NYPD Officers Expect Public To Be Stupider Than They Are; Justify Shutting Down Recording With 'iPhones Are Guns' Claim

from the you-can't-fix-stupid,-you-can-only-assign-it-to-desk-duty dept

When the appeal to authority fallacy doesn't work, try appealing to ludicrousness. That seems to be the M.O. in play here. NYPD officers arrested a bicyclist for running a red light, but that arrest wasn't effected until the bicyclist attempted to film the interaction. Here's all ten seconds of it before the cop shut the arrestee's impromptu shooting down.

Will Paybarah, the scofflaw in question, received this memorable explanation for the hasty neutralizing of his iPhone while sitting in the back seat of the unmarked squad car.

I was told by another officer while in the car that recording a police officer was illegal because people are using iPhones as guns and shooting cops through the camera lens...I told him that I have the right to be recording a cop and he said that there were incidents, specifically in uptown Manhattan where a kid shot a cop with his iPhone. Straight face. Very serious.

Now, it's true that recording footage is often slangily referred as "shooting footage," and that cops are increasingly on the receiving end of these types of "shootings." But there has yet to be any evidence produced that indicates phones and cameras are being converted into guns on any sort of mass scale or that these new hybrids are so common that this "fear" has a rational basis.

A kid may have "shot" a cop with his iPhone, but without any data to back up this claim, the only thing taking a hit was the officer's mistaken belief that public service is afforded an expectation of privacy. Cops telling citizens this sort of cop-centric urban legend to defend the trampling of the First Amendment indicates that they believe citizens are idiots.

Paybarah, meanwhile, spent 13 hours in lockup over a red light infraction. Well, not entirely. By the time the cop was finished effecting the arrest of the person holding the theoretically weaponized iPhone, charges of resisting arrest, obstruction and criminal mischief had been added -- charges that are just as malleable as cops' minds.

Cops walk or drive by plenty of people holding "weapons" in plain sight, all of them unlicensed and potentially deadly. An overwhelming majority of the public wouldn't even consider leaving the house without being "strapped," and yet, months and years go by without cops being shot in the face by iGuns. Perhaps the police chalk up this low rate of deadly incidents to their expedient neutralization of camera gun wielders. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and all that, and the cops can't be expected to protect the freedoms they'll take from you if they're constantly being "shot" by armed citizens.

Better safe than sorry -- that's the real intent of the Constitution. An officer getting home safe (and unrecorded) at the end of every shift is a far worthier goal than the vague rights pre-supposed to idiot citizens by a handful of amendments.

Maybe the cops should switch out their service pieces for deadly cameras -- you know, in order to keep up with "the streets" in the arms race. That way, the next time they get drunk and start shooting, the end result will be nothing more than a bunch of shitty Instagrams.

Filed Under: filming police, guns, iphone, nypd, phones

Man Who's Spent Three Years Challenging IL's Eavesdropping Act Suddenly Finds He Has No Case

from the this-is-how-it-ends,-not-with-a-bang,-but-with-a-moot dept

The oft-abused Illinois Eavesdropping Act that was recently found to be unconstitutional by the courts is at the center of one man's lawsuit against his local police force.

According to the filing, the plaintiff (Louis Frobe) suffers from insomnia, which has led to him spending a great deal of time outside of his house at night, either going to late movie showings or engaging in nocturnal animal-watching. As is to be expected, Frobe also spends a great deal of time interacting with local law enforcement (an estimated 40 times over a two-year period), who are prone to view people wandering around at night with suspicion.

Because these interactions rarely went well, Frobe decided to start recording his run-ins with the police. That didn't sit well with one officer, who arrested him under the Eavesdropping Act in 2010. Charges were never filed, but Frobe was concerned enough about future arrests that he sought a permanent injunction against the police to prevent them from arresting him under this act.

Thanks to the ACLU's victory in court, the state's Eavesdropping Act can no longer be applied in this fashion (i.e., recording police officers while on duty and in public places). The state Attorney General was ordered to cease prosecution of those who "violated" the unconstitutional law. According to the presiding judge, this rendered Frobe's complaint moot.

The attorney general has since publicly stated that it "will not prosecute or assist in prosecuting Frobe under the [IEA], because any prosecution of Frobe under the facts in his complaint would run afoul of the First Amendment."

"In the instant case, defendants have given public notice of the policy change, they have explained their reasoning, and they have abandoned the defense of the IEA as constitutional. Thus, it is not 'difficult to conclude that there is no reasonable expectation that plaintiff would be prosecuted under the statute in the future,'" the judge said.

While Frobe unquestionably had standing to challenge the Act when he filed his lawsuit, subsequent federal court rulings in other cases have succeeded in their challenges to the Act, and public officials have conceded the issue.

"Since the time of those decisions and public declarations, there have been no new prosecutions. In short, plaintiff Frobe no longer has a reasonable expectation that the Act will be enforced against him. His claim for injunctive relief is moot," Pallmeyer concluded.

Frobe stated in his suit that this declaration not to prosecute doesn't necessarily mean local police won't attempt to file charges against him for recording, but Pallmeyer pointed out (with several citations) that the state AG needs to be taken at his word until proven otherwise. This decision doesn't look like it will necessarily curb the number of run-ins Frobe will have with the police, but at least it means he's free to use his camera to keep them honest.

With the State AG declaring there will be no prosecution under this act, that only leaves the Cook County's state's attorney Robert Bonjean III who, along with Police Chief Tony Grootens, declared back in August that they would be selectively prosecuting cases of those charged under the unconstitutional act. This drew heat from the Illinois ACLU, which sent a letter demanding to know what exactly Bonjean meant by refusing to issue a "blanket statement" and vowing to prosecute on a "case-by-case basis."

At the point we covered it here, there had been no response. But it looks at though Bonjean has decided to join the rest of the state and follow the court's instruction.

State’s Attorney Robert Bonjean III will not be prosecuting anyone in Morgan County for audio-recording police officers performing their public duties in public places.

Bonjean has conveyed that assurance to the American Civil Liberties Union in response to a letter the group sent seeking clarification about whether anyone would face charges under a 1960s eavesdropping law...

“Consistent with the Alvarez decision in the northern district of Illinois, which would apply if (the ACLU) applied for a preliminary injunction in the central district, the Morgan County State’s Attorney’s Office will not prosecute those individuals who audio-record on-duty police officers, which was the finding of the ACLU v. Alvarez case,” Bonjean said.

Chief Grootens also made a similar statement.

“Our department will not arrest civilians if they audio-record any on-duty police officers in a public place,” Grootens said in a one-paragraph letter to Schwartz, dated Aug. 28.

So, now it's unanimous (finally). While the police may be highly uncomfortable with being filmed while on duty, they'll just have to tough it out. The law's no longer theirs to abuse.

Filed Under: eavesdropping, filming police, illinois, louis frobe

San Diego Cop Thinks You Might Have Turned Your Cell Phone Into A Gun And That 'Officer Safety' Trumps Constitutional Rights

from the convert-your-DSLR-to-an-RPG-in-3-easy-steps!!! dept

We've seen several times before the reticence (a fancy $20 word for "antipathy") many law enforcement officers have towards being recorded while on the job. They don't seem to mind cameras they control (even though those too have proven problematic -- but fixable), but if the average citizen starts "taping" an encounter, much ado is made about the impropriety (or illegal-ness) of the citizen's actions.

We've seen all of this before. But this one tops those stories. This is one of those has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed events. Fortunately, it involves a functioning camera installed in a surprisingly dangerous cell phone.

San Diegan Adam Pringle was minding his own business illegally smoking a cigarette in a public area (I know -- this falls under the "California Is Ridiculous" heading) when he was approached by Officer Reinhold, who then proceeded to cite him for outdoor smoking.

Pringle decided to whip out his Samsung and record the encounter. At that point, things went from bad to worse to surreal.

It all seemed pretty civil until the cop writing the citation told him to stop recording, which Pringle refused to do.

"Phones can be converted into weapons …. look it up online," the cop told him.

When Pringle tried to talk sense into the cop, the cop slapped the phone out of his hand where it fell onto the boardwalk and broke apart.

The other cop then pounced on him, slamming him down on the boardwalk where he ended up with a laceration on his chin.

Read that again. (Or watch the video.) Officer Reinhold wants Pringle to shut off the camera in his phone because, no shit, a cell phone can be turned into a gun. Apparently, the internet says so. Yes, this would be the same internet that declared the unusual popping noise in your knees to be "AIDS." And, yes, it is possible to turn a camera/cell phone into a gun. It's just very unlikely this is happening with any frequency.

Despite this very "real" danger, Reinhold allows a gun camera to be trained on him for the next few minutes as Pringle's friends continue to record the arrest. Not only that, but he continues to write the ticket for smoking outdoors, oblivious to multiple passersby that are carrying their phoneguns out in the open or concealed in pockets/purses.

Let's hope this little bit of misinformation doesn't become the next "Stop resisting." Officer Reinhold seems remarkably calm for a man with a gun pointed directly at his face. If I was in his position, I'd, at the very least, have my taser aimed directly back at the gunman cameraman threatening my life.

It gets even better/worse. Reinhold, while being filmed by the non-arrestees, makes a statement even bolder/more ridiculous than his "Don't literally shoot me with your phone!" claim. (Second recording over at Photography Is Not A Crime.)

He also said that "officer safety" trumps the Constitution, meaning they can claim they are fear for their lives while they throw you in jail for any lame excuse.

So, we're to believe that if an officer is in danger, the entire rulebook can just be tossed out the proverbial window? I mean, if you're already going to negate the Constitution when staring down the barrel of a Samsung, what's stopping you from scrapping the local codes and policies governing police work when in danger? Hours and hours of training in order to prep officers for dealing with the potentially dangerous public but when it all comes down to it, law enforcement is "authorized" to succumb to "fight or flight?" That makes no sense.

Pringle, double-threat that he is (smoker and gun camera owner), was hauled away after sustaining enough injuries from the arrest that an ambulance was called. He then spent a night in jail after being charged with obstruction for failing to immediately turn over his weapon cell phone.

Fortunately for all of us, Pringle didn't. This is why we should record police activity. Without record of statements like these, it's nearly impossible to convince anyone that some members of law enforcement carry around an imaginary rulebook, one that can be rewritten on the fly to suit the situation at hand, or thrown out completely if the officers feel threatened. Reinhold is now infamous and will likely be confronted with many more dangerous would-be guns provided to the populace by notorious weapons dealers like T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T.

Filed Under: filming police, mobile phones, police, san diego