Arrested for Videotaping

[Vashta Nerada]

TAMPA — Taxpayers will pay $41,500 to settle a claim for damages from a Tampa woman arrested as she made a cellphone video of her husband's DUI arrest. City attorney Kirby Rainsberger warned Tampa officers, "don't expect the courts to protect you from the annoyance of having your general activities recorded from an appropriate distance.
Even when the people behind the camera make profane comments, "this sort of activity is generally constitutionally protected up until the point where the recording individual substantially interferes with law enforcement duties," he said. "The officer bears a heavy burden to prove that the interference substantially outweighs the protected activity.""

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/tampa-to-pay-41500-to-settle-claim-over-cell-phone-video-arrest-wvideo/2209125




Next in line:

 

[Vashta Nerada]

A 36-year-old Baltimore woman claims she was tased by police and arrested while filming the arrest of a man with her mobile phone.

Video of the March 30 melee surfaced online this week. Police erased the 135-second recording from the woman's phone, but it was recovered from her cloud account, according to the Circuit Court for Baltimore City lawsuit (PDF), which seeks $7 million.
Kianga Mwamba was driving home from a family gathering in March. Stopped in traffic, she began filming the nearby arrest of a man who she says was kicked by police.

"You telling me I can't record," the woman says on the video as police tell her to move on.
"I'll park. I'll park. I'll park," the woman is heard saying in her own recording.
All of a sudden an officer says, "Out of the car. Out of the car."

Mwamba was arrested on charges of assault for allegedly trying to run over two officers. Charges were dropped, and she suffered cuts and bruises.

At the end of the tape, an officer says, "You a dumb grumble, you know that?"
"What did I do?" she asks.
"You just tried to run over an officer," the officer responds.

While in custody, she gave her phone to an officer to show the video that she didn't try to run over anybody. The video was allegedly erased from the phone in what her attorney, Joshua Insley, described in a telephone interview as a "coverup."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/cops-use-taser-on-woman-while-she-recorded-arrest-of-another-man/

[Vashta Nerada]

http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2014/12/watch-nypd-cop-runs-punches-12-year-old-boy-detained-three-cops/

[Vashta Nerada]

When the mother asked if the officer had to detain the father in front of the children, the officer turned to the father and said, "You're going to jail because your wife keeps running her mouth." The mother then began recording the officer on her cell phone. The officer became irate, declaring, "You don't videotape me!" As the officer drove away with the father in custody for "parental neglect," the mother drove after them, continuing to record. The officer then pulled over and arrested her for traffic violations. When the father asked the officer to show mercy, he responded, "No more mercy, since she wanted to videotape," and declared "Nobody videotapes me." The officer then took the phone, which the couple's daughter was holding. After posting bond, the couple found that the video had been deleted.

http://photographyisnotacrime.com/blog/2015/03/usdoj-exposes-ferguson-police-department-to-be-filled-with-racist-cops-suppressing-the-right-to-record/

[Vashta Nerada]

About 10 times a day, Darren Baptiste gets an email informing him that footage of police brutality may have been posted to YouTube through software he developed. Baptiste is the creator of CopWatch, an iPhone app that helps people record police-citizen interactions, upload them directly to the Internet, then alert Toronto-based activist group the Network for the Elimination of Police Violence to the material's existence.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/users/2015/04/copwatch_mobile_justice_and_other_apps_for_citizens_filming_police_encounters.html

Strengthen the right to record police
http://www.denverpost.com/editorials/ci_27881946/strengthen-right-record-police



Without the knowledge that the killing had been videotaped, the department gave an account of the killing that was brazenly false. This tall tale was straightforwardly reported by local media, and probably would have set the narrative that led to Slager's exoneration had the videotape not surfaced.

One upshot of this case is to demonstrate the vital importance of the First Amendment right of citizens to film the behavior of police officers who are on duty. As The Washington Post's Radley Balko explains, despite the hostility of police officers to being filmed, recording their behavior while on duty is protected by the First Amendment in all 50 states. Citizens should be educated about this right and make use of it. At worst, one result of the killing of Walter Scott is that more officers will not expect that they can kill unarmed and unthreatening citizens with impunity.
http://theweek.com/articles/548688/nearly-getting-away-murder-how-walter-scott-video-exposed-corrupt-system

The video of the shooting not only shows the necessity of recording bad police, but the necessity of doing so covertly.

[Vashta Nerada]

Police Nearly Confiscated Pivotal Video of Murder

(CNN)  Feidin Santana, the man who recorded a South Carolina police officer fatally shooting a fleeing, unarmed man, told CNN on Thursday night he was told by another cop to stop using his phone to capture the incident.
One of the officers told me to stop, but it was because I say to them that what they did was an abuse and I witnessed everything," he told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360."
Santana said an officer told him to wait where he was but eventually he left the scene to go to work.

Feidin Santana told NBC Wednesday that he was walking to work and approached the scene because he noticed officer Michael Slager controlling Walter Scott on the ground. He began recording when he heard the sound of a Taser. He says "Mr. Scott was trying just to get away from the Taser."

Santana has reportedly said he waited to release the footage to see how Slager would report his actions.
"He wanted to see what reports were coming from the North Charleston Police Department because of the fact that they may have told the truth," Walter Scott's brother told TIME on Wednesday. "And when they continued with the lies, he said, 'I have to come forward.'"

Scott family lawyer L. Chris Stewart said at a news conference that Santana's actions "should be respected throughout this country," according to the Guardian. "We have to really recognize the strength and fortitude and fearlessness that it took to come forward when you know you just filmed a police officer murder somebody."

Santana said he was so shaken by what he had witnessed that he initially considered erasing the video from his phone and leaving town.
"I felt that my life, with this information, might be in danger," Santana said.
Santana said he changed his mind after reading the version of events as recounted by the police, which didn't match what he had seen. He said he provided the video to the dead man's family because he didn't believe anything would happen to Slager if he didn't come forward.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/walter-scott-shooting/man-who-recorded-walter-scott-being-shot-speaks-out-n338126

[Vashta Nerada]

[patric]

http://rt.com/usa/251781-south-gate-marshal-camera/

[patric]

Smartphone app from ACLU of California aims to preserve videos of police
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-aclu-app-police-video-20150430-story.html


California joins New York, Oregon and Missouri as states having the ability to directly upload citizen videos to the ACLU even when the citizens phone is confiscated.
The downside is it doesn't guarantee police wont shoot that citizen for having something in their hand.

[Vashta Nerada]

Not a good month to be in South Carolina....


CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A sheriff's deputy responding to a home invasion shot the homeowner in the neck Thursday because he refused to drop his gun, authorities said.

Two deputies from the Charleston County Sheriff's Office encountered the man at the rear of his mobile home in Hollywood, South Carolina, after two other men fled on bicycles, Sheriff's Maj. Eric Watson said in a news release.
Watson said the identities of the deputy and the shooting victim would be released on Friday, as would copies of a dashboard camera video.



Or maybe not....


COLUMBIA, S.C. (WCIV) -- State Law Enforcement Division officials say there are no body cam or dash cam videos of the deputy-involved shooting on Thursday.
According to SLED, this is the 17th officer-involved shooting in South Carolina in 2015. In 2014, there were 42 officer-involved shootings, officials said.
Law enforcement officials planned to meet with community leaders later Friday to discuss the shooting, the second in recent months involving law enforcement in Charleston County.
On April 4, a white North Charleston Police officer shot and killed a black man who he said fought with him over the officer's stun gun.
Officer Michael Slager has been charged with murder in the slaying of Walter Scott. A bystander's cellphone video showed him firing eight shots at Scott's back as he ran away.

So there is dashcam video, but not for you....

Heyward spoke with an investigator in an ambulance Thursday as paramedics patched the wound in his neck and worked to save his life. His words were captured in an audio recording that sheriff's officials released a day later, while dashboard camera video that might have caught the deputy's words were not made public.
No documentation alleges that Heyward pointed the gun at the deputies.

There is no known video footage of the shooting, SLED said in a statement Friday. The deputies' in-car cameras did not capture it, SLED spokesman Thom Berry said.  Sheriff's officials explained later, though, that the microphones on the deputies' uniform "likely" captured what they were saying at the time, including how they announced themselves to Heyward. The microphones are linked wirelessly to the video cameras.

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150508/PC16/150509445/1268/hollywood-man-on-getting-shot-by-deputy-x2018-he-thought-i-was-the-crook-x2019&source=RSS


Throwdown: Officer Slager plants a weapon next to the body of his victim:

[Vashta Nerada]

LAKEWOOD, Wash. -- A dark object that officers claimed was a gun being pointed at them when they fatally shot a man in a lumber yard last month turned out to be a cell phone, according to interim Lakewood Police Chief Mark Zaro.

Zaro made the new revelations in the shooting that took the life of 37-year-old Daniel Covarrubias during a press conference Monday afternoon.

An employee at the lumber yard had called 911 to report seeing Covarrubias running through the lumber yard "as if he was running from police".  The man then climbed atop a 25-foot tall stack of lumber.

When officers David Butts and Ryan Hamilton arrived, they attempted to talk to the man, who wasn't speaking, according to Zaro.

"Mr. Covarrubias was in an elevated position atop the stack of lumber and was seen reaching into his pockets," Zaro said. "Officers gave numerous (English) commands to show his hands, but Mr. Covarrubias did not respond. Seconds later, Mr. Covarrubias raised up with a dark object in his hands and pointed it at the officers in a manner that was consistent with pointing a firearm."

Zaro said the man crouched down, then raised up a second time and pointed the dark object at the officers. That's when both officers began shooting, firing nine shots in all, of which five struck Covarrubias, Zaro said.

Covarrubias raised up a third time with the dark object, then dropped back onto the lumber. Zaro said six seconds elapsed between the first time Covarrubias raised up and the final shot was fired by the officers.

Covarrubias was taken down via ladder and loaded into an ambulance. That's when officers discovered the dark object in Covarrubias' hand was a cell phone, not a gun, Zaro said.

Zaro said their investigation revealed that Zaro wasn't running from police when the 911 call came in and still aren't sure why he was running. The employee heard sirens in the area and then spotted Covarrubias running when they made the 911 call, but Zaro said they were not seeking him, adding he might have been heading to his home in Parkland.  Police also said Covarrubias might have been under the influence of meth and possibly hallucinating, as a possible explanation as to why he would point a cell phone at officers to mimic a gun.
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Man-shot-dead-by-Lakewood-officers-was-pointing-cell-phone-303323281.html

Another explanation would be that he was using the cellphone to take pictures.

[Vashta Nerada]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3186904/Shocking-moment-Northern-California-officer-pulls-gun-man-recording-cellphone.html

McComas, who was not arrested or detained, told the officer he would post the video on YouTube to which he replied 'I don't really care'.

[TeeDub]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3186904/Shocking-moment-Northern-California-officer-pulls-gun-man-recording-cellphone.html

McComas, who was not arrested or detained, told the officer he would post the video on YouTube to which he replied 'I don't really care'.

Could have been handled better by the photographer...  With the rash of crazy, the cop kept a level head and didn't do anything to be embarrassed about.  Everyone went home safe and alive.

[patric]

Could have been handled better by the photographer...  With the rash of crazy, the cop kept a level head and didn't do anything to be embarrassed about.  Everyone went home safe and alive.

...except the guy with the cellphone camera, who police killed.
Dont photographers lives matter?

[heironymouspasparagus]

...except the guy with the cellphone camera, who police killed.
Dont photographers lives matter?

Hey!  I bet there is a slogan there....

Something along the line of....
"Photographers Lives Matter!!"