Man Ordered At Gunpoint To Hand Over Phone For Recording Cops 983
HungryHobo writes with this excerpt from a story at Pixiq:
"Miami Beach police did their best to destroy a citizen video that shows them shooting a man to death in a hail of bullets on Memorial Day. First, police pointed their guns at the man who shot the video, according to a Miami Herald interview with the videographer. Then they ordered the man and his girlfriend out of the car and threw them down to the ground, yelling, 'you want to be f****** paparazzi?' Then they snatched the cell phone from his hand and slammed it to the ground before stomping on it. Then they placed the smashed phone in the videographer's back pocket as he was laying down on the ground."
Re:Ahhh crime. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm fairly certain this gent has a 42USC1983 claim against all of the individual officers involved, and I *certainly* hope he's taking advice on that point.
Re:The bright side... (Score:3, Informative)
It IS completely legal to video record police officers.
Anothe video of the incident... (Score:5, Informative)
...can be found here [liveleak.com]. Rather chilling.
Re:how how? (Score:4, Informative)
Qik does this quite well.
http://qik.com/ [qik.com]
Re:What we need are cops who aren't thugs (Score:4, Informative)
It's not illegal to film them,
It is in at least the states of Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland. [gizmodo.com]
Re:he says he kept the SIM card in his mouth? (Score:4, Informative)
Think the reporter meant that:
The person who recorded it does not want to post it till he gets compensation
but morally the reporter feels the person should release it NOW for everyone to see...
Re:The bright side... (Score:4, Informative)
There's Gandhicam... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bad cop, no donut (Score:2, Informative)
Already exists. iPhone Justin.TV client can broadcast over 3G or wifi straight to the net.
Re:UNacceptable (Score:4, Informative)
>"Why does everyone have to bring up the Constitution in cases like this??"
Oh let's see:
Freedom of assembly
Freedom of press
Freedom from unreasonable search or seizure
Right to due process
Freedom from unusual punishment
Stuff like that seems to apply in such cases, even if it is also covered by other laws that protect from police brutality or destruction of private property. ALL our rights spring from the Constitution.
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
Don't think he was.
"Non-electronic", and on a public way.
From http://www.rcfp.org/taping/states/florida.html [rcfp.org].
Re:What we need are cops who aren't thugs (Score:5, Informative)
It's legal to film and record police in Maryland. The case mentioned in your link went to the Maryland Circuit Court for Harford County and was ruled [scribd.com] not a violation of the law. "A law enforcement officer has no reasonable expectation of privacy in encounters with citizens in public places"
Re:Any laywers here? (Score:4, Informative)
That's what the police said. By the testimony of the police he was also doing 110-115mph in a 1988 Hyundai Excel (top speed 95mph). And was a superman high on PCP (drug tests were negative for PCP)
Re:Ahhh crime. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, http://qik.com/ [qik.com] Qik supports android and iPhone.. it worked well on my 3g and works fine on my android.
Re:Any laywers here? (Score:5, Informative)
It definitely is and assuming that this is a somewhat accurate description of what happened, the police officers involved could easily find themselves behind bars for witness tampering, destruction of evidence amongst other things. And police officers do get sent to prison from time to time for this sort of behavior.
Every once in a great while when there is a massive public outcry and there are no other politically viable alternatives, yes, they do. This is far, far less often than it should happen. Of the instances of police overstepping their bounds I have heard of exactly one police officer being fired, and that was for a clear case of murder that was committed on camera and the victim was a homeless person who was well known and liked. The officer's excuse was that the man (who was known as 'the woodcarver' by locals) had a knife, and he did not put it down in the 2.5 seconds between the time the officer told him to and the time he fired. The man made no threatening gesture with the knife.
I have never heard of a police officer going to jail.
Re:Any laywers here? (Score:4, Informative)
The wood carver was also partially deaf.
The officer in that case wasn't fired if I remember: he resigned.
Re:Ahhh crime. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the way Florida law reads (and probably in other states), anyone injured during the commission of a crime will be found at fault for that injury.
This is the way it was explained to me in law enforcement school.
If Suspect A were robbing a bank. The police show up, secure the area around it, and the situation escalates. Suspect A realizes he doesn't have a chance, and comes out of the bank, gun held above his head in a submission manner. SWAT is going to be in full battle gear (body armor, assault weapons, etc).
IB 1 (Innocent Bystander 1), a 90 year old gentleman, see the commotion, realizes what's happening and has a heart attack and dies. Not a shot has been fired yet.
SWAT1, a member of the SWAT team determines that the submissive manner isn't submissive, but aggressive, and fires. Because of the shot, every officer on the scene starts firing. we'll assume for this argument, that none of the officers shots hit their target due to the distance from the police line, and the inaccuracy of their weapon.
Random shots ricochet and hit IB 2 through IB 10, people who were standing at another police line (on the other side of the street, or an intersecting street, it doesn't really matter).
The shooting stops, ambulances come and collect the injured. Here's the summary.
Injured: Suspect A
Fatality: IB 1, IB 2 - IB 4 (3 dead from gunfire injuries, one from heart attack)
Who did it?
SWAT1 injured Suspect A.
Other officers injured IB 5 - IB 10
Other officers killed IB 2 - IB 4
So when the charges come down, who gets charged?
SWAT 1 - no charges.
Officers - no charges.
Suspect A - 4 homicides, 6 attempted homicides, all without firing a single shot.
The logic goes like this. If Suspect A had never been robbing the bank, the police would not have responded. The scenario would have never happened, and therefore it's all Suspect A's fault.
The same applies to the real case in question. The blame *WILL* be laid on the driver who is now dead. The IA investigation regarding the shooting will likely find that it was a good shooting. There may be some misconduct charges for the threats to bystanders and destruction of private property. That'll result in a nasty note in their file, and maybe a few days of paid vacation.
Re:See with that Apple patent (Score:4, Informative)
The real trick is to post everything directly to "The Cloud".
True. And the easiest way to do it is to use Qik [qik.com]. You can even set that up for the vids to land directly onto YouTube.
Re:Anothe video of the incident... (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously.. 3 cops and it sounds like each of them emptied their clips in a matter of 5 seconds or less.
Cops (and, really, pretty much everyone with a gun) are trained that, once you reach the decision to fire - which is not supposed to be taken lightly - you keep firing until you're absolutely sure that the target is incapacitated. At that point, the safety of the target is simply no longer a concern. It's not like they shoot once and then check if the guy is not reaching for the gun anymore, and if he is, they shoot again and repeat. Nor do they shoot to wound.
In this case, if all three cops saw something done by the guy in the car that was clearly aggressive (e.g. he was raising a gun?), then it would make perfect sense for each one of them to start firing at the same time, and to fire several times.
Re:See with that Apple patent (Score:4, Informative)
And this astounding theory is based on ... what? Local police can become locally corrupt and start doing the bidding of local politicians and local wealthy people. And they have done that.
Historically, it's the federal government that has curbed corruption and excesses in local and state police.
In this case, you don't seriously believe that anybody would lift a finger locally to get these people their camera phone back.
Re:Lawlessness (Score:4, Informative)
Just a warning to those who feel like replying to this "roman_mir" gold-bug troll, he's a serial liar here on Slashdot:
He lied about US purchasing power. [slashdot.org]
He lied about 19th century US economics. [slashdot.org]
He lied about taxation levels of the country you supposedly live in. [slashdot.org]
He lied about 19th century depressions. [slashdot.org]
He lied about the current level of inflation. [slashdot.org]
He lied about the consumer price index. [slashdot.org]
He just posts his lies and if anyone actually points out the inconsistencies in his arguments he runs away into another thread :-)
In the above post he compiled a variation of those lies: pointing out commodities bubbles (which were mostly caused by physical shortages on a finite planet with growing population, well before "money printing" began after the 2008 crisis) while not pointing out deflationary forces that balance out price bubbles. You can see how real aggregate inflation looks like, in the links I provided above.
His motivation seems to be that he's all invested into the current gold bubble (no diversification? Yikes ...), and wants to see it continue. He will accept no rational arguments that point out the inconsistencies in his belief system.
JFYI.
Re:See with that Apple patent (Score:2, Informative)
crazy paranoid explanations (Code Pink? Really?)
I guess you conveniently ignored the link to the SF Examiner story I provided (there are many, many other mainstream news services/papers reporting the same thing)?
Nice ad-hominem spew. Attacking the messenger assures me you've got nothing to say worth reading to refute me.
Your Liberal-fu is weak. All your base are belong to us.
You set *yourself* up the bomb.
Strat