Posted on 02/25/2011 11:11:08 AM PST by lbryce
For the second time in less than a year, Weare police have charged someone with felony wiretapping for recording police activity.
William Alleman, 51, of 140 Helen Dearborn Road, was charged Tuesday with interception of oral communication prohibited, which is the state's felony wiretapping law RSA 570-A
Police Chief Gregory Begin released few details of the case when reached for comment Thursday. The charges stem from a July 10 traffic stop, Begin said.
"He was making an audio recording of the officer during a motor vehicle stop without getting consent of the officer," Begin said.
Alleman said the charge is based on a cell phone call he made as an officer approached his vehicle.
Police considered it wiretapping because the call was being recorded by a voice mail service without the officer's consent.
Attorney Seth Hipple, of the Martin and Hipple law office, is representing Alleman as well as Carla Gericke and William Rodriguez, who were arrested on the same charge in March 2010 after Gericke began videotaping a police traffic stop. Their charges were later dropped.
"This is another example of the Weare police arresting people for recording public officials doing the public's duties in public," Hipple said.
Alleman said the incident began after he left a gathering to support Palmer's Tavern owner George Hodgdon, whose arrest days earlier for interfering with an assault investigation caused many to publicly criticize the Weare police.
Alleman said he was followed by a police officer when he left the gathering, attended mostly by members of the libertarian activist group, the Free State Project.
Alleman said he supports the group's cause but is not a member.
Alleman said he made a cell phone call as Officer Brian Montplaisir approached his vehicle.
(Excerpt) Read more at unionleader.com ...
"He was making an audio recording of the officer during a motor vehicle stop without getting consent of the officer," Begin said.
The balls on these cops.
cops have an expectation of privacy on the side of a HIGHWAY...?
Can we have sex on the side of the highway? If not, why?
Do we not also have an expectation of privacy?
Citizens or subjects?
You know, at some point this stupidity will begin to cost cities, counties and police dept’s so much money maybe they’ll get the idea and stop it...
None of these cases ever end well for the police, so why do they continue to do it?
Are they truly that dumb?
More like the nerve of the prosecutor — if he regularly declined to prosecute such cases then occifers would not dare to suggest it.
Apart from the fine points of legality, there is the obvious point of felony-flation. Keep in mind that the idea of felony evolved in law as the class of crime so evil that it would be worthy of punishment by hanging or other loss of life. Anyone can see that applying such a punishment to an offense (?) such as this fails the laugh test.
THAT's the real reason the cops are on this jihad...
Do the cops there have in car cameras with audio?
Heck, you should visit NC. Our State Highway Patrol officers have sex on the side of the highway all the time, or on some back-roads where they administer “breathalyzer” tests to unsuspecting, but agreeable, female lawbreakers.
related:
Jury Nullification Advocate Is Indicted
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2680112/posts
From reading the above it appears that they do. Therefore, if they don’t get the consent of the motorist, the cops should be arrested and prosecuted for every recording they make.
Doesn’t there have to be a wire in order to indict somebody for wiretapping? Probably a stupid question, I know.
LOL, you’re all missing a bit of context. NH is generally a rural small town affair As such not too much goes on in the way of crime, big cities excepted. Couple that (ie boredom) with raging hormones, super sized egos, badges and guns and the result is documented in the article. I’ve yet to meet a local who didn’t have his head firmly ensconced up his rear-end. We’re talking mall cop fodder here. The state animal cops rank about the same, perhaps slightly higher on the mall-cop scale.
It is the result of a corrupt legal system. Our “man-made” laws not based on Natural Law Theory and God’s Law are unjust and unconstitutional. (Holmes was the one to divorce logic and reason from the laws that is the result of removing it from Natural Law Theory which is where common sense originates.
Lawyers have divorced the laws from Natural Law Theory, something all the Founders agreed would result in political laws—laws that gave some groups power over others and would create inequality under the law. We have unjust laws, which is obvious in thousands of cases. We have created “protected” status for some—which screams unconstitutional. We have to clean up the legal system, before any of the egregious things can be remedied.
Unjust laws cannot prevail without creating chaos and revolutions. But that is what the Marxist legal scholars in the elite universities want and the types appointed by Clinton and Zero want....to create a totalitarian state where they are god and tell us what to use when we wipe our b*tts.
`This is the Live Free or Die State.
Hey, jack booted thugs.
YOU WORK FOR US.
Oh, and by the way, you’re fired!
The balls on these cops.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I’m thinking they’re quite a different organ.
It would be great if we could know what state this was in. Or how about a country? Could you tell us what country this is in? Pretty please?
In this particular instance it seems self serving by the ostensible servants of the government. I could see if you were expected to keep such a recording confidential except to present it in court as evidence or share it with your attorney. But this is jackbootism.
The “felonyness” only adds insult to injury.
New Hampster
An educated guess is Weare, New Hampshire. (It is annoying how so many online rags don’t state their locale on their home page.)
This is, I believe, near Nashua which is known for its, ahem, gaiety. At least the paper is from Nashua.
State legislators need to be contacted and laws passed.
Every government agent, when representing himself as such,
must be individually identifiable,
must allow recording of his actions, both audio and video,
and should be subject to disciplinary action and criminal liability for thwarting either identification or recording.
I was on a business trip to Concord, NH about 8 years ago. I didn’t get to my hotel until late and I was downtown (on a week night) at around midnight looking for a place to eat. 2/3 of the cars on the road and in convenience store parking lots were cop cars. I’ve never seen such a concentration in my life.
That's why posters need to put the state in the keywords section.
And let’s not forget that if you DO get pickup on, say, a DUI, you can post bail on the change in your ashtray, if not have the judge cut you R-O-R outright.
Take it to court and kick their butt!
They roll dash cams without YOUR consent!
They have to look busy & ‘on the job’ ya know. Anything open all night draws ‘em like flies esp places that have doughnuts and/or sugary drinks.
At one of the gun clubs I was a member of they used to allow the local PD to do quals & practice at the indoor range. The cops demanded exclusive access which meant members had to forego for an entire w/e sometimes more depending on the event. Eventually the club got tired of repairing the roof and asked the PD to find another venue. What is it about police work that draws Barney Fife types?
Cell phones are considered wireless wires, for the purpose of the law.
Not true. They almost always end well for the police. The officers in question are never charged, fined, or sued. The TAXPAYERS get it in the shorts when these go to court, but nothing ever (one or two rare instances where this was not true come to mind, but statistically speaking there are no consequences to police) happens to the police involved
>>What is it about police work that draws Barney Fife types?<<
It is a great way for an “outcast” to get “authority”. It was what sucked in a lot of brownshirts to the Nazi party. I consider modern cops to be either idiots or brownshirts. Or they just couldn’t find any other job.
I think I knew the defense attorney growing up - if so he is a hard working homeschooled conservative who will fight for this guy and others.
Of course. That makes perfect sense. I knew it was a stupid question.
Why not also consider the police car to be a court house, and consider the policeman to be a fully robed judge? The cruiser's glove compartment could be considered the judge's chambers. That would make sense too, wouldn't it?
And then he was stopped, and then arrested for recording a public servant performing his duties in a public setting? Harrassment, violation of civil rights, nail this jackboot to the wall!
LOL, I always thought it had something to do w/ size of a particular part of the anatomy coupled w/ an inferiority complex. Frankly, the majority of cops aren’t suited to the job mentally and/or physically. Their bad and sometimes criminal behavior is enabled by town councils and state legislatures. At least in NH if half disappeared overnight the only way you’d (eventually) figure it out is by a surplus of $ in the towns payroll acct.
Weare, NH is correct.
However, The Union Leader is a conservative newspaper from Manchester, NH.
Keep in mind that most of these small town cops did not graduate at the top of the police academy. The smart cops end up working for the state police , then the bigger cities like Manchester, Nashua ,Portsmouth or Concord and then the richer towns like Hollis, Bedford, Rye, Windham and Amherst. If he ended up working in Weare, he is probably not the sharpest tool in the shed.
Your point being?
Sue for false arrest and imprisonment!
A cop can record me (we see these all the time on tv) as evidence I may be committing a crime?
The city government can record me (traffic cam) as evidence I may be committing a crime?
The store can record me (shoplifting) as evidence I may be committing a crime? ...
Ever body can record me ..all without my permission...as evidence I may be committing a crime?
But I can not record any evidence to defend myself against the charge I may have committed the crime?
The cops don’t want you recording them because its shedding light upon their criminal actions causing them and their unions great grief...
One that obviously passes your understanding...
They don’t have ‘balls’. They have a lack of integrity, respect for their profession and an aggregiously blatant disrepect for those they protect. Most have self-image and control issues and something about how their mommy and daddy treated them when they were in shorts.
Sounds like Deprivation of Civil Rights under Color of Law and Official Oppression.
Don’t forget phone calls being recorded “for quality control purposes”; once, when esp. bored on some insane phone call to golly knows where, the person asked if it was OK if they recorded the conversation. I replied “Certainly. I record all my phone calls as well.”
Full stop. “You mean... You’re recording this right now?” “Oh, absolutely - you don’t mind do you?” After tweaking with them, THEY claimed that ME recording was “against company policy” and they hung up right away.
Gee you'd think a learned person would recognize Weare, NH as the home of a US Supreme Court Justice Souter. Deeply enmeshed in the eminent domain ruling, such that the people up here tried to seize his home using the same arguments. Look it up.
Oh, yeah, that “rag” is the Manchester Union Leader. World Famous, just not in your little world. Once called Reagan a liberal!! That far right. Also, torpedoed Ed Muskey campaign, long ago. ( I go back that far)
Nashua, the “Gate city” (on the border with MA, not the “gay city”, get you ears cleaned out!) The problem with Nashua is illegals overflowing from MA. I can remember when signs were in English and French (french Canadians), think there are some churches that still hold services in french.
OK, Nashua= Gate city, Manchester is the “Queen City”, look it up. The “gaiety you seek is on the coast, all 18 miles of it. Try Portsmouth.
The “rag” from Nashua is the “Nashua Telegraph”, total liberal paper. Wouldn't line a birdcage with it, that would be redundant!
Before you besmirch Nashua any further, “Money” magazine called it the best city in the US to live TWICE in ten years. Had to stop identifying cities and switched to “regions after that.
Weare is “small town”, think Mayberry. NH has had some difficulty with the “wiretap” issue. Since I'm in the same county, maybe I can be on the jury and let FR what happens!
Have fun. Rohn
If there is tape of the interaction, Officer X can no longer rely on the court to take his word over that of the accused simply because he’s one of The Brotherhood..
Once an officer is faced with his own words or image on a tape, that officer can no longer lie with impunity.
It’s as simple as that.
Believe!
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