Another CA Cop Thinks A Cell Phone Might Be A Dangerous Weapon
from the 'to-serve-and-elicit-incredulous-laughter' dept
Citizens recording police activity often find their subjects in no mood to be photographed. These amateur photographers/filmmakers are threatened, attacked or dragged to the nearest police station and booked, using charges like "interference" or "disorderly conduct" or "walking in an alley" to make sure they don't walk away unintimidated.
A new thought process seems to be taking hold, however. As we covered a few weeks ago, police officers are now trotting out the bizarre theory that the cell phone filming them might be a weapon. Photography Is Not A Crime has rounded up another instance of a cop playing the "cell phone=gun" card in order to prevent being recorded.
A California cop who was being video recorded by a smartphone said she was in fear for her life because the phone could have possibly been a gun, marking at least the fourth time this year a cop in this country has uttered those nonsensical words.
The trend of insinuating cell phones can be guns began earlier this year when Juan “Biggie” Santana had his Sony Bloggie confiscated by Hialeah police officer Antonio Sentmanat in South Florida.
It continued when San Diego police officer Martin Reinhold slapped a phone out of Adam Pringle’s hands and arrested him while writing him a citation for smoking a cigarette on a beach boardwalk.
Then again in Arkansas when a cop ripped an iPhone out of a man’s hands who had been trying to document the Exxon oil spill outside Little Rock.
It certainly hasn't reached epidemic levels yet, but the argument seems to be increasing in popularity. The story we covered contained a statement by the police officer that indicated this new "cell phone=gun" logic is part of the training process.
Now, it's not entirely impossible to make a weapon shaped like a cell phone. It's just highly unlikely. PINAC's article contains a video of a cell phone/gun, but it seems to require a bulky, out-of-date antenna to hide the barrel. The weapon exists (or existed), but it (or any knockoffs) never made an appearance here in the US.
[T]hat weapon never even made it to the United States, according to ExCopLawStudent, a former cop turned law student who firmly believes in the right of officers to ensure their safety, but who also understands police paranoia doesn’t override the Constitution.So, the threat of a weaponized cell phone is hovering at zero, or close enough to it to be laughable when a law enforcement officer uses this "danger" as an excuse to prevent being recorded. Even the supposedly trained-in-the-art-of-phoneguns cops don't take the argument seriously. Or at least no more seriously than the TSA agents who are instructed to consider 3 ounces or less of a liquid "safe," ignoring the fact that any traveler with opposable thumbs could pour 6 ounces of liquid into two three-ounce containers and sail right through the checkpoint with a "dangerous" amount of contraband.
In 2000 or 2001, police in Europe discovered a four-shot gun disguised as a cellphone. Since then police officers in the United States have claimed on multiple occasions that civilians who were recording video with their cellphones had to put the phone down. Why? Because it could be a weapon.
Geez, guys, you’re killing us. There have been no cellphone guns recovered in the United States, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. None. Zero. Nada. Zilch.
In addition, there are exactly zero court cases that discuss the issue. As a matter of fact, there is nothing in the legal world that discuss the issue. No law review articles, no trial or appellate briefs, nothing.
[I]f Detective Shannon Todd of the Newark Police Gang Unit was really so stupid to believe that the phone could have been a gun, then why did she first order the citizen to place it back into his pocket?The rhetoric is used solely to shut down filming. If this was an actual weapon, one presumes it would be confiscated and the carrier arrested, or at least detained until proper paperwork was produced (cell phone bill?). This also conveniently ignores the fact that many everyday objects that people carry around have also been converted into weapons at one point or another.
The only threat a cell phone presents to an officer making this assertion is the possibility of public embarrassment. I suppose we should be happy that these officers are at least going above and beyond the "you can't film me" argument and showing a little creativity in their shutdowns of amateur policewatchers. But this one crosses the "fine line between clever and stupid" and just keeps running.
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Reader Comments
The First Word
“Flying
I guess nobody's taking cell phones on airplanes anymore.Subscribe: RSS
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Detective Shannon Todd needs to be fired for incompetence.
Mistaking a phone for a gun = fail.
Not responding to what you believe to be a gun in an appropriate manner = fail.
Off topic: ¿Doesn't Newark have larger problems than 3 teenagers sitting on a picnic table in a park on a nice afternoon?
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you think you have the right to peaceably assemble, or sumpin' ? ? ?
how quaint...
(now we have 'peaceably assembling while black' violations!)
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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I had one that came in a metal box. The thing weighted like 2Kg.
Now that could kill a man.
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what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander...
...unless the gander has a drone army !
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
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Otherwise, if I say "my arm itches" and it didn't, it would be a felony.
So, the camera argument, unless they're looking for a camera that was used to bludgeon someone, how is lying about "you're being filmed" a felony, unless you're being investigated for some weird crime that involves not filming people.
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Flying
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"Don't ask the meaning of a folly, ask only what it accomplishes."
What this deliberate insanity accomplishes is preventing recording, gets "police" used to confiscating phones, besides ratchets up the general level of police believing they're under attack from everyone not in a uniform. -- And of course hundreds of hours of playing violent video games trains them to shoot first and often to rack up a score, never bother with questions.
Look for more of it. People living in countries that launch wars for empire can't expect to remain free. While the bankers loot the country from air-conditioned offices, the police will become more violent toward the innocent citizens they've sworn to protect.
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Sounds familiar?
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Bloody frontier mentality. Maybe y'all should be shipped to Mars - or the asteroid belt...
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Unfortunately, I suspect we'll have to wait for a tragic event, probably involving the loss of life of a cell phone owner to see anything done to stop this.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmZkN2PFhAw
I'm not necessarily siding with the cops but the person recording this thing also seems to be annoying and possibly interfering.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJzni-eqOiw
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Also, if the person is not associated with the group there could be an issue of privacy if the camera holder is really close to the cops discussing the matter. Perhaps the group being questioned by the cops don't want cameras on them. Granted, they are in a public place but when being questioned by cops they maybe asked private questions or questions that they may not want on tape, especially if those questions involve giving the cops useful information on other people who may retaliate.
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Cop == coward
"Serve and protect" is a joke -- as we saw in Boston, when the wimps and cowards in the Boston PD couldn't manage to find one frightened, wounded teenager without shutting the whole town down and bringing in armor. If they were actually faced with a REAL adversary they would have wet their pants.
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Re: Cop == coward
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All these police people are doing is teaching the public to put the camera in a pocket. Or to wear hidden cameras. or have fannie packs come back into fashion.
I can see it now - shirts with special pockets large enough that the camera can stick out, and with some bean bag material to aim the camera.
Fanny packs might come back....with holes and special pockets to aim.
Both devices work with Smartwatch technology, to start and stop recording as desired.
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What can you fit in a video camera?
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Still seems like an excuse, or over reaction. If the person was actually interfering with police business, then charge them with that, and use the video as evidence.
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Robbery: n. 1) the direct taking of property (including money) from a person (victim) through force, threat or intimidation…
or, from a different legal dictionary,
Robbery: The crime of directly taking property (including money) from a person (victim) through force, threat, or intimidation.…
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I have a Samsung S3, and Samsung's website lists the dimensions as 5.38 x 2.78 x 0.34 inches and the S4 is .31" thick. The iPhone 4 is listed as being .037" thick, while the iPhone 5 is .30" thick.
While there is a .17 caliber bullet, the most common smallest rounds are the .204 and the .22 caliber rounds.
For argument's sake, a Samsung S3 built to be a gun using a .204 caliber round would have to have a barrel that is less than .07" thick. ( .34" - .204" = .136" AND .136"/2 = .068")
That gun would be a bigger threat to the person pulling the trigger than to the cop.
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What's really wrong with the idea that if you shoot someone in the back —or if you shoot an unarmed man— then people are just going to find a rope and a tree.
Looks, cut-n-dried to me. You think riding two days to fetch a judge is reallly going to do all that much to change the facts? The man was unarmed. You shot him.
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They're right you know
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And yet while fearing for her life she didn't attempt to protect herself or the public she is sworn to protect by drawing her firearm.... Interesting.
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Her life would be absolutely destroyed… if she got herself convicted of a felony assault.
What do you think would happen to you, if you pulled a gun on someone with a smartphone? They'd lock you up.
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Egging each other on
These cops sound like they're egging each other on… trying to see who's actually got the guts to kill some poor kid holding a cellphone.
Takes a lot of guts to shoot a kid holding a cellphone.
A lot of guts.
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Re: Egging each other on
Already been done.
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Bogus
Had they really thought a gun then they would soon draw their own handguns while ordering them down on the ground spread eagle style.
So all we have here is abuse of the law to censor. You would think cops would want to teach a bunch of kids better lessons in this high technology world.
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Using this logic
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since most police cars have dash cameras....
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A cell phone can be a dangerous weapon
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