs, from any public gathering or venue they deem
“sensitive”, and “protected from externalities.”
¬In
other words, these powers will have control over what can and cannot be
documented on wireless devices during any public event.
And
while the company says the affected sites are to be mostly cinemas, theaters,
concert grounds and similar locations, Apple Inc. also says “covert police or
government operations may require complete ‘blackout’ conditions.”
“Additionally,”
Apple says,” the wireless transmission of sensitive information to a remote
source is one example of a threat to security. This sensitive information could
be anything from classified government information to questions or answers to
an examination administered in an academic setting.”
The
statement led many to believe that authorities and police could now use the
patented feature during protests or rallies to block the transmission of video
footage and photographs from the scene, including those of police brutality,
which at times of major events immediately flood news networks and video
websites.
Apple
patented the means to transmit an encoded signal to all wireless devices,
commanding them to disable recording functions.
Those
policies would be activated by GPS, and WiFi or mobile base-stations, which
would ring-fence (“geofence”) around a building or a “sensitive area” to
prevent phone cameras from taking pictures or recording video.
Apple
may implement the technology, but it would not be Apple’s decision to activate
the “feature” – it would be down governments, businesses and network owners to
set such policies, analyzes ZDNet technology website.
Having
invented one of the most sophisticated mobile devices, Apple now appears to be
looking for ways to restrict its use.
“As
wireless devices such as cellular telephones, pagers, personal media devices
and smartphones become ubiquitous, more and more people are carrying these
devices in various social and professional settings,” it explains in the
patent. “The result is that these wireless devices can often annoy, frustrate,
and even threaten people in sensitive venues.”
The
company’s listed “sensitive” venues so far include mostly meetings, the
presentation of movies, religious ceremonies, weddings, funerals, academic
lectures, and test-taking environments.
Cyclist Arrested For Videotaping Cop During Red Light Stop
Photographing and videotaping
anything in public view—including federal buildings and the police—is legal in
NYC as long as the documentation does not impede any law enforcement activity.
Nevertheless, plenty of people—including journalists—continue to be arrested
and harassed by camera-shy NYPD officers. Will Paybarah, a 24-year-old Brooklyn
resident, says this is exactly what happened to him in late March, when he was
stopped for running a red light on his bike and then arrested for trying to
videotape the officer with his cellphone. "When I tried to record my
interaction with the officer I was arrested... in 10 seconds flat," he
told us. You can see that interaction quickly play out in the video below.
Paybarah, a designer specializing in lettering and typography, told us he was
stopped on the morning of March 20th while biking west on Houston past
Broadway. He says he was stopped by "Officer Rich" of the 10th
Precinct, who was in an undercover cop car, after he (admittedly) ran a red
light. Paybarah took out his ID and immediately started taking video as the cop
approached him: "After those 10 seconds I was pulled off my bike, pushed
up against the metal fence, placed in handcuffs and put into the back seat of
the car. Other officers came. They joked saying they were going to 'handcuff my
bike to the tree.'"
The NYPD Patrol Guide Section
212-49 states that “Members of the service will not interfere with the
videotaping or the photographing of incidents in public places. Intentional
interference such as blocking or obstructing cameras or harassing the
photographer constitutes censorship.”
While in the back of the car,
Paybarah says he asked the officers why he was arrested for taking video. One
officer responded memorably:
I was told by another officer
while in the car that recording a police officer was illegal because people are
using iPhones as guns and shooting cops through the camera lens...I told him
that I have the right to be recording a cop and he said that there were incidents,
specifically in uptown Manhattan where a kid shot a cop with his iPhone.
Straight face. Very serious.
There are iPhone cases that
double as stun guns, and there have been calls for the "iPhone of
guns," but this is the first we've heard of an NYPD office being shot with
an iPhone gun.
Paybarah was jailed at Central
Booking for 13 hours that day, and though he was originally pulled over for
running a red light, he was also charged with resisting arrest, obstruction of
justice, and criminal mischief. He had his court date this week, and was
sentenced to one day community service (and he'll have the arrest purged from
his record if he isn't arrested again in the next six months).
Asked about Paybarah's
experience, NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman says, “New Yorkers have a
constitutional right to film police activity in public. Cell phone cameras
empower people to expose police abuse and hold law enforcement accountable when
it violates people’s rights." Last year the NYCLU released a free smartphone
app that lets users record police interactions and submit them to the
organization in real time.
Paybarah adds that he's an avid
biker (and used to be a bike messenger), but this is only the second time he's
had a run-in with the law: "The only other time I was pulled over on my
bike was for...get ready for it...Speeding. I was speeding on my bike. When I
went to court for the summons, a clerk looked at the summons and dismissed my
case."
Man Arrested For Filming NYC Cop Ticketing Him
By Edwin Kee on 05/04/2014
Will Paybarah, a 24-year old
who has made New York City his home, was riding his bicycle last March 20th
when he was asked to stop by a policeman who was about to give him a ticket for
running a red light. In this day and age when social media is extremely
pervasive, Paybarah took out his iPhone to record a video of the police
officer’s approach only to find out that he was arrested instead for filming
what was about to happen.
One ought to take note that
there is no such law that forbids the filming of giving out a ticket, and the
arrest was made by a certain undercover officer who goes by the name of Rich
from the 10th Precinct. There were other policemen afterwards who showed up and
made jokes that included how they were going to cuff Paybarah’ bicycle to a
tree.
The NYPD Patrol Guide Section
212-49 does mention that the are not supposed to do anything should someone
want to snap a photo, since that could be seen as a form of censorship.
Paybarah, in a handcuff and seated within a patrol car, asked for the reason of
his arrest only to be told that recording a police officer with an iPhone was
illegal because criminals in the city do use iPhone handsets as a gun to fire
bullets via the camera lens, while citing an example that a kid recently fired
at an officer in the very same manner.
What do you think of the
police’s reaction? After all, there are tasers that have been disguised to look
like iPhones…
Green Bay police investigate arrest shown in viral video
Green
Bay police said Tuesday they are investigating an arrest outside a downtown bar
over the weekend captured on video and posted online.
The
video, posted to Facebook and YouTube, shows an exchange between a man outside
a bar and Green Bay Police Officer Derek Wicklund. The profanity-laced video
appears to show an officer aggressively subduing an individual outside the
tavern.
All
officers involved in the incident remain on the job and continue to work on
patrol.
The
department’s Professional Standards Division is initiating an investigation and
is seeking the public’s cooperation, police said Tuesday.
“We
haven’t had, per se, a formal complaint filed, but based on the information we
received (Monday) we have decided to start our own investigation,” Capt. Bill
Galvin of the Green Bay Police Department said during a press conference
Tuesday morning. “We’re going to be looking at everything that took place
before, during, and after that incident.”
Joshua
Wenzel, 29, of Caledonia, said he is the man on the video being grabbed by an
officer, pushed against a car and taken to the ground. Wenzel said he and other
people had been drinking at Stir-Ups Parlor & Saloon on South Washington
Street, and were outside the bar shortly after it closed.
“I’m
standing in front of this other kid, who is saying things and he is walking
toward a cop,” Wenzel told Press-Gazette Media. “I don’t know the kid. I say,
‘you don’t want to go after a cop.’ Then the cop starts arresting him, and I
say ‘what are you arresting him for?’”
On
the video, a voice says “why is he getting arrested too now? Why is he getting
arrested too?” An officer walks toward Wenzel, grabs him and pushes him against
a parked car. The pair then fall to the ground and scuffle.
“He
pushes me back ... he punched me in the face,” said Wenzel, who has been
ticketed on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
Wenzel
said he doesn’t have any bruises or other injuries. He said Tuesday he had not
lodged a complaint with police, and had not decided if he will consult an
attorney.
Wenzel
said he was “kind of drunk” at the time of the incident, but “not stupid,
falling-down drunk.”
The
incident came to light Monday afternoon through a Facebook post.
Galvin
said the early investigation indicates the beginnings of the incident started
around an individual who left one of the bars with an open intoxicant. Police
ticketed a 24-year-old Green Bay man on that charge.
At
least several days of work lie ahead in the investigation, but its duration can
vary depending on information that comes forward, Galvin said.
“What
we look at is, did officers follow policies and procedures?” Galvin said. “If
they didn’t, what happened, and why did it happen. We put that all together
into report form and forward it to the chief.”
He
said officers dealing with a person who is resisting arrest can “go one level
up” to subdue that person. If the person is wrestling with an officer, the
officer could be justified in throwing a punch, striking with his elbow or
using his baton, Galvin said.
“Every
complaint against an officer is investigated as fully as possible,” Galvin
said. “In an incident like this we didn’t wait for someone to come forward and
file a complaint, we felt something like this is something that should be
looked at.
“There
were quite a few comments on Facebook, we were receiving emails from people
that were concerned about the actions that took place,” he said.
“We’re
reviewing details, video from officer’s squad cars, videos submitted to us by
citizens and we’ll be trying to formulate a list of possible witnesses we can
interview,” Galvin said. “We’ll be doing a thorough and transparent
investigation.”
Momentum Grows for Police Body Cameras
By
James Poulos.
For
critics of police misconduct looking for an easy fix, one solution towers above
the rest: affix video cameras to cops. The idea is picking up steam in
California, where top officials are showing increased interest.
Yet
this also is a time when concerns about data harvesting and government
surveillance are also increasing. So questions remain as to whether augmenting
oversight with “foolproof” technology contributes to a frame of mind that
doesn’t serve civil liberties as much as advocates might hope.
California’s
on-body camera experiment is already underway in Los Angeles. As the Los
Angeles Times reports, Police commissioner Steve Soboroff led the push, raising
$1 million for an effort expected to culminate in some 600 body cams to be used
across the LAPD. But with Police Chief Charlie Beck describing the cameras as
“the future of policing,” future growth seems assured, barring some unexpected
mishap.
Who,
indeed, wants to be seen taking a stand against the future — especially the
future of public safety? In San Diego, the Times points out, politicians are
lining up to endorse the rosy view. There, the city council has allocated twice
Los Angeles’ planned spend, with city officials joining the incoming and
outgoing chief of police in embracing cop cams.
Southern
California’s swell of institutional support is a strong indication of one
powerful trend — government enthusiasm toward enlisting technology in pursuit
of public safety perfection. The case for videocams on police pitches a dual
rationale that seems to benefit both those who govern and those who are
governed. Citizens get a body of evidence in the event of officer misconduct.
And officers — and departments — get protection from adverse verdicts and
costly settlements in litigation surrounding alleged abuse.
What’s
missing from that balanced equation, however, is a reckoning with the broader
implications of perpetual police surveillance. The logic behind ubiquitous
officer-mounted video does not stop with miniature automated camcorders.
Wired
The
degree to which cops are “wired” is limited only by the state of the
technological art. The New York City Police Department predictably now is
testing Google Glass for use on the streets. The “future of policing” permitted
by technology is a future where police operations work more and more like
military ones — with officers back at headquarters closely monitoring and
directing cops in the field, using real-time, first-person video and
information.
For
civil liberties advocates concerned about what The Washington Post’s Radley
Balko calls “the rise of the warrior cop,” that’s not exactly a reason for
optimism. So long as no-knock raids, aggressive SWAT techniques, and
unreasonable or warrantless searches flourish under judicial protection,
invasive and violent policing can become the norm, no matter how
well-documented.
It’s
a process that can be accelerated by Americans’ frequent sense that a muscular,
active police force is a sign of social and political progress, and by the
pipeline that so often leads prosecuting attorneys “who get results” to seek
and gain higher political office.
Yet
the main argument against the trend set by on-body police cameras fails to
think very far ahead. The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, which
generally accepts the move toward cop cams, focuses almost entirely on ensuring
that cameras cannot be edited or turned off by the cops who wear them.
Yet
many Americans are very uncomfortable with the idea of “always-on” webcams
embedded in their video game consoles. Isn’t the always-on issue even more
salient when it’s an entire police force equipped in that way?
Not
only is the bodycam trend apt to feed — and increase — the huge federal and
other government appetite for monitoring and databasing. It’s also likely to
atrophy our shared standards of individual responsibility, neighborhood trust
and civic freedom.
In
a world where every interaction with an officer is monitored, recorded,
overseen and archived, our relationship to power is fundamentally changed —
even if the kind of extralegal abuse associated with high-profile litigation
against police departments disappears.
Now
at the forefront of the tech revolution in policing, California’s often
anti-establishmentarian citizens have a unique opportunity to question whether
“the system” should forever be put between every private person and every law
enforcement official.
NYPD Twitter Campaign Backfires – #myNYPD Goes Viral With Photos Of Police Brutality
On
Tuesday, the New York Police Department asked its Twitter followers to tweet
pictures of them interacting with the city’s policemen with the hashtag
#myNYPD. This attempt of promoting a positive image for the department instead
backfired into a public-shaming stint by their followers.
The
#myNYPD Twitter campaign became an outlet for people to erupt the Twittersphere
with pictures of the department’s excessive brutality, particularly during the
Occupy Wall Street movement. Instead of happy pictures of cops in uniform
posing with locals and helping people out, the #myNYPD hashtag was flooded with
barbaric images of policemen kneeing civilians, bashing people with sticks and
the bloody results.
After
more than 10,000 tweets in an hour with the hashtag #myNYPD Tuesday evening,
NYPD did not have much to say in defense. All NYPD spokeswoman Kim Royster
publically had to say was, “The NYPD is creating new ways to communicate
effectively with the community. Twitter provides and open forum for an
uncensored exchange and this is an open dialogue good for our city.”
This
revealing #myNYPD Twitter campaign sparked similar hashtag trends directed
toward various police departments around the country, such as LAPD. Twitter
user @amusem tweeted a picture of an NYPD officer pulling at a woman in
handcuffs’ hair, with the caption, “Is that the one your public relations
people requested? #mynypd.” Well, probably not.
Although
this was most likely not the social media activity that NYPD intended with this
hashtag, a conversation around police brutality is one that needed to be
brought to light. Since police are a vital part to keeping any community safe,
their shortcomings and excessive violence often go overlooked.
Just
a few weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Justice released a report scrutinizing
the Albuquerque Police Department in New Mexico for their unacceptable “pattern
of excessive force.” Last month the APD shot and killed James Boyd, a homeless
Albuquerque man, during an outburst of mental instability. According to a
Tuesday USA Today article, Boyd was the 37th person shot by APD and the 23rd
one killed since January 2010.
And
just two days ago, an APD policeman shot and killed 19-year-old Mary Hawkes who
was suspected of truck theft — “suspected” being the operative word. Similar to
Boyd, even though Hawkes never pulled out a gun on the police, she is the third
person in five weeks to be shot dead by the Albuquerque police.
As
the brutality of the APD and NYPD have re-entered the spotlight via social
media week, it is vital that our justice department revisits the conversation
around conventional police training. The fact that Tuesday evening’s
Twittersphere was dominated with more pictures of police brutality than
compassion speaks to a fundamental problem within this country’s police force,
in which they are trained to act based on reaction rather than rationale.
Attila
Denes, a Colorado County Police Captain, said the incessant issue of police
brutality around the United States lies in the way policemen are trained.
According to a 2013 report by the National Sheriff’s Association, at least half
of the people who are violently killed by police in the U.S. every year have
some sort of mental health problem — such as one of APD’s victims, James Boyd.
If police were taught how to better identify the psychological rather than
physical state of the suspected criminal, than fatal encounters between the
police and mentally ill wouldn’t be so frequent.
“Traditional
law enforcement tactics are rooted in logic, in reasoning — and in issuing commands
for someone to comply so that we can make the situation safe right now by
taking a person into custody,” Denes said. “But barking orders at a person with
serious mental illness doesn’t work.”
This
is not meant to undermine the importance and vital role police forces play in a
community, however. Just look at the positive role both the Boston Police
Department and Boston University Police Department play in our daily lives.
Both of these departments act with good intentions, and, for the most part, succeed
in making BU and Boston feel safe. Their excessive presence at Monday’s
Marathon was not only warranted, but comforting as well.
But,
at the same time, it would do our country a disservice to overlook how
frequently the police use excessive force to quiet at rowdy crowd. Police
should be inherently emphathetic, not just toward the mentally ill, but also
toward normal, everyday civilians. If the police were trained with more of an
emphasis on psychology and empathy, maybe Tuesday evenings Twittersphere would
have been filled with fewer pictures of NYPD police officers with their knees
on people’s necks, and more pictures of Hallmark moments like their social
media managers probably intended.
Photographer sues Caltrans, CHP over Willits arrest
By GLENDA ANDERSON
A freelance photographer who
was arrested while covering protests against the controversial Willits highway
bypass last summer is suing Caltrans and the CHP, alleging they violated his
constitutional rights.
“I want to protect the First
Amendment. That's my main incentive,” said Steve Eberhard, 65, a retired
welder-fabricator who moved to Willits from Santa Rosa 11 years ago.
The lawsuit includes
allegations of false arrest, false imprisonment, civil rights violations,
unnecessary delay in processing the arrest and intentional infliction of
emotional harm.
CHP and Caltrans officials said
they cannot comment on the case.
San Francisco attorney Duffy
Carolan, a media law specialist and counsel to dozens of California newspapers,
is representing Eberhard at no charge to him.
“It's very important for the
press to have access to the area and the ability to monitor the CHP's response
to the ongoing protest,” Carolan said, explaining why she took the case pro
bono.
Protests began early last year
as Caltrans started work on the $210 million, 5.9-mile Highway 101 bypass
project. Demonstrators have been arrested after venturing into the construction
zone, occupying trees on the site and chaining themselves to heavy equipment.
Opponents say the project is
unnecessary and damaging to the environment. Supporters and Caltrans say the
project is critical to alleviating traffic congestion in downtown Willits,
through which Highway 101 currently runs.
The project also has generated
lawsuits from environmental groups and citations from government agencies,
which have slowed, but not stopped progress on the bypass.
Work on the project resumed
last week, Caltrans spokesman Phil Frisbie said.
Eberhard, who has had two photos
published in The Press Democrat, was arrested in July after walking onto a
construction site at the north end of the bypass project. He said he was
handcuffed, booked and detained for several hours before being released. No
criminal charges were filed against him.
Eberhard said he would have
left on his own, but a CHP officer abruptly arrested him while another was
looking up the wording of a standard order to disperse.
At the time of Eberhard's
arrest, Caltrans officials defended what happened.
They said they did not prevent
Eberhard from covering the months-long protests, but that he and other media
representatives were required to wait for an escort because there was
construction underway.
“It's not safe to have people
wandering around a construction site, even when there's no construction” in
progress, Frisbie said at the time.
First Amendment experts say the
press must be accommodated when covering legitimate news stories, but that it
doesn't give them a right to go wherever they wish.
Eberhard had been warned
several times before his arrest that he could not enter the construction zone
without a press escort, Eberhard and Caltrans have said.
Eberhard said he always
contacted Caltrans before going out but that an escort was not always available
and that he would have missed the protest activities had he waited.
Carolan, the attorney, said the
arresting officers knew Eberhard and why he was there. She said they arrested
him to prevent him from covering newsworthy events and, “in their minds, to
teach him a lesson.”
“Now we are going to teach them
one,” she said.
Ex Cop: Everyone Behaves Better When They're on Video
Paul
Detrick & Will Neff|
"Ex
Cop: Everyone Behaves Better When They're on Video," produced by Paul
Detrick and Will Neff. About 5:45 minutes.
Original
release date was March 25, 2014. and the original text is below.
Civilians
shoot and upload police encounters to the Internet everyday using tiny cameras
on their cell phones and other mobile devices. In fact it may be easier than
ever to keep the police accountable with the technology we all carry around in
our pockets. But police are looking to keep civilians accountable too by
wearing cameras of their own. Reason TV sat down with former Seattle Police
officer Steve Ward, who left the force to start Vievu, a company that makes
body cameras for police officers.
“Everyone
behaves better when they’re on video,” says Ward. “I realized that dash cams
only capture about five percent of what a cop does. And I wanted to catch 100
percent of what a cop does.”
The
cameras are small, light, and clip to the clothing of a police officer’s
uniform. They turn on with a large switch on the front of the camera and have a
green circle that surrounds the lens so that civilians know that the camera is
recording.
But
once the data is recorded, what stops an officer from editing or manipulating
the video? Ward says his cameras contain software that stops officers from
doing anything nefarious with it, “Our software platform stops officers from
altering, deleting, copying, editing, uploading to YouTube, any of the videos
that the cops take.”
While
body cameras present the strong benefit of keeping police accountable, they
also present a risk of invading civilians’ privacy. But in a policy brief from
October 2013, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that depending on how
the body cameras were implemented, the privacy concerns could be dealt with.
Although
we generally take a dim view of the proliferation of surveillance cameras in
American life, police on-body cameras are different because of their potential
to serve as a check against the abuse of power by police officers.
Historically, there was no documentary evidence of most encounters between
police officers and the public, and due to the volatile nature of those encounters,
this often resulted in radically divergent accounts of incidents. Cameras have
the potential to be a win-win, helping protect the public against police
misconduct, and at the same time helping protect police against false
accusations of abuse.
In
2013, The New York Times reported that the city of Rialto, Calif., was able to
cut down on complaints against officers by 88 percent over the previous year
when it gave its officers body cameras.
Use of force by officers fell by almost 60 percent.
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Fairfax County Police Watch: Temple student sues Philly cops over photo inciden...: WILLIAM BENDER A TEMPLE University photojournalism student and his girlfriend are suing two Philadelphia police officers who th...
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Texas student arrested after filming police traffic stops
A University of Texas at San
Antonio college student has reportedly pressed charges against a local law
enforcement officer after she was arrested while recording a police speed trap
with her cell phone.
Abie Kyle Ikhinmwin, 25, was
standing with her bicycle in front of a bus stop last week when she started to
record footage of a marked police car pulling over suspected speeders on an
adjacent road. When all was said and done, though, she was one of the
unfortunate ones who ended up with a traffic citation — as well as a ride in
the back of a cop cruiser.
As evident in the videos
Ikhinmwin uploaded to her YouTube page, at one point while recording the clips
she was approached by a San Antonio Police Department officer and asked to move
her bike away from traffic.
“What’s the traffic violation?
I’m 12 inches from the curb. Am I not 12 inches within the curb?” she asked on
camera.
When Ikhinmwin refused to
relocate her two-wheeler, the officer asked for identification. After refusing
to comply with that order, the cop handcuffed the woman and hauled her in.
“You can’t just arrest me for
sitting at a bus stop,” the college student is heard telling the cop on camera.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” the
police officer responds. “M’aam, you’re going to go to jail, that’s what's
going to happen. You’re already going to jail.”
According to local news network
KENS 5, “she was eventually dragged by her hair into a squad car, but not
before suffering bruises that would keep her out of school for a week.”
Ikhinmwin spoke with the
station afterward and said of the incident: “I’ve never been so dehumanized in
my life.”
“Her bike was confiscated,
along with her school books and computer,” KENS 5 reported. On top of that,
though, she also received one citation for failing to obey an officer and
another for impeding traffic. With regards to the arrest, though, she says that
was the result of being charged with failure to provide identification to a
police officer.
Ikhinmwin, a criminal justice
major at the local college, is pressing charges against the officer, KENS 5
reported.
According to the authorities,
however, the arresting officer was never in the wrong.
"I think there was
somebody there that certainly seemed to be failing to obey the police officer's
orders," SAPD Sgt. Javier Salazar told the station after being asked for
comment.
On her personal Facebook page,
Ikhinmwin wrote, “If I were looking for fame it wouldn't be from an officer
beating me up.”
KENS 5 reporter Joe Conger
claims Ikhinmwin told her that officers took four hours to come up with the
failing to produce identification charge after she was apprehended. The SAPD
confirmed to Conger that they are investigating the ordeal.
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