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NH Man Arrested For Videotaping Police.. Again
OhPlz writes "Back in 2006, a resident of New Hampshire's second largest city was arrested while at the police station attempting to file a complaint against officers. His crime? He had video tape evidence of the officers' wrongdoings. According to the police, that's wiretapping. After world wide attention, the police dropped the charges. His complaint was found to be valid, but the evidence never saw the light of day. Well, guess what? Round two. There are differing reports, but again the police arrested Mr. Gannon and again, they seized his video camera. This time it's 'falsifying evidence' because he tried to hand off the camera, most likely to protect its contents. If there's the potential of police wrongdoing, how is it that the law permits the police to seize the evidence?"
Once when I was 16 and a huge smartass, I yelled, "I smell bacon!" out the window of a car I was a passenger in. There was a cop on the side of the road that had someone pulled over. I see him drop everything, run back to his car and get back into it. I thought there was no way he would ever catch us, and anyway I thought yelling out the window was not illegal. He didn't try to catch us - instead he radioed ahead to someone else who pulled us over within a few minutes. The cop comes up to the car, says, "Which one of you yelled, 'I'm going to kill you fucking cops'"? We played it off like it was the radio and said nobody yelled that out the window. Anyway, they took all our names, made us get out of the car, the whole nine yards. For yelling, "I smell bacon" at a cop. I guess we were luck we didn't get beat up, tazed, maced and put in jail like this guy.
I'm a big tall mofo.
We need a "National Record the Police in Public Day". I think that a public event like this would enforce the point far more strongly that the police losing an occasional lawsuit.
The feature I love most about Google+ is that, as soon as I take a picture or a video on my Android phone, it is immediately uploaded to my Google+ account, without any further action on my part. Suddenly, having control of the device isn't enough to guarantee that you have control of the data.
Yes a suprisingly large amount of the populations belives that if a police officer says you are guilty then you must be.
Unfortunately a surprisingly large amount of (all) judges believe the same.
"If you enter a plea of 'guilty' or 'no contest' then I will look over the sworn statements by both you and the arresting officer. In which case, I will assume the written report by the officer is true and you will be found guilty. If you enter a plea of 'not guilty,' then a meeting with the prosecutor will be arranged for a later date. You will then, at another later date, go to trial with a jury of your peers. If you cannot afford legal representation then you may apply for a court appointed attorney by submitting an application along with a $25 charge for processing the application."
Basically, 'guilty' and 'no contest' are synonymous in the eyes of the judge. The only way for police testimony to come into question is for a jury to rule against it or for a lawyer to prove it's tainted in some way. So say you're being charged with something relatively minor and the penalty is like $100 + court costs. Of course, whether you're guilty or not, it would make sense to plea 'no contest' and take the punishment b/c the damn lawyer will suck more than that out of you. Not to mention the time it takes to go through the various processes.
Sadly, many police/court systems are nothing but legalized extortion. Justice is an afterthought.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Also consider the following regarding "traffic stops" and "minor tickets":
If you show up to "just pay it" or "take defensive driving", they give you a "break" and it costs you around $150-200 after court costs.
If you want to plead not guilty, then you have to burn:
- The cost of your lawyer.
- At least one half-day (if not a full one) of leave from work to show up and plead not guilty.
- At least one half-day, if not full day, to "meet with the prosecutor."
- A large amount of time subpoenaing whatever you need to subpoena, taking your own measurements of the area, photographing. And half the time the corrupt police won't deliver the things requested as evidence (like the officer's dashcam record, radar gun calibration records, etc) and you'll have to fight for those, which means you have to show up in court and burn MORE leave time to get the judge to issue the subpoena for discovery.
- At least one half-day, if not full day, to actually be in court and empanel the jury.
- At least one half-day, if not full day or even more, to be in court to actually argue your case.
And at the end of it, you have to be prepared for the possibility that if you're found guilty, the corrupt judge is going to throw the book at you and the Prosecutor is going to tack on a bunch of miscellaneous bullshit charges, whatever they can come up with, to punish you for "wasting our time" by actually asserting your constitutional right to plead innocent and have a trial by jury.
The whole system is rigged. Cops know it; they're the corrupt underpinning of it.
During voir dire I was asked, "Do you think a policeman might lie?" I told the obvious truth and was dismissed from jury duty. I guess they figured that selecting the ignorant helps the rigging process.
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
I run a youth program. We have HD security cameras covering all of our premises (not the bathrooms). We have caught police misconduct more than once with those cameras.
Back in May we had a police officer from the next town over come in to "talk" with one of our teens about a crime that "they may have witnessed". When I got this call, my next call was to 911 to put on record that this was going to go on (standard policy for us, any time a police officer calls to interview a kid in our program, a staff member calls 911 to put it on the record. We find this stops a lot of police abuses, along with our ready access to lawyers). When the police officers came, the two of them tried to strong arm the kid out the door. We flatly refused to allow the teen to be taken to the police station to be questioned, and told the police officers that they would need to arrest the teen and read them their rights before we would allow them to leave (and that the teen was then invoking the right to a lawyer). They were not happy - they even accused me of not 'playing ball'.
When they started shoving the teen and talking about how the teen had just hit the officer (to be clear, the teen never touched the cop, the cops flatly made it up), and that was grounds for arrest, I physically stepped between the cops and the teen (I am 6'1, 220, a third degree black belt in Tie Kwan Do and like to lift weights) and informed them that the interview was over, and they were to leave. My volunteer assistant (who works part time as a judge at the state Department of Education!) called 911 at that point - calling 911 also activates the audio recording of all of our cameras, as well as an auto backup of our cameras to the law office next door.
Long story short, it was a weird stand off until local police arrived - the two cops having their hands on their guns, my telling them they had to leave or be escorted out. When local police arrived (with whom we have a generally good relationship) we informed them that our security cameras had caught the whole thing and we wanted the two cops arrested for assault. The first thing the local cops wanted to do was take the recording device and arrest the teen. When I said that it was no problem, our system recorded to three redundant devices, one of which is at our lawyers office, suddenly they didn't want to take the teen, and couldn't get out of their fast enough.
We sent a copy of the video to the DA's office, asking for an investigation, another copy went to the lawyer we set the family up with to represent this kid, and a third to the police department of the next town, with a letter from our lawyer stating that we would not allow any officer from their department to enter our premises or interview any of our kids without the programs lawyer present.
I know I shouldn't respond to trolls, but it's late... As a liberal who doesn't like Republicans, I can guarantee you that every right I've ever had to worry about in my life was in danger from Republicans and not Democrats. You seem to think that as a liberal I have faith in the beneficence of the state. What I want is the state to protect me from others, without taking away my rights. In other words, I'd like to have gay sex and smoke pot as long as I don't fuck over anyone else, and I don't want assholes to tell me I can't do these things because I'm not hurting anyone.
As far as Democrats spending too much money and "obsession with taxes" (the latest Republican catch phrase), meh. It doesn't affect me the way Republicans claim it affects people like me. I'm a upper middle class (~115K/year) so I do pay my fair share of taxes, but the extra 3% or whatever everyone is bitching about is nothing compared to a cop pulling me over to take money from me when I haven't hurt anyone, or the government telling me I can't visit my partner in the hospital, nor catching my friends with pot and treating them as if they were bank robbers or some other high profile criminals. This is not hyperbole, this is experience. And once it really bit me in the ass... I had to pay an extra $1500 in the ONE month between jobs because the way COBRA* works, my partner had to go to the emergency room in that ONE month and the federal government would let heterosexuals keep the same benefits at the same rate as the company gives them, but NOT the same rate to domestic partnerships. Yes, an extra $1500 when it would have been an extra $0 if I were straight. I hate you motherfuckers like I hate Hitler and Stalin... you and your ilk are constantly trying to take away the freedom of others.
So fuck you, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I love freedom and I hate Republicans for trying to take away my rights and freedoms and for God's sake not letting me live alone in peace. Don't kid yourself, asshole cops are not progressives and they are not liberal.
*COBRA is basically the law in America that allows employees who have been laid off to continue to have insurance at the same group rate as they had with the company. The company does not have to pay any money towards the monthly premiums if they paid a portion of it. In other words, the employees have to pay the full premium themselves. However, a family plan still applies even though the employee would have to pay whatever extra the company was paying. Unfortunately, domestic partnerships aren't considered families and therefore don't get to benefit from COBRA so they have to be paid as if they were individuals and not family plans.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.