Texas citizen illegally detained and harassed for filming police

[Cheese Sandwich]

[Travis_0004]

1. I'll be honest, I don't really care

Sure, cops need to know the law and they will learn from this, but the person making the video got the result he wanted. It seems like the police were very polite the whole time.

[Cheese Sandwich]

4. The cops lied to him, accused him of breaking the law, threatened to fingerprint him if he refused

to identify himself, searched his body, improperly used "frisk for safety" as a tool to search for ID, handcuffed him, and locked him inside a police car for half an hour, all to intimidate him because he was using a video camera near police and they don't like being filmed.

That was not polite or appropriate behavior. This man had done nothing illegal and was not suspected of any crime. These police behaved like thuggish bullies.

And this is not the result he wanted. I am sure he would much prefer to have his rights respected and be left alone.

[zeemike]

10. Not to mention a waste of man hours at taxpayers expense.

It took 4 cops to ask him what he was doing.
It was just them asserting their power over people.

[maindawg]

5. The police were very polite

But they were wrong. Regardless of their dept policies or their city ordinances or whatever reason they claimed to detain and interrogate a citizen the ultimate law is supposed to be the US constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Any police dept can make up some policy but that does not trump the law. The man who was conducting this experiment was able to demonstrate that the police are doing these kind of things in violation of our rights.

And he did it without any one ever being put in a compromising situation. He kept his experiment safe.

[Taitertots]

12. Police criminality doesn't bother you?

But at least they are polite criminals.

[markpkessinger]

13. It wasn't the "response he wanted" -- it was the response he expected . . .

One can argue about the appropriateness of these videotaped "tests," but people wouldn't be making them unless, based on what they knew of police behaviors in prior encounters, there was reason to believe police were in the habit of acting improperly. What is truly telling is that the police reaction is so very predictable.

[virtualobserver]

2. looks like he was detained for refusing to speak to them

pretty strange

[valerief]

3. That's illegal in the U.S. apparently. nt

[hrmjustin]

7. Are you against filming police?

[hrmjustin]

9. No one here said police are not human.

But filming police helps to get a fuller picture of any incident.


And your hippie comments shows a lot. Free Republic is to the right thank you very much.

[Freelancer]

11. In Illinois, it's audio recording that is illegal -- class 3 felony in the case of a cop

The Supreme court struck down Illinois' previous law, and then the State Gov immediately sneaked an almost identical provision through in another bill. It stipulates illegality if one of the persons recorded (audio) is unaware, and has "the expectation of privacy". But then the bill doesn't delineate what is meant by "expectation of privacy." So, now every cop takes it to mean that they can threaten you with arrest if you record them -- a practice, no doubt, that the murky language of the law sought to perpetuate.