Seattle Hacker Catches Cops Who Hid Arrest Tapes

An anonymous reader writes "In 2008, the Seattle Police illegally arrested security consultant Eric Rachner for refusing to show ID. After Rachner filed a formal complaint, he was prosecuted for obstructing, and the police claimed that videos of the arrest were unavailable — until Rachner's research uncovered proof that the police had the videos all along." It's an interesting story of how he figured out how the system in use by Seattle police automatically tracks deletion, copying, or other uses of the recorded stream.

Comments

Obstruction of justice

[Enderandrew]

Shouldn't the officers in this case be charged with obstruction of justice?

Re:Obstruction of justice

[Pharmboy]

And falsifying police document. Perhaps perjury as well, if the cops told this to a judge. This is one of those times when "making an example" is the right answer. Otherwise, wtf should we trust the police?

Re:Obstruction of justice

[Red Flayer]

No. They should be charged with making a false arrest. They should be suspended without pay until the trial is resolved, and someone should make sure they aren't put on the PBA payroll during that time. If they are found guilty, they should be fired. Not suspended, fired.

The individuals in the police department that refused to release the video of the arrest -- on false pretenses, by the way -- should also be fired.

Finally, the head of the police department in question should be fired.

Cops who abuse their authority are despicable.

Re:Obstruction of justice

[Protoslo]

You are incorrect. While the Washington Supreme Court has ruled that in Washington, people are not required to identify themselves to the police, this is not true nationally. You are not required to produce ID, but in most states you can be required to state your name.

Rachner impressively knew about this rights in Washington, but you should be careful to be as informed as he was before challenging the police in another state.

As for obstruction, I agree; the only obstacle is finding a prosecutor to enforce the law against the police.

Re:Obstruction of justice

[jd]

Cops in the US can usually claim Sovereign Immunity. Which is one reason I dislike the concept so very much. (Even the Magna Carta had - in its original form - that sovereign immunity does not apply in cases of rights violation.)

I seriously doubt the cops will get punished, and quite possibly they'll never even have to stand trial. If there's an inquiry, it'll be internal and kept secret.

The problem is that, ever since the days of the Wild West, cops have seen themselves as absolute authorities with total power over the citizenry, the laws and the very facts of the case.

Re:Obstruction of justice

[Chyeld]

No, ONE person smacked ONE person in the face with a ball, and he wasn't either party.

Not only wasn't he of that group, but the one who did the douchebaggery, didn't get arrested. The person they arrested for THAT (as opposed to refusing to show ID, and thus making it an illegal arrest) also didn't do anything.

The guy IS a fucking hero. Not because of what happened before, but because he was willing to fight the fight all the way to the end instead of simply caving because it was too much trouble.

Re:Obstruction of justice

[v1]

They arrested Rachner for obstruction of justice for not identifying himself.

No, they arrested him for frustrating and pissing them off. They charged him with obstruction of justice as their means of retaliation in an attempt to legally justify his arrest.

Big difference.

Re:Obstruction of justice

[gangien]

Maybe getting a news story about it, made it worth it?

Maybe just standing up for you rights, is worth it?

People have given their lives for the sake of their rights, this guy gives up a weekend and 25 hundred bucks. I don't know how i would handle the situation, but i applaud him for standing up for his rights.

Re:Obstruction of justice

[AK Marc]

No, we don't.

Yes, we do. Anyone can be arrested for any reason. If there is no reason, they they are arrested for resisting arrest or obstruction of justice. All it takes for a resisting arrest charge is to give two conflicting orders, then arrest them when they ask for clarification or don't do both within 5 seconds.

That people aren't arrested on a regular basis for no reason doesn't mean that any one person could be arrested for any invented reason at any time, and would likely end up convicted.

For us to not be in a police state, we must require video for a conviction (shouldn't be hard since all cop cars have them now, and putting them on cops themselves would be trivial, though not cheap), and "resisting arrest" and "obstruction" would require that someone be convicted of a felony that was resisted or obstructed before the additional charges could be made. When "resisting arrest" is the only charge, it's absurd. They can't arrest you for resisting arrest because they didn't arrest you before you resisted, and if they didn't charge you with anything else, then they weren't arresting you at all when you resisted. Yet it's getting more common for any belligerent person to get arrested (and convicted) of resisting arrest when no arrest was being made.

We are in a real police state now. The douchebaggery isn't isolated, it's systemic and pervasive. Almost all cops believe that "contempt of cop" is an arrestable offense, and the law lets them make up charges. Just because the rate of unjustified arrests, charges, and convictions is low doesn't mean that it isn't a system wide problem that could become worse at any time.

Re:Obstruction of justice

[rahvin112]

You know, in the 50's the vast majority of Americans in this country wished to differentiate ourselves from communist and totalitarian countries where the phrase "papers please" was as common as hello.

How quickly we forget the danger of a government with to much control and police that arrest and detain people for nothing more than annoying the officer.

Re:Obstruction of justice

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was little kid, the cold war was still on. So in civics class at school, they taught us the various reasons why America was better than the Soviet Union. One of those reasons, of course, was that you didn't need to carry ID papers around with you for normal life.

Damn, I'm too young (32) to feel like an old man...

A few bad apples

[BigHungryJoe]

A few bad apples making the other 1% look bad...

seriously, why do cops always circle the wagons to protect dishonest cops?

Re:A few bad apples

[jDeepbeep]

A few bad apples making the other 1% look bad...

seriously, why do cops always circle the wagons to protect dishonest cops?

Just for the record, any cop who protects dishonest cops, is also dishonest.

Re:There's a better charge..

[Pharmboy]

The more I read the article (yes, some of us do), the more obvious that this is a systemic issue with the Seattle police dept, and this was a bonified SNAFU, (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.)

Re:PAPERS PLEASE

[entrigant]

Most people don't need to defend their rights because they willingly give them away.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Wow, what a waste of time and money

[Anonymous Coward]

So they spent months, thousands of dollars in defense, thousands in city funds all over the fact that some drunk tool refused to tell the cop who he was?

No, you moron. They spent that money because the police made an arrest under false pretenses, then tried to cover it up by lying about the presence of evidence.

Get enough people like you together...

[Concern]

And pretty soon you have no rights left to give away.

Listen to the audio

[Anonymous Coward]

Have any of you posting listened to the audio? Especially the ones claiming they were a group of 'drunken douchebags'?

If you listen to the audio you'll notice that nobody was loud, obnoxious or incredibly rude. Eric sounds a bit curt, but he's defending his rights against an office who clearly is uniformed of the laws or has gotten too used to getting his way because he is a police office.

But honestly, I don't fault the officer either. He was as polite as can be expected and I believe he thought that he was in the right.

The this should have gone down, Eric gets arrested, police realize "Oh crap, you shouldn't have done that." Eric gets compensated for his attorney fees, the police officer gets sent to additional training and a memo is written to the rest of the department reminding them of how the laws ACTUALLY WORK.

That would have been justice, but we live in a society where everyone is out for blood for the most minor injustices and neither side is willing to say "oops, we screwed up."

Everything that happened afterward could have been avoided by simply saying "we were wrong, we're sorry" and then providing the necessary training to the police force so that they understand that citizens DO have the right to refuse to identify themselves.