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Photograph the Police, Get Arrested
Servo writes "Last month a man was arrested in New Hampshire after presenting evidence of a police officer being verbally abusive that he had captured on his home security camera system. Now just recently in Philadelphia a 21 year old student was arrested on his property after he took a photo of the police who were in the process of arresting a drug dealer down the street." From the article: "Cruz said that when he heard a commotion, he walked out of his back door with his cell phone to see what was happening. He said that when he saw the street lined with police cars, he decided to take a picture of the scene. 'I opened (the phone) and took a shot,' Cruz said. Moments later, Cruz said he got the shock of his life when an officer came to his back yard gate."
He said that when he saw the street lined with police cars, he decided to take a picture of the scene. 'I opened (the phone) and took a shot,' Cruz said. Moments later, Cruz said he got the shock of his life when an officer came to his back yard gate.
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How can the police be sure that the photos aren't going to be used to identify police officers for later revenge attacks?
The attitude should surely be, "if you ain't got nothing to hide..." ; it's what they are increasingly coming to expect from the rest of us.
If I don't have anything to hide, why do they need to watch me?
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I'm not suprised at all. The USA has under the Bush Administration has become a police state. If the people get a back bone he waves the terrorist flag and everyone ducks for cover.
Its really sad all in all.
You are just 70 years behind Europe. What took you so long?
(Moderators: this is called black humor).
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
OK. I'm more inclined to believe the cops... wait a second...
Oh, you dumb, dumb cops. Of course Neftaly Cruz was "not on his property" during the arrest if you went onto his property and dragged him off! Why would you do that in front of witnesses?
-Tony
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Police officers on duty in a public area have no more right to privacy than anyone else, i.e. none, and thank God for that. Power corrupts, and police have power. The only thing that reliably prevents police abuses is public accountability, which can only happen if the public is informed.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
. . .you could say that the police have a right to privacy . . .
No, I could not. The second a police officer puts on a uniform and a badge he is a public officer, ostensibly working in the public's interest and certainly paid from the public's coffers.
And as a branch of the government requiring oversight it is the public that provides it.
KFG
I am not a lawyer. If the facts of this incident are as described in the story this is an easy civil suit for wrongful arrest. A law that outlawed taking pictures of police activity in public would be unconstitutional (1st Amendment) in any case and doesn't exist. The right to observe police activity in public is well established. Another poster mentioned that the police might have a right to privacy in making an arrest in public. Wrong. One cannot have a right to privacy in public doing a public activity. There is no possible expectation of privacy there. This isn't to say that police all over the country don't pull this kind of shit all the time-arresting or attacking people for videotaping or taking pictures of public police activity. Usually it isn't quite this blatant though.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? [Who will police the police?]
- Latin proverb
you could say that the police have a right to privacy
And you would be very, very wrong.
People who are police officers -- that is, the men and women who do that as their job -- have a right to privacy, when they're at home and off-duty, or doing personal business. As public officials, they have none as they are conducting their jobs. Some of what they do may be confidential, because there's a vested public interest in keeping it secret, but such areas should be clearly and narrowly defined by law. (And that's different from general 'privacy' anyway.)
Furthermore, when standing on a public street, nobody has a right to privacy sufficient to overwhelm my right to photograph them there. It's a public place, you chose to be there, if I choose to record an image of that public place with you in it, tough luck for you.
It's a very dangerous road we go down, when we say that any aspect of our Government -- from the local police on upwards to the highest echelons of the Executive Branch -- has an inherent "right" to be secretive. Nobody does. Where the government is secretive, it should be so only because there's an overwhelming public interest for it to be that way, or where doing so prevents citizens' rights from themselves being violated (e.g., personal records maintained by the government on Federal employees). But those should be the exceptions, and not the rule. Any time you have a situation where citizens have to justify the disclosure of information from the government on a regular basis, you have a problem.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
...when I first came to the Land of the Free, I had a strong inclination to take a photograph of the light show that two police cars were flashing for my amusement just in front of my bedroom window at 2:30AM. Some poor bloke was being stopped for drunk driving. Anyhow, I refrained from snapping the picture even from within the safety of my darkened bedroom, feeling that I should wait a little until I get better acquainted with the customs of the country. Just for the reference: I hail from the "Land of the Slaughterers", i.e. Serbia, bombed by the U.S. and a few minions back in 1999. Good grief, I might have gotten myself into so much trouble for practicing our savage ways of taking photographs of public service officers on duty.
Police are fighting terrorism and crime, so therefore are above any kind of accountability?
No way!
Next, we could see the US military operating secret overseas prisons!
I wish the Cruz family the best of success with their legal actions against the police. This will be an interesting test of the US Constitution and judiciary.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Parent worse than flamebait. More like: (Score:-1, Traitor to the American people)
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
As a general rule of thumb, it's usually safe to assume that anyone can be deemed to be breaking some law or other at any given moment. That, of course, is in itself an appalling state of affairs - it is the antithesis of democracy governed by law, as it gives the authorities carte blanche to arrest and punish whomever they wish.
"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged".
- Cardinal Richelieu
'There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with'.
- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"...it's probably so easy to make mistakes in police procedure that if you were to record their activities, a good lawyer could probably shoot down a large percentage of arrests..."
In that case, the procedure is obviously far too complicated and should be drastically simplified. If something doesn't work, you fix it; you shouldn't go on using it unchanged and try to cover up the deficiencies.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
The US has become a defacto fascist state. Much like Nazi Germany last century. Starting wars without valid reason. Protecting governments that involve in state-organized terrorism (Israel). Bush and his gang and their counterparts in Israel are committing war crimes at a rate of which Hitler would have been jealous of.
... What deeply saddens me is that most of the European governments don't give a shit about what's going on in the world. They are very afraid of upsetting the their US or Israeli "friends". Israel continues to abuse its victim role of the second world war genocide. It's like in 1984 where the victims of the past became the butchers of today.
But that I already know for a long time
Considering that cops were caught red-handed fifteen years ago beating the living mess out of Rodney King, it was only a matter of time when they would attempt to strike at the heart of the problem...and outlaw cameras.
Jesus Christ, these imbeciles are unbelievable! Be it drug hysteria or a phantom war on terror, right wingers always find an excuse to erode citizens' rights while erasing as much oversight for themselves as possible.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
How many stories do I need to read on Slashdot, Digg, Fark, Google News, Wikipedia about things like this before people start doing something about things like this?
If all you're doing is sitting here on Slashdot bitching about it, shame on you. If it's so important, get off your arse and do something about it.
This is what you get when the government keeps taking away liberties everyone takes for granted.
Next time when you vote, please remember that it's not just 'the bad guys' when they mean terrorists.
Since the term terrorist is used pretty wide and broadly, it may mean you next time you do something 'the authorities' inappropriate.
Second, what was Cruz doing before. I have seen to many incidents of small incidents escaltating because of bystanders getting involved. Once the riot has started the police is blamed for letting things go out of control but if the police orders the crowd to disperse then they are fascists. A no-win scenario for the police.
This leads to the third question, does the (US) police have the right to tell people to go inside/disperse? I am not a lawyer but I think they do. If the public doesn't have to follow police instructions then things would quickly become impossible "STOP, or don't, whatever you feel like".
Fourth is that journalists have a right to photograph and this is usually accepted with press-photographers only being hit by riot squads say every other riot. In general it seems the police is all to aware that trying to supress the press only leads to more attention. But how does this translate to every citizen having a camera? What if under-cover agents are present? SWAT teams and similar typically wear camoflage not just to hide but to protect their indentity. This is offcourse not possible for under-cover agents. Even drug dealers would notice a customer with a face mask. Does the police have the right to stop photographing in these circumstances?
Fifth, where was cruz photographing, in his back yard or on the street. Furthermore if the police wanted to arrest him why shouldn't they have the right to come on to this yard. I smell rats when two sides seem to quote bogus laws. Imagine that it was true you could not be arrested on your own property. If photographing the police is illegal (I don't know) then surely it doesn't matter from where you do it?
Sixth, was cruz really just an observer? Offcourse he is just an innocent angel harmless standing in his own garden just taking a shot of some police cars. You wouldn't expect his parents to admit that he is a flunky for the drugs mafia and trying to photograph undercover agents to warn other dealers? To often I read stories like this and then when you dig a little bit deeper you learn that much more was going on. It just sets of an alarm in my mind not to take everything this guy says at face value.
No I don't blindly trust the police but so far we only got the neighbours of drug dealers confused and unlogical accounts of what went on. Just because your neighbours deal drugs don't mean you are a liar but when you can't keep your own accounts straight and claim non-existent law (the police has a right to arrest you no matter were you are) I don't trust you. Remember, we only got their word for it that he was just arrested for using a camera phone. It may be true, it may not be. Yet I find it typically of slashdot that very few question the account given. I too would like to use this as an example off out of control police powers BUT precisly because I want to believe this I have to skeptical. If a story confirms what you want to hear you must be extra doubtfull or risk falling in the yes-man trap.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What is the "new law" in Pennsylvania that criminalizes photographing police? Please cite it. This seems to be part of a national push. In Montana it extends beynd photography. I have recently been threatened with being charged with "Obstructing" for not yielding to a warrantless search of my property, so I looked it up. See http://data.opi.mt.gov/bills/mca/45/7/45-7-302.htm especially paragraph (2). !! Our general defense in Montana is insisting on trial by jury--provided one represents himself; otherwise it invites rapid bankruptcy--but trial by jury is not guaranteed by all states' consitutions for all crimes.
I think the real crux of the conflict between the police and the populace is that they only really see each other when something bad happens.
I only ever talk to police when I'm about to get in trouble (usually a speeding ticket). The police don't always see the greatest members of society. The see the drunks, the druggies, the traffic offenders, the murders, and so on. So we have two groups that only ever see each other in a negative manner.
The story would be different if it were talking about Mr. Cruz were taking a photo of the policeman and his neighbor sharing a joke. Wishy washy I know, but would you rather talk to a cop when you're a suspect or would you like to wave hello to a friendly officer as he patrols your neigborhood?
I think both sides need to realize that no every person who made a minor traffic infraction is carrying 10kg of hashish in the boot and that people understand that not every cop is some neo-Nazi violent psycho working for Big Brother then maybe the serious situations like this article won't happen or if they do, they get settled more respectably.
"just deleting the pictures (or confiscating the memory card so it can be securely erased down at the station) ought to have been sufficient"
What right do the police have to delete my own data?
Grr! Arg!
Aren't you forgetting something?
What difference does it make if he was on his own property or not?
Taking a picture from your lawn or from the sidewalk next to your lawn is just as legal.
So big deal if he was not on his own property when arrested. He still should not have been arrested.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
He never said the Canadian police are angels. He said that they don't care that someone takes their picture while making an arrest.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
That's why you fight it in court. It would be very easy to win such a case if the arresting officer has no evidence.
MABASPLOOM!
I wish I could find the original quote, but it went along the lines of:
When the laws become so complex that people cannot understand them, the people are no longer free.
The trend is getting more disturbing these days. I grew up with the believe that police were there to protect and serve. I'm not quite sure who they are protecting now. The sad truth is that if police weren't harming the innocent, there wouldn't be so many loopholes that the guilty can use to get off the hook.
And something else to ponder, if a law against cell phone pictures of police were passed yesterday, would you know (assuming the media didn't pick up on it)? Are we really free when the people making the rules have no responsibility to inform the public of those new rules. Yes, I'm aware that they are made available for the public to view, but the lawmakers are well aware that the public doesn't have the time, nor the ability to comprehend, everything that is made into law. So we are left with a world where getting arrested is based on whether the police like you, and how much money you have to pay the lawyers. The same thing applies to paying your taxes.
Puh-lease. Richelieu might be a reasonable quote, but Ayn Rand? She's no more than an author and one that gave not a shit about anyone but herself. She verged on being an anarchist. Hardly one to honestly espouse the regulations that a government should be run by.
Except that you have still spent the night - perhaps several nights - in an overcrowded filthy jail cell packed full of addicits and violent people, you've lost wages, had court costs, probably been roughed up at least a little by police, and gotten an arrest record. A "not guilty" verdict in court is scant consolation.
I increasingly wonder if the whole idea of a full-time professional police force isn't a bad idea, if perhaps a sort of militia of "citizen cops" (with a small corps of professional full-time investigators) might not result in less of the "thin blue line" attitude that seems to slide slowly and gently towards the police state. (Of course, so long as the cops spend much of their time enforcing laws against consensual acts, lasw that should never have been made in the first place, perhaps abuse of power in inevitable; once a cop thinks he has the power to forcibly prevent you from controling your own nervous system by ingesting certain chemicals, or forcibly prevent you from sleeping with certain people, what power won't he take on?)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I firmly believe that the terrorists won with their 9/11 attack.
One attack, a few thousand people killed, and your country's civil rights are now being violated like never before "for the sake of security", and your constitution isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
That's a common trope meant originally to shock people into think about what they're giving up for security, but to be honest, the terrorists couldn't give a damn about our civil rights at all. What the terrorists want is for the US to pull out of the Middle East, leave Israel to fend for itself, leave the Middle Eastern regimes that are not theocracies (like Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia) to fend for themselves against Islamist movements at home, and to reestablish the Caliphate.
If the US were to become a 1984-style eternal dictatorship where the very humanity was crushed out of our souls, the terrorist wouldn't care at all so long as we weren't in the Middle East anymore. The fact that our slide towards militaristic authoritarianism is being bolstered by fear of Muslims and desire to kick over more of their territory actually represents a significant loss for their agenda of getting us out of the Middle East.
We're not winning the "War on Terrorism," but neither are they. We're losing civil rights and world prestige, they're losing lives in droves and seeing us become more entrenched in their backyards. This conflict is many, many decades from being resolved, but right now it's a lose-lose battle.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
What about for people who just think it's important? What about people who don't think it's an important part of communication, but important as it's a factor that creates an outward appearance of the person writing? Does it demonstrate a level of self pride in attaining a certain level of accuracy?
Do people not wash their face and adjust their hair in the morning (/afternoon) before leaving the house, not because it changes how functional they are, but because not checking the things that create an outward impression gives the impression of a lack of self pride? Respect for somebody can suffer purely based on how much they appear to respect themselves.
Yes we can argue that appearance based opinions are shallow, but we can also argue that it's something that reaches others consciousnesses, and IS used to create an idea of how much effort somebody will put into something.
And before anybody jumps up at this being an attack at dyslexia, dyslexia to various degrees is pretty common, I share it myself, I know it's not a matter of just not trying hard enough, but where the extra effort into "learning spelling" would get you nowhere, that effort into checking spelling most certainly would (I alt+tab to a google window to check spelling of individual words, or even just switch to a different word as I struggle with one).
I'm not saying that mine is great, I'm sure people will find (and point out) errors in my post (like the last section beginning with "and"). What I am doing is pointing out the rationale behind spelling errors influencing the impact of what you saying having on people.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
... though presumably unintentionally and ironically in his own family.
... this at least according to reliable family sources who knew Karl and the wife's family very well.
One could argue that living out his socialist dream in London exile was one way to test whether his utopia could hold together. However, in the process of sharing everything with everyone, the money that his wife's family sent to support them was squandered, and several of their children died of hunger, malnutrition, and preventable diseases. After all, he had no steady income and thus had to leech of his wife's family.
Citizen cops would be an even worse idea... They would lack training and make different, even worse mistakes. I think officers should be treated the same as some police cars. Have a camera and a microphone attached to a recording device, and have it always on. If they can't account for several hours, or arrest someone while the camera is off, they get fired. Period. That sort of scrutiny should solve most problems.
Why did a cop taking a perfectly legal look at your car give you a lower opinion of them? Your car represented an anomaly, by your own admission it didn't fit the neighborhood. That's exactly the sort of situation that I want cops to take a quick surface look; if it's nothing (as in your case) they'll move on. But sometimes it is something worth investigating: a car full of toilet paper might indicate an imminant TPing of someone's hour. Piles of small valuables might mean he stumbled across a burglary.
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It only gets major once it gets ignored. It's our resposibility to stop the breaches when they start, before they become widespread policy (Which, in this case, apparently wasn't true, though the officer did lie and say it was). And the other breaches are unrelated, separate incidents. Much as people might like to think otherwise, police forces don't coordinate much with each other.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
"Much as people might like to think otherwise, police forces don't coordinate much with each other."
It isn't so much a matter of "coordination" as infec tious concensus building. If cops in City A get by with something, cops in City B will (a) leanr about it and (b) adopt it. There is no conspiracy or collusion, just observation and mimickry.
Further, police (and I have 5 cops in my immediate and extended family, so know a bit about them) very much have a common "us against them" attitude. Incidents like this camera fiasco are manifestations of that.
(On a side note, one of my grandons-in-law who is a cop in a major city has a refrigerator magnet that reads: "Hi, I am police officer and I can kick your ass and get by with it.")
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
Either the ideas described in the quote are valid, or they aren't. It doesn't matter who said it.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Yea because that would make it all better. Winning in court doesn't make the experience of sitting in a shitty cell for 24+ hours. It doesn't give you back the night of good times you were "planning" on having. It doesn't give you back the job you lost because you were in jail. It doesn't give you back the respect you lost because you were taken to jail, but hey, you "won" in court.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I agree, in principle, with your third point, but do you know what effect this is going to have on slashdot readers? Personally, I'm going to carry my digital SLR with me just to snap photos of police officers in areas where I expect this to happen. Bonus points if they damage my equipment in the act, making an easier entry to a civil suit.
This is a fight that we can take to the streets by exercising our rights. If someone has the incident report (from which we can pull the offending officers' names), let's get some Philly flash mobs to photograph these officers in action. Just make sure to keep your distance and avoid harassing any officers. Oh, and be ready to be arrested. The sort of police officers who do this sort of thing are scared children looking for a place to exert power.
You are just 70 years behind Europe. What took you so long?
Nice leap. A man in New Hampshire is *charged* with violating a wiretapping and eavesdropping law. Another man in Philly gets busted by the cops for taking a photograph, which raises a big stink and likely will backfire on the police department.
The NH case is being reviewed. The man arrested in Philly was released, and the family has requested an inquiry. Don't be surprised if the police department is forced to apologize.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how do these two cases lead to the assumption that America is in the grip of jackbooted thugs?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
It's perfectly legal for papparattzi to stalk and abuse any member of the public they want, because when you are in the public domain you have chosen to open yourself to surveillence. ... but when a public organization run on your tax dollars, operating in a public place has a picture taken, you go to jail.
You have NO REASON AT ALL to complain. You brought it on yourself.
- Americans chose to give up their constitutionally protected freedoms in the name of 'security' (as defined by your government). That choice happened when Americans allowed the Patriot Act to stand above the constitution.
- Americans didn't overthrow their government as is their constitutional responsibility when their government destroys their constitutionally protected rights.
You're just adjusting to the consequences of your actions. Deal with it.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
It's also worth pointing out that based on writings (letters, journals, etc.) leading up to and following authoring the Constitution, the "well regulated" clause was in reference to/meant "well-trained", not "run by the government" because the whole point of the second amendment was a final check and balance against tyranny within/from the government.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
On the other hand, if you take aerial photographs of private property, that may be an invasion of privacy by way of trespass, if you wish to publish them.
Someone should tell Google that...
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
So many posters here blame the current administration for this incident. It's really not the case.
I've lived in Philadelphia my entire life. The police force, and the entire city, is very corrupt. It's a local problem. I'm not saying that the federal administration isn't making it worse, but the event in question would have happened regardless of who is in power in Washington.
I remember this story from the mid-90's (during a Democrate federal and city administration). There was a scandal reported in the local paper where the cops were throwing handcuffed people in the back of their vans - which are empty and have few handholds. Then, they would drive like crazy through the neighborhoods so that the people in the back would get knocked around. This wasn't some outlier, this was a standard trick they used. It only got reported because they permanently disabled a minister.
Very corrupt, very brutal - Philadelphia
Yes, that's how personal responsibility works. Similarly Jesus was personally responsible for the crusades, Nietzsche and Wagner was personally responsible for the Holocaust, Benjamin Franklin was personally responsible for Hiroshima and Dresden, and Justinian was personally responsible for all modern western legal systems. Or not.
Everyone should own a gun.
Why some people in the field make bad choices those in the office are much less willing to "ask" (nicely or not so) for the video after the fact. Remember, get the video and distribute it as fast as you possibly can.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST