Recording of Boston Police Nets Man $170,000 Settlement

[Hissyspit]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/27/recording-of-boston-police-nets-man-170000-settlement

Recording of Boston police nets man $170,000 settlement

By Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, March 27, 2012 15:52 EDT

The City of Boston settled a lawsuit recently filed by Simon Glik, an attorney who was arrested in 2007 as he recorded police using force to subdue another man.

The settlement total came to $170,000, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, which represented Glik in the case. He was initially charged with a felony, under laws meant to ban illegal wiretapping, but the charge was dismissed.

“The law had been clear for years that openly recording a video is not a crime. It’s sad that it takes so much for police to learn the laws they were supposed to know in the first place,” Glik said in an ACLU media advisory. “I hope Boston police officers will never again arrest someone for openly recording their public actions.”

- snip -

Glik isn’t the only American to face arrest for recording police officers in public. Others have been taken into custody in states like Florida and Illinois. A federal jury in Oregon, as well, awarded minor damages to a man who was arrested for filming an officer in 2009.

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[PoliticAverse]

1. Good. n/t

[DLevine]

2. Some good news for a change. n/t

[gratuitous]

3. Will the police "get it" now?

Or will they continue to arrest and harrass citizens who aren't doing anything illegal, and cost their departments and their cities all those settlement dollars, not to mention the lost time in the city attorney's office having to deal with this misconduct?

[msongs]

5. these fines should come out of the police union, not the taxpayers. If police will not regulate

their own behaviors, why should taxpayers be stuck with the bill? Let them subsidize their own illegal and immoral behaviors committed under color of authority.

[Tejas]

4. $170,000 taxpayer $ down the drain.