NH Man Arrested For Videotaping Police.. Again 666
OhPlz writes "Back in 2006, a resident of New Hampshire's second largest city was arrested while at the police station attempting to file a complaint against officers. His crime? He had video tape evidence of the officers' wrongdoings. According to the police, that's wiretapping. After world wide attention, the police dropped the charges. His complaint was found to be valid, but the evidence never saw the light of day. Well, guess what? Round two. There are differing reports, but again the police arrested Mr. Gannon and again, they seized his video camera. This time it's 'falsifying evidence' because he tried to hand off the camera, most likely to protect its contents. If there's the potential of police wrongdoing, how is it that the law permits the police to seize the evidence?"
If Live Free Or Die are your choices (Score:5, Insightful)
... I reckon "die" is all that's left.
Falsifying evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
Evidence of what? Evidence of him having videotaped officers? This makes as much sense as when the police arrest someone on the sole charge of "resisting arrest." He was resisting arrest. Why were you arresting him? For resisting arrest. Do they really think anyone buys that?
lulz (Score:5, Insightful)
It's quite obvious. Cops are here to serve and protect, themselves, above all else. You don't take videotaped evidence of police wrongdoing to the police, that's the last thing you do. You think there would have been riots in LA had there not been a helicopter overhead filming police beating the shit out of Rodney King? Dashcam footage of that beating would have never seen the light of day. First thing you do when you have video evidence of police wrongdoing, you upload it to the internet. Plain and simple.
Re:A Fair Word of Warning (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A Fair Word of Warning (Score:4, Insightful)
Police state (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Falsifying evidence? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And people wonder why they want guns protected? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If Live Free Or Die are your choices (Score:2, Insightful)
No, "kill" is left.
Americans are MUCH too comfortable to exercise that option at the moment. Nothing to see here for a long time.
Stranger than Fiction (Score:5, Insightful)
This time it's 'falsifying evidence' because he tried to hand off the camera
Preserving it is falsifying it? Orwell had nothing on this.
Re:Falsifying evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Gannon was charged with resisting arrest, simple assault on a police officer and disorderly conduct."
The original charge seems to be disorderly conduct. Whatever he shouted at the police while they were driving by, plus whatever he said prior to being tackled is probably what the disorderly conduct was about.
If you ask me, they probably would have arrested him for saying "Booo!"
Re:Google+ (Score:3, Insightful)
The feature I love most about Google+ is that, as soon as I take a picture or a video on my Android phone, it is immediately uploaded to my Google+ account, without any further action on my part.
I can see that biting you in the ass sooner or later....maybe not you personally but people in general.
Re:I've learned not to yell anything at cops (Score:5, Insightful)
I've learned not to yell anything at cops.
I guess we were lucky we didn't get beat up, tazed, maced and put in jail like this guy.
That's the wrong lesson. What you should have learned is that people with power tend to abuse it, even for the most trivial of things.
Things have to change (Score:4, Insightful)
Among these are abuse of "wire tapping" laws which must be reformed in states that require two party consent. Recording public events is not and should never be considered wire tapping. Where is the wire? Where was it being tapped?
This case needs to go to trial and speedily. Police dropping charges only means that they are free to continue their harassment and terrorizing.
People need to make copies of their videos before presenting them as evidence anywhere. One should go to the FBI, others to news organizations and still more somewhere online. (There must be a service somewhere that allows hosting of large encrypted files which can then be made available to all with a key file kinda like the wikileaks thing.)
All of this wrong really gets under my skin sometimes. When you have to defend yourself against police, things have gone way too far.
Re:If Live Free Or Die are your choices (Score:5, Insightful)
what man, that is terrorist talk.
I have notified homeland security
Re:What are these words? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ad hominem attacks: good as logic since 2001!
Re:Police state (Score:4, Insightful)
If people, especially authorities can't be recorded when in public, then there is nothing to prevent them from abusing their authority, doing anything they wish, and lying about it.
We've had C-SPAN for decades and it hasn't done anything to restrain congress from abusing its authority.
But of course I agree, we do have the right to monitor our employees.
Re:What are these words? (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed. Hardly surprising that Rethuglicans gravitate to positions and a political party where they can tell people what to do and take away people's rights, I suppose.
Hey Rethuglicans, here's a hint:
Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t get one.
Don’t like abortions? Don’t get one.
Don’t like drugs? Don’t do them.
Don’t like sex? Don’t have it.
Don't like booze? Don't drink it.
Don’t like your rights taken away? Don’t take away anybody else's.
Re:What are these words? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. So I'm modded "flamebait" for linking to the Tenaha abuses by police, in a story about police misconduct? I get the feeling some republican just ran through the entire thread dropping downmods anywhere they could.
Re:A Fair Word of Warning (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we are 100% IN a police state right now.
The final brick in that particular wall was the aftermath of 9/11, when the nation as a whole suddenly became obsessed with safety.
Re:Douchebags (Score:4, Insightful)
Couldn't agree more. The justice system is very fond of claiming that harsh punishments deter crime. We should make them put their money where their mouth is and punish cops who break the law by having mandatory additional jail time on top of the normal sentence for whatever crime they committed. You could implement it as an 'abuse of authority' law. You break the law while acting in the capacity of your job as a police officer (I am aware there are some jurisdictions where cops are 'on duty' 24/7 in which case this would apply 24/7) and it's an extra 2 years + half the sentence length for the crime committed.
I think similar should be done for prosecutors. If you say something in your role as prosecutor about a defendant that turns out not to be true, even stating that the defendant is guilty if they are acquitted, you should have to serve time. How many people's lives have been ruined because of public perception brought on by a mouthy prosecutor? There should be punishments for doing that.
Re:What are these words? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is /. you're only supposed to complain about moderations when you're being an ironic karma whore.
Re:Falsifying evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer then: some of my family are cops, and some are soldiers.
Perhaps things are just different from this perspective.
It's the bad apple effect.
Risk = Severity x Probability. The amount of damage a bad cop can do to an innocent civilian's life is enormous, so it only takes a few bad apples on the force to make the risk of naively cooperating with a random cop too high. It's different if you have a personal relationship with the specific officer because, chances are, you know if he's a douche or not. But when all you know about the guy is that he has a badge, the risk is pretty high.
I have cops in the family too and I'd be extremely surprised if you hadn't heard a tale or two from them about either their own exploits or that of another officer on the force, that in the sober light of day, was at least ethically wrong if not outright criminal. Part of the problem is that "good" cops let other cops get away with shit and that undermines public confidence. A little less of the "brotherhood" and a little more of the "duty" and things might eventually get better.
Re:What are these words? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ad hominem attacks: good as logic since 2001!
Insult != ad hominem. For example, if I were to say, "You're an idiot, therefore I conclude you're confusing an insult with an ad hominem argument," that would be an example of the ad hominem fallacy. On the other hand, if I were to say, "You're confusing an insult with an ad hominem argument, therefore I conclude you're an idiot," that would not. Since I don't like making fallacious arguments, I will restrict myself to the following statement:
You're confusing an insult with an ad hominem argument, therefore I conclude you're an idiot.
Re:Falsifying evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
I will have to agree with you on that one, for I am truly in awe.
Conspiracy to loiter. Wow.
Well, from the 'teenager in the 80's' bit, I reckon I've about a decade on you (I graduated high school in '76), but I'm going to say something that I never imagined I would ever say:
In view of current happenings, I miss that era sometimes.
Re:The case for "security" cameras (Score:5, Insightful)
I run a youth program. We have HD security cameras covering all of our premises (not the bathrooms). We have caught police misconduct more than once with those cameras.
Back in May we had a police officer from the next town over come in to "talk" with one of our teens about a crime that "they may have witnessed". When I got this call, my next call was to 911 to put on record that this was going to go on (standard policy for us, any time a police officer calls to interview a kid in our program, a staff member calls 911 to put it on the record. We find this stops a lot of police abuses, along with our ready access to lawyers). When the police officers came, the two of them tried to strong arm the kid out the door. We flatly refused to allow the teen to be taken to the police station to be questioned, and told the police officers that they would need to arrest the teen and read them their rights before we would allow them to leave (and that the teen was then invoking the right to a lawyer). They were not happy - they even accused me of not 'playing ball'.
When they started shoving the teen and talking about how the teen had just hit the officer (to be clear, the teen never touched the cop, the cops flatly made it up), and that was grounds for arrest, I physically stepped between the cops and the teen (I am 6'1, 220, a third degree black belt in Tie Kwan Do and like to lift weights) and informed them that the interview was over, and they were to leave. My volunteer assistant (who works part time as a judge at the state Department of Education!) called 911 at that point - calling 911 also activates the audio recording of all of our cameras, as well as an auto backup of our cameras to the law office next door.
Long story short, it was a weird stand off until local police arrived - the two cops having their hands on their guns, my telling them they had to leave or be escorted out. When local police arrived (with whom we have a generally good relationship) we informed them that our security cameras had caught the whole thing and we wanted the two cops arrested for assault. The first thing the local cops wanted to do was take the recording device and arrest the teen. When I said that it was no problem, our system recorded to three redundant devices, one of which is at our lawyers office, suddenly they didn't want to take the teen, and couldn't get out of their fast enough.
We sent a copy of the video to the DA's office, asking for an investigation, another copy went to the lawyer we set the family up with to represent this kid, and a third to the police department of the next town, with a letter from our lawyer stating that we would not allow any officer from their department to enter our premises or interview any of our kids without the programs lawyer present.
Yea, and just yesterday I was having sex with a dozen of my girlfriends when Santa and The Easter Bunny dropped by to do blow and jerk off unicorns. I have quite a few unicorns. Their barn is right behind the lake where my pet Pleseosaur hangs out.