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Wiretapping Charges Dropped
Ada_Rules writes "I realize that the end of a story is not nearly as sexy as the beginning, but police in Nashua have dropped the wiretapping charges against a man that had recorded both video and audio from on his home security system. The man had brought a videotape to the police station to back up a claim that a detective was rude to him while on his property as part of an investigation. In addition, the police have determined that the man's complaint about the detective was justified."
It seems that it is less that the little guy here won, so much as the DA simply thought he wouldn't win. The decision is less based on the merit of the claim so it doesn't seem like anything is really gained by this happening.
In a fair society:
1: He is entitled to compensation, say $1000 per hour for every hour between the time he was charged and the time he knew for sure that the charges were dropped.
2: The police involved should be sent back for a minimum of 40 hours of updated training in the laws they are supposed to be enforcing.
3: The city attorney, who didn't immediately drop these bogus charges (he, at least, has no excuse at all for not knowing the law) should be immediately fired, suspended, or recalled as appropriate.
4: If there were any judges involved who didn't immediately drop the case, they should be impeached.
Then there'd have been some true justice here.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Now they can focus on the guy they dragged out of his yard and arrested for daring to photograph the cops with his cellphone camera. After that, they can re-evaluate just what "Live Free or Die" means.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This has yourtube written all over it...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
This is very true. Over a year ago I was ran off the road by another car, causing me to lose control and hit the wall. The guy that ran me off the road naturally kept driving. When the police arrived, the first thing out of the officers mouth was something about how he knew I was racing, and could tell I hit the wall at 160mph (I was driving a dodge viper). In anycase, I really hit the wall doing 50-60, no way would I have been able to walk away from an accident at 160mph. I told the officer this and he said I was lying and that I was going to get charged with reckless driving, but he'd lower the charges if I'd admit to racing. I wasn't going to confess to something I didn't do. He wouldn't listen to a word I said and tried to make me feel just as you said, as if I had no rights. Then he started spewing something about having witness that saw me racing. At that point I told him to write me the wreckless ticket and that I'd gladly see him in court.
Come the day of court, no witness. The cop and the prosecutor had to drop the charges because they had no evidence. Furthermore I had photos of my car after the accident to show that the damage was not consistant with a 160mph accident, and they had nothing to refute it.
Leasson learned here is, know your rights, and know that the cops are not on yourside, its up to you to prove you are innocent.
if i installed a home security system in my house (if i lived in that state) and some one robed my house. i would not be able to use the cameras to identify the persons but instead i would be charged for wire taping. that is messed up! they really need to think a little more. wire taping is used via phone (video phone and voice is what that law was made for) not live actions. if this law was made for what their interpritation is of it then all news crews in that state would be screwed if they didnt put up a big sign saying they were recording.
(yes i know i suck at spelling fell free to correct my grammar and/or spellin i dont care, im still not going to change
When I read the first article about that man who was arrested because his home surveillance system had recorded a police officer who came to his home to speak to him I was fairly disturbed. It is no secret that our constant "legal" state of national emergency, that we have lived under for decades, has pretty much suspended the constitution. The laws passed following 9/11 took things that much further to where we are now. A man has the right to film his own property and anyone who passes onto it, so why was he arrested and charged with wiretapping because of the police's dislike of him? The thing I dont understand is how can the police allow themselves to be so propagandized and "programmed" to the point at which they no longer enforce the liberties granted to us under the constitution. I have read internal FBI memos that have been leaked and they discuss how the agents should be on the look out for different types of terrorist groups and they list certain characteristics of each. They characterize people who speak of their "constitutional rights" as being trouble makers. Am I the only one who see something wrong with this? Then again, I guess for most people it is easier to buy into the whole "less liberty/freedom = more protection against terrorists." I hear it all the time. Yes, those big bad arab-muslim terrorists are going to kill all americans...just after they get done killing each other in iraq. I'm not sure if you all have read the papers yet, but the media is reporting how iraq is on the verge of a major civil war...if it hasn't begun already. All i'm saying is this police oppression is nothing more than an extension of the post-9/11 mindset of tyrannical militarism and unreasonable punishment. This is just like the story a few days ago about the three 12 yr old children in england who were arrested and booked for breaking dead branches off trees so they could build a treehouse. What ever happened to the police protecting the people? I have heard more and more, from young and and old alike, that even though they are doing nothing wrong they still feel like they are guilty of something while in the presence of the police. I just dont see why they feel the need to be so intimidating and accusatory.
Seriously, the correct answer here, if citizens are really outraged, it to push through a ballot measure to change to be a 1-party state. That solves future problems like this.
Remember: This isn't a US thing, this is state by state. Some states, like New Hampshire are rea 2-party, and bitchy at that. All parties involved in being recorded have to consent beforehand. Of course, police get an exemption from this for their cameras in the cars.
Well that's not how it has to be. Other states are 1-party states, meaning only 1-party has to be informaed of the recording. So you can't go and tap your neighbours phone, but you can tap your own and not tell anyone. So long as one person knows, it's fine. Further some places, like Arizona, have a law such that if you own something, you are implicitly a party present or not. So you can record your own property, phoneline, whatever, and even if others are conversing without your presence you are still a party because it's your stuff.
So that's what it comes down to here. The NH voters just need to get this on the next ballot and change it. Now I'm guessing, for all the outrage, they are just going to let it drop and forget about it. Kinda sad, but really nothing you can do.
New Hampshire is traditionally a state where citizens love their privacy. The idea of being a two-party state is to make it damn hard for citizen A to record what citizen B has to say. I don't think that's a bad idea. But I doubt people thought much about the issue of citizens recording the police, probably because they didn't realize -- pre Rodney King -- that this would generate any information useful to the preservation of public order.
Now we know better. Turns out to be very useful to watch the police, as useful as it is to keep an eye on any public servant entrusted with the peoples' power. So I'd say the right thing to do is classify the police -- or any government agent -- in the same way as we classify public personages, like candidates or actors in public. These people by their choice of profession and action implicitly give consent to be recorded. It's not a felony to record John Kerry making a public speech (should you have sufficient stamina or caffeine), or film Mel Gibson getting arrested on Highway 1, even if neither gives his prior consent. These people have chosen to be "public personages" and are in public, and that means they no longer have the same rights to privacy as Joe Citizen.
If the police are out in uniform doing the public's work, it seems to me there should be a clear presumption that they're just as much public personages as a candidate for the state legislature giving public speeches, and that they have implicitly given permission to anyone to film or record them. (An obvious and sensible exception would be when they're undercover, not in uniform.)
And if it's a crime to record someone's conversation without their knowledge or consent, let's just go down and arrest the entire Bush administration and the NSA, then, eh? The law applies to everyone, including those who are supposed to enforce it.
/was no/ investigation to begin with. There were police officers who broke the law repeatedly and should now be on unpaid leave pending review of their professional competency. I can record anything that goes on in my own home with or without the consent of visitors, whether they're friends or supposedly-professional-law-enforcement acting like thugs. They had a reason to be there but the homeowners' right to privacy and security from state thugs is unilaterally over-riding.
Their entry was unlawful. Their evidentiary discovery was unlawful. Obstruct investigation? There
The charge was police intimidation, pure and simple. Stop being an apologetic for the fascist thugs.
The thing is, I shuold be able to record my phone conversations. Why not? You cannot safely assume that what you say to me on the phone is lost forever. I could be writing it down, or maybe just remembering it (I know people who are exceptional at that). Either way when you talk to me you've got to assume that I could be recording, in one fasion or another, what you say. If you trust me to keep that confidence is up to you.
I see the privacy arguments of a 2-party system, I just think they are invalid. It is basically saying "I should have privacy, even when I do things that break privacy." As the saying goes, if two people know it, it's not a secret. So if you tell me, you should assume I can tell others, if I wish, regardless of if it's jsut me telling them from memory, or having a recording of it.
To me it's similar to photography laws (which are fairly uniform). You can photograph my house from public property, there's nothing I can do to stop you. You can't come on my property, of course, or circumvent barriers I have, but you can stand on the street and take pictures (or video) to your hearts content. Thus, if I want to have privacy, I need to keep my blinds closed. If I am standing on my porch naked, I can't get pissed that you took a picture of me. I have no expectation of privacy, because I'm publicly visible, even if I'm on my property.
It should be public policy to record all police activity, to protect officers against false claims of abuse, and also to protect the public against the possibility of such abuse. The same policy is needed in all other agencies with draconian powers of search seizure and arrest. In other words, any official with opportunity and motive for abuse of power should be monitored and recorded whenever they are on duty.
Don't limit it to law enforcement. Let's have all politicians and public officials videotaped whenever they're in public areas. And since we, the taxpayers, pay for their offices, those offices are technically public areas. If they claim they work for us, then they can't have any secrets from us in their work, can they?
Basically, if a 'public servant' (whether politician or civil servant) is on the clock, then the people who pay for them should have the right to see exactly what they're doing at any time. Playing trashcan basketball when they should be working? Fiddling their expenses? Beating up 'troublesome' citizens? Declaring war under false pretenses? We should know, and hold them accountable for it. These people do not rule us. We chose them to do a job for us. That's what they forget, at every level. It's high time that they were reminded they serve us. At our sufferance. If they wilfully do a bad job, they should be gone.
You must think in Russian.
Juries don't have the legal knowledge of everyone else in the courtroom and therefore can't act with respect to legal precedent unless instructed to do so by the judge. However, the judge can't instruct the jury to act in accordance with the previous jury's actions, because juries don't write rulings or legal opinions, so nobody else involved can proveably discern what a jury used in its decision.
A jury certainly can nullify, and the end result is the same, but only for that particular case. (And, as an aside, that's why precedent is tricky - no two cases are exactly alike, and opposing sides have different interpretations of precedent. That's why we have judges, not databases of rulings.) There's nothing stopping a prosecutor from filing a very similar case in another jurisdiction, nor should there be until a judge is more assertive and strikes the law down as unconsitutional - thank God for pre-trial motions. Judges nullify laws. Juries nullify charges.
HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
IMHO taxpayers should not pay for a bad cop's stupidity, I agree with your idea
Since we have criminal penalties that grow on second, third offences (etc) we should make a similar tiered system for police officers (and other public servants) that cannot do their job properly.
No one earns the right to be a police officer by passing the exam, we ought to revoke those privileges upon bad behavior. If such behavior does not get corrected (ala Three Strikes or something less extreme) they get demoted.
If the police force of cities shrinkbecause of this, the people can understand the cause. It may also encourage honest people who wish to help their neighbors to become good cops themselves, without fear of having to interact with such corrupt scum
The guy appears to be a total jerk to have raised such a son and go to such efforts to keep him from getting caught.
Well, can you blame him? Maybe he didn't even know his son had a gun. Even if he knew, he probably didn't know, and surely couldn't believe, his son was a mugger. Also, don't blame all the kid's problems on the parents; you're just as aware as I am of the fact that after a certain age, friends contribute more to one's upbringing than parents. Furthermore, his son being a criminal doesn't mean he's a jerk. Think a little before you go randomly insulting people with misinformed knee-jerk statements.
However, I for one would be very careful about creating exceptions to a law that protects privacy, who knows what other exceptions they may invent against me?
Exceptions for the cops are already in place: they can film you, but you can't film them. That doesn't mean you can break the law though, but from what I read in the previous article there's an exception if both parties know they're being filmed. The sign clearly stated such, so the cops would have known if they bothered to read it. Ignorance of the law is no excuse to break it, and ignorance of the wording on the sign you just passed is no excuse for suing someone who's done nothing wrong.
The police didn't break any laws
They refused to leave after being asked several times to do so. One cop even stuck his foot in the door, so even assuming the front yard was not private property, the house clearly is (just clarifying, 'coz the street I live in, everything between the street and the outer wall of our house is property of the town I live in, not private property). As far as I know, remaining on someone's private property after being asked to leave, is illegal.
What is the proper etiquette to talk to the family of a man who commits muggings at gunpoint?
Why would you treat him any other than you would treat any other random civilian? Being family of someone who at the time the actions took place was suspected of committing muggery does not mean you're in on the deal, so there's no justification for being treated as such. However, this gets abused fairly often; I know a girl whose whole family is on some government black list here in Belgium, barring her and her family from ever holding public office, simply because her grandfather or something was a collaborator in the second world war.
This means they had every reason to investigate.
Sure, "investigate" being the keyword here. Not "harrass". Maybe in your world all verbs have the same meaning, but there's roughly 6 billion of us who'd happily trade with your world if we'd only knew for certain that "trade" doesn't mean "make war" in your language...
Install windows on my workstation? You crazy? Got any idea how much I paid for the damn thing?
I don't think he could have released the video. As I understand it, the police seized the tape when he brought it to them (he should've copied it first), then came to his house and ripped the cameras off the walls.
They still haven't returned the cameras (or the tape, I think) and they still maintain that he broke the law (maybe they're right, but if so, that law is despicable and just wrong).
They say he was disrespectful to them. That may be, but they still owe him a public apology for what they did.
-Rich
You're misunderstanding his use of the word "legally". He's not saying that it's illegal for a jury to refuse to convict or that the jurors have broken any law. What he's saying is that the jury's refusal to convict has no effect on the law itself. That is, the lack of a conviction does not alter the law. I have no idea if he's right or not, (I suspect that he is), but that's what he's saying. Essentially, the jury can take the teeth out of the law for THAT defendant and that defendant only. A judge can take the teeth out of the law for that defendant and ALL future defendants by declaring a law unconstitutional or putting an interpretation on the language. Again, no idea if he's right, but that's what he's saying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance
They weren't children, it wasn't mortal danger or bodily harm, the teenagers should have known the risk, and anything he could do to stop them would have involved a lot of effort. Attractive Nusicance doesn't even begin to apply to this case. It is for a child that might unwittingly hurt himself.
What he did wasn't nice, but it wasn't wrong, and only maybe, barely immoral. I would argue it was a very fitting punishement.
Why should a criminal have any expectation at all to not be harmed in the process of comitting a crime?
If I leave my floor slippery and wet at night to deter burglars, you would be among the crowd of scumbag lawyers trying to sue me for his broke leg and stiches.
If I keep a yard full of half-working cars but decide to only fix a few of them because I believe my yard would be a target for car thieves, why on earth should I be responsible for the thief who got killed when the axel fell apart while crusing 80 down the highway with my stolen car?
If you come onto my property with the intention of stealing something, I have the legal right to shoot you in my state. If you try to steal my fuel, then I am well within my rights to store crap in there that will wreck your car as a deterrent. I'm not telling you to take the fuel. Unless you get express permission, you have no expectation whatsoever, morally, ethically, or legally to touch those cans.
What if I decide to put in diesel fuel in those cans? Its a prefectly valid fuel for certian types of engines that can also ruin a normal engine. There is no difference.
It is amazing the sorts of minds out there who side with the common criminal and are against the rights of those to stop criminals. I will never side for a person who intentionally and willfully comitted a crime and got himself into trouble in the process and you should be ashamed of yourself for doing so.