Woman Catches Cop Beating Handcuffed Suspect; Police Union First In Line To Shoot The Messenger

from the no-one-to-blame-but-everyone-else dept

The presumed illegality of filming police is a law enforcement mental disorder. Far too many officers believe they have the right to perform their public service unobserved. Officers continue to take cameras from bystanders who happen to catch them behaving badly. Abby Phillip at the Washington Post details another apparent act of police misconduct that resulted in more misconduct as officers attempted to shut the recording down.

Just after 4 p.m. Thursday, a woman stood a few feet away from several Miami Police Department patrol cars with her cellphone camera recording. After a few seconds, an officer entered the frame, escorting a handcuffed young black man to the back of a police car.

Suddenly, the officer put his head inside the car door and appeared to punch the suspect.

“Oh!” a woman exclaimed on the recording, reacting to what was unfolding before her. The woman, who the Associated Press identified as Shenitria Blocker, moved closer, and the officer climbed into the back seat of the car. Moments later, the camera shook and the video ended.

Here's the video:


The camera shake was due to an officer's attempt to take Blocker's phone away from her. Blocker says they then ordered her to delete the footage or face being arrested. While the video does show Blocker moving in very close to the police car to get a better view of the action, any arrestable offense would have been limited to "interference," and that would only be legit if she refused to move away from the vehicle when ordered to. No such order was given. Instead, the cop went for the camera and threatened her with arrest.

Even if the cops can't find a sufficiently malleable "violation" to charge photographers with, the law enforcement community (including police departments and, especially, their unions) finds ways to ensure no damning recording goes unpunished.

To its credit, the Miami Police Department has suspended the officer caught punching the handcuffed arrestee and is investigating the incident. On the other hand, it hasn't said anything about the unidentified officer who attempted to take Blocker's phone, nor has it issued a statement affirming the public's right to film police officers.

The Miami Fraternal Order of Police, on the other hand, is going out of its way to deliver its own brand of "justice" for Blocker having the temerity to catch one of its officers behaving badly.

In a statement, the police union said “social media has placed a very negative tone on law enforcement nationwide” and that the officer in question was “protecting our community.”

Ah. So that's what happened. A now-suspended officer didn't punch an arrested man who was already in the back of a patrol car. Social media did. In fact, social media should be made to answer for the hundreds of incidents of police misconduct every year. At the very least, people should stop running to social media with their clips of police abuse because being a cop is hard work.

But the union has gone farther than simply making the ridiculous assertion that all of these police officers captured on film doing the things they were actually doing is nothing more than negative spin by Social Media Co. LLC. It's also attempting to disparage Blocker herself -- ironically, by using the same social media that's apparently destroying the reputation of its suspect-punching police officer.

The union has delivered screenshots of Blocker's since-removed Facebook page, claiming these show Blocker is a bad person and therefore, all video captured by her phone should be disregarded… or something.

The remainder of the union’s statement focused on criticizing Smith, the woman who at the time they believed recorded the video. It highlighted screenshots of Smith’s Facebook page and accused her of posting photos of herself with men who have handguns.

According to the farcical police officers' group, the real problem is men with guns on Facebook pages, not an officer punching a handcuffed suspect. If only the "community" had done more to raise Ms. Blocker right, Unidentified-and-Suspended Officer X wouldn't have had to punch a handcuffed man in the back of his patrol car.

“Our community has accepted behavior that motivates violence in our younger generation. It’s time for the community to take a stand against this reckless behavior and stop the violence,” he continued. “As the saying goes: It takes a village to raise a child. Guns don’t belong in the hands of children.”

So, remember: the next time you see a police officer beating a handcuffed person, remember that somewhere out there, there's a male with a gun and someone's daughter might be friends with him. Ask yourself: what's more important here? The reputation of the misbehaving officer? Or the reputation of the misbehaving officer? And then put the camera away. Because as the union sees it, the only people above reproach are the officers whose abusive actions prompt poorly-thought out and thoroughly ridiculous statements from their unions.

Filed Under: filming, miami, miami police department, photographing police, photography is not a crime, police, shenitria blocker

Purdue Cops Throw Student Journalist To Ground, Seize His Camera And Detain Him For Three Hours

from the we'll-let-you-know-what-your-rights-are-once-we've-finished-violating-th dept

Cops vs. cameras: the apparently never ending battle continues. A student photojournalist at Purdue found himself on the receiving end of a little extra "attention" while attempting to cover Tuesday's on-campus shooting.

In the midst of Tuesday’s shooting, an Exponent employee was detained by the police while trying to fulfill his journalistic duties.

Exponent photo editor Michael Takeda, a junior in the College of Technology, was slammed to the ground by the Purdue Police after being found in the Electrical Engineering Building taking photos. The area had not been closed off to the public at the time.

The officers confiscated Takeda’s camera and photos, detained and questioned his whereabouts within the building, which was then on lockdown after being held by the police for roughly three hours.

While it's somewhat understandable that the campus police might be a bit on edge while looking for a shooter, that doesn't excuse any of the actions they took when they came across Takeda. (You can see his article on the shooting here.) It shouldn't have taken three hours to determine whether Takeda was involved in the shooting and his presence in a building that hadn't been "locked down" should not have been greeted with the use of force. Those who say people who are "doing nothing wrong" shouldn't fear police officers might want to reexamine that assertion in light of Takeda's experience. One also wonders whether the presence of the camera escalated the officers' physical response.

The police finally let Takeda go after detaining him for three hours but they had no interest in returning his equipment to him until someone higher up the ladder at Purdue interceded on his behalf.

[I]it was only after Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, prodded the University that Takeda’s belongings were bequeathed to him.

“They were very cooperative, and they recognized right away that this was a serious situation that required their immediate attention,” LoMonte said.

LoMonte said, though the University was helpful in releasing Takeda’s belongings, it was just the police’s instinct to retrieve his belongings, despite the possible infringement of a federal law.

By "retrieve," I assume LoMonte means "seize." Notwithstanding this oral typo, what LoMonte says next is both unsurprising and sad.

“Honestly I think almost nobody knows that is the law, not even lawyers,” LoMonte laughed.

LoMonte may be laughing but I don't think I'll be joining him. People who are charged with enforcing laws or keeping clients out of jail should be familiar with the laws that are an integral part of their jobs. The law LoMonte refers to isn't a recent development prompted by the ubiquity of smartphone cameras. It's been on the books for more than 30 years and was crafted in response to an incident at another college, Stanford University.

“(It) specifically says that the police cannot confiscate or search where journalists keep their unpublished work product unless they first go in front of a judge and give the journalist the chance to argue his side,” LoMonte said

Now, police have ways around this limitation -- the always-useful "exigent situation" exception. This is supposed to be used only when the safety of officers or the public is immediately threatened. In reality, the exception is most frequently used to ask for post-rights violation "forgiveness." The Purdue officers didn't cite this exception, but it will probably be deployed if Takeda decides to make some more noise about his treatment. Is it really too much to ask for law enforcement officers to know and respect the laws governing their actions?

Filed Under: journalism, michael takeda, photography is not a crime, police brutality, purdue
Companies: purdue university

Barnes & Noble Claims That Public User Names Are Private Info; Refuses To Restore Blog With Comments

from the huh? dept

We've linked to the Photography Is Not A Crime (PINAC) blog on Pixiq.com many times in the past. To be honest, I had no idea that the site was actually owned by Barnes and Noble -- I had assumed that it was just an independent blogging operation. It turns out, however, that B&N hired Carlos Miller, who had written PINAC as an independent blog, and "moved" the blog to Pixiq two years ago. However, it recently chose not to renew his contract, and agreed to transfer the blog back to being independent. Except... that now it's claiming that it cannot transfer all of the comments on the site because that would somehow violate B&N's privacy policies (note that link goes to PINAC at Pixiq... but I have no idea where it will go in a week when the "transfer" takes place). At best, B&N says it can transfer the comments but only as "anonymous."

At first, Pixiq was asking me to sign a document, which stated that the migration of my blog would not include a single comment because of its privacy policy.

But when I protested, Pixiq attorney Gillian Berman said they would make an exception in my case and migrate the comments, but turn every username into “anonymous,” which would make every single comment over the last two years appear to have been left the same person.

This makes no sense. We're not talking about handing private info over to a third party, but the actual names that people chose to display publicly. Perhaps B&N would have an argument if there's concern about transferring email addresses or IP address info with the comments -- but even that seems like a stretch. People commented on a blog. Transferring the entire blog to a different site doesn't change any of that -- but it's especially stupid when it comes to public info like commenters' chosen display names.

It seems like the only explanation I can figure out is that B&N is being incredibly lazy here, and doesn't want to do the bare minimum amount of work to return the blog to Carlos. We've seen a few other blogs "join" different sites in the past, and it seems worth highlighting how the separation can create ridiculous problems like this when a big company decides to make claims that just don't make any sense.

Filed Under: blogs, photography is not a crime, private info, public, usernames
Companies: barnes and noble