Posted on 08/01/2010 4:49:10 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
When Tasha Ford was summoned by Boynton Beach police to pick up her son for allegedly sneaking into a movie theater she came with a video camera.
Her decision to protect her son by capturing the officers on tape backfired badly.
After repeatedly warning her to stop taping them, insisting it was illegal, Boynton Beach police slapped her in handcuffs and took her to jail. She was charged with resisting arrest without violence and intercepting oral communications, a third-degree felony.
While prosecutors ultimately decided not to file charges against Ford or her son in connection with the February 2009 confrontation the 34-year-old Boynton Beach mother of two doesn't want others to face a similar ordeal.
Now, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union Ford is hoping to give people throughout the state the right to whip out cameras when police stop them.
The lawsuit filed in July in U.S. District Court is one of several the civil rights group has filed throughout the country seeking to overturn laws it says violate residents' First Amendment rights. In Maryland, the group is representing a man who taped a traffic stop from a camera mounted on his motorcycle helmet. The tape that shows a gun-wielding plainclothes officer approaching the motorcyclist became a YouTube sensation.
Like the Maryland man, Ford prominently displayed her camera to Boynton Beach officers. She said she grabbed it when police called because she had a bad feeling about why they stopped her son, a good student who had never been in trouble. She said she was shocked when they hauled her off to jail.
"When can't I record you for my protection?" she said recently. "If they're not doing anything wrong, why should they care?"
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander...imho
I hope she wins. There is no good reason for Law Enforcement to fear cameras or any type of recording. IMHO
So what’s the difference between a cop’s dashcam recording video and audio of you and you recording video and audio of him with a handheld camera?
intercepting oral communications —
How does this happen?
Stop a sound wave??
Listen to someone talk??
Put earplugs in ears??
Write down a quote??
I am puzzled!!
They love to use that line on the little people when trying to bully their way into searching your car... I wish more folks would repeat that same phrase.
“There is no good reason for Law Enforcement to fear cameras or any type of recording. IMHO”
Sorry I disagree, there is a very good reason for LE’s to fear cameras. Thats why they don’t want us to have them.
Even 911 calls are recorded.
So what’s the difference between a cop’s dashcam recording video and audio of you and you recording video and audio of him with a handheld camera?
Some animals are more equal than others.
____________________
The K-9’s were heard chanting;
“Four legs good. Two legs bad.”
How true!
Public officials, when acting in their official capacity, have NO right to privacy WHATSOEVER.
Here’s one where the cop was video taped planting evidence on a kid he just ran over, and he gets away with it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2562952/posts
Deputy confiscated her phone and deleted all video. Imagine that.
I'll find a link and post it.
Deputy confiscates woman’s cell phone
He feared it had been modified into a gun
Friday, July 30, 2010 02:54 AM
By Randy Ludlow
The Columbus Dispatch
Melissa Greenfield was videotaping the deputy.
When a deputy sheriff began questioning Melissa Greenfield’s boyfriend at a Delaware County truck stop, she began recording video with her cell phone.
She never thought that she, or her phone, could be viewed as a danger as she documented the activities of public employees in a public place.
“I’m a 115-pound, 20-year-old girl wearing a cervical collar with nothing but a cell phone. I was not going to harm any officer,” Greenfield said yesterday.
However, a sheriff’s sergeant saw the situation differently after Greenfield announced that she was recording video “for legal purposes and our own safety.”
Sgt. Jonathan Burke wrote that he repeatedly ordered Greenfield to place the “unknown” object in her pocket and keep her hands free. When Greenfield refused, she was arrested and charged with obstructing official business and resisting arrest.
Burke wrote in his report that he feared that Greenfield could have been holding a dangerous object such as a “cell-phone gun.”
However, neither the sheriff’s office nor the Columbus office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has ever come across one of the black-market devices that apparently are made in Eastern Europe.
Burke ultimately determined that Greenfield’s cell phone was not the exotic stuff of James Bond but a simple T-Mobile device.
In a statement, Delaware County Sheriff Walter L. Davis III said that cell-phone guns are an example of everyday items that have been altered into deceptive weapons that endanger the safety of officers and the public.
“When a sheriff’s deputy encounters an individual holding something in his or her hand, the deputy will take action to identify the item. This is done for the safety of the deputy, the involved parties and the public,” Davis wrote.
After Greenfield got her phone back, she said, the video she took of the deputies at the Flying J truck stop at I-71 and Rt. 37 on July 9 had been deleted, along with a couple of vacation videos.
Deputies did not delete any video, Davis said. A warrant would have been required to search the phone, and one was not obtained, he said.
The sheriff’s cruisers are not equipped with dashboard recording systems, so there is no public video to document what occurred. However, through a grant, more than 30 cruisers soon will have cameras.
In Delaware Municipal Court on July 13, Greenfield’s public defender deemed it “ridiculous” that she might have had a cell-phone gun. Greenfield, who lives in Poway, Calif., pleaded no contest to obstructing official business. She was fined $20 and released with time served: three days in jail. The resisting-arrest charge was dropped.
Greenfield said her no-contest plea was one of convenience to allow her to return home to receive treatment for her neck, which had been injured in a car wreck a few days earlier.
She and her boyfriend, Colton Dorich, were driving back to California when their truck ran low on gasoline and they pulled into the truck stop. Dorich, 19, of Conover, Wis., began walking his dog along Rt. 37 while displaying a sign asking passing motorists for money. That triggered a call to the sheriff’s office.
Burke arrived, questioned Dorich and then accompanied him back to his truck so the young man could get his ID. Burke wrote that Greenfield began to intervene and asked Dorich, who was not charged, for her cell phone.
“Not knowing what the item in her hand was and having prior knowledge of all types of hidden weapons, including a cell-phone gun, I asked her several times to place it in her pocket and to keep her hands free,” Burke wrote.
Greenfield said that, while driving her to the jail, Burke said that it was “unacceptable for me to be filming his activities.”
“I wish I could be surprised,” she said, “but I’ve heard so many stories of incidents like this happening before. ... There’s no law against videotaping police encounters.”
Yet, people swear up and down that the police are our friends and that we are not heading toward some kind of quasi police state.
The majority of the police are today agents of the state. They don’t protect us, they protect the interests of the state.
Time to wise up folks.
Plenty of cameras in a pen and some even smaller are on the merket now.
Pratice with the use of the camera, then - put it in your pocket - next time orrice friendly stops you - you will have it on tape(so to speak).
Under 50 USD and digital to boot.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.