New Jersey Cop Demands Camera From Eyewitness After Police Dog Allowed To Maul Prone Suspect

from the additional-narrative-control-efforts-to-follow dept

If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide, right? That's what the government tells us when it wants to erect cameras and fund domestic surveillance efforts. So, what do you tell a police officer who demands a citizen hand over their phone? Even if the officer has done something wrong, he still can at least attempt to hide it. And even if the effort fails, he still likely has nothing to fear. That's the imbalance of power at work and it leads directly to this sort of thing.

New Jersey police may have gone too far when they took the cell phone from an onlooker who recorded their encounter with a suspect who was mauled by a police dog and later died.

The man, Phillip White, had dog bites all over his body last week, his lawyer said, and a jarring video shows cops struggling to pull the dog away.

A police officer took the video from a witness who was recording the arrest — possibly in violation of the law — but the footage was later obtained by NBC Philadelphia.

The tail end of the "arrest" and the officer's questionable demand for the witness' cellphone can be seen here:


[And here's additional, just-released video, courtesy of PINAC that seems to show the suspect was unconscious for a majority of the "altercation."]


Demanding personal information from an eyewitness is one thing, but demanding the person turn over the phone is something else entirely. Either the demand failed to take or the phone was returned intact to its owner (third possibility: an automatic upload to cloud storage after recording was interrupted) because the footage was later turned over to a Philadelphia news station.

No excuse has been offered for this officer's actions yet, but one imagines the justification will fall under the "evidence of a crime" warrant exception. Of course, any criminal activity committed by Phillip White, the suspect being mauled by a police dog in the video, had long since ceased. The only potential criminal activity captured by this recording would have been committed by law enforcement officers.

The officer's line of questioning gives some insight into his motivations. First, he asks if the witness saw everything. Then he informs the witness that he'll need to take the cellphone.

The police were responding to a "disorderly person" call. By the end of it, the "disorderly" person was dead. Police claimed White was combative and a dispatch recording contains an officer claiming the suspect tried to grab his gun. Eyewitnesses, however, said White wasn't resisting. Even the single eyewitness who did say White was resisting said he wasn't by the time the recording was captured.

Agustin Ayala of Ayala Towing said he was driving down Grape Street in his tow truck when he saw two police cars on the street and two officers trying to handcuff a man.

"He was resisting," Ayala said of White.

The two officers, including a K9 officer, handcuffed the suspect and brought him to the ground, he said. Ayala said he asked the officers to stop because he was concerned for the man's welfare.

An officer then reportedly said to Ayala, "you didn't see him try to take my gun."

So, it would appear the deployment of arguably excessive force was retaliation for White's earlier, alleged gun-grabbing. For making an officer feel fear, he was restrained to death with an assist from a four-legged officer -- one who won't stop attacking until instructed otherwise. And at the end of it all, there's an illegal "request" for a citizen's camera. There isn't much about the incident that looks good and the officer's demand for the unflattering footage seems to confirm he's well aware of this.

Filed Under: cameras, filming police, new jersey, phillip white, police

Officer Put On Leave For Tweeting To Bait Public Into Violence

from the bad-cop-bad-cop dept

It seems like there are so many police-behaving-badly stories that have come out recently, it's no longer all that noteworthy. Mind you, I don't know that the policing situation is generally actually getting worse, as it might seem, or if there is just simply a greater willingness to shine a spotlight in some very uncomfortable places within our own society. That said, what does remain interesting is watching how police around the country react to this spotlight. Watching the unfortunate reactions to athletes showing support for protesters, for instance, would be hysterical if it weren't so sad. Those stories appear to indicate that some within law enforcement appear to think that protecting some members of the population is a task with which they can be selective.

But, hey, at least those police representatives weren't directly attempting to escalate the confrontation in the most insulting way possible. Reader Tim A writes in with an ironically-named Officer Phillip White's suspension from multiple jobs for using social media in an attempt to convince us he's the biggest asshole alive.

The San Jose Police Department said Officer Phillip White was sidelined after officials learned of statements made Saturday from his Twitter account. In the tweets, White said he would kill anyone who threatens him or his family. He also said he would be off-duty at the movies with his gun if anyone "feels they can't breathe or their lives matter."

The tweets and hashtag played on protest slogans "I can't breathe" and "black lives matter."

For a member of law enforcement to actively attempt to bait members of the public he is sworn to protect into a violent confrontation is stupid on levels I'm seriously having trouble conceptualizing. The good news is that the San Jose police reacted swiftly and took this clown off the streets, hopefully removing the gun he'd been boasting about as well. In addition to being placed on leave by the police department, Menlo College also relieved Mr. White of his duties as an assistant basketball coach.

"The college will not be represented by expressions of intolerance and bigotry on the campus, on social media, or on the Internet," the college said in a statement.

Look, free and open speech is immensely important, but anyone who thinks it's okay for a public officer to publicly bait members of the public to a potentially violent confrontation in public is publicly dumb. Nearly as dumb as Officer White, who thought that hurried attempts to delete his tweets would keep him out of trouble. We shouldn't want to hear from him again until a well-thought-out psychiatric evaluation is conducted.

Filed Under: baiting, phillip white, police, san jose, social media