Tag Archives: police

Occupy Wall Street Protest Video by Django’s Ghost

by Cimaxion

Django’s Ghost has posted a stirring and rather enthralling video compilation of the ongoing and exploding phenomenon known as Occupy Wall Street. The film is set to several rock & roll protest songs and it gets across the feelings of rising anger and the public’s growing awareness that it can in fact stop the corporate takeover of the United States.

The protesters seem to me to be a rather intelligent and well-behaved crowd. Some of the New York police however appear to be overeager. Cops always end up on the wrong side of these things. They never get it right. Many of them seem to be pretty easy-going, but there are always the brutes that come stomping in and make a mess of things.

I love the way the crowd is so heavily armed with photographic equipment. The protesters are their own journalists!

This movement is spreading quickly. It’s come to Los Angeles at City Hall and is springing up in other cities as well. People are angry about the corporate takeover of their country and their Supreme Court. Losing a President to corporate interests is one thing. That is rather expected. Obama jerked us all around and then turned into a cheeseball from General Motors. But when our Supreme Court gets bought out and turns into a boardroom… well, that is a terrifying problem. That is just about the end of the line. A democracy cannot survive the corruption of the judicial branch.

Thanks to Marc Campbell at Dangerous Minds.
 

PEOPLE ARE THE PRESS: Federal Court Rules it is Not Illegal to Film Police or Government Officials

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

In what I consider the most important recent news event, the Federal First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that citizens have the legal right to film police while they are performing their public duties.

The case involved attorney Simon Glik in Boston who observed an arrest in the Boston Common that he thought was abusive.  So he flipped out his cellphone camera and filmed the cops.  They arrested him.

The Court has responded to this – one of the increasing number of cases nationwide in which cops try to take cameras from or arrest citizens who try to record them during arrests – by affirming a lower court ruling in Glik’s favor.  In this case, as in most similar cases, the police attempted to charge someone with ‘wiretapping’ because the video cameras are ‘secretly’ recording audio.  Of course any court recognizes that only a simpleton would associate using a video camera with wiretapping.

The Court stated:

The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles [of protected First Amendment activity]. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting the free discussion of governmental affairs.

Episodes of police misconduct, brutality and murder are increasing nationwide. Police powers are growing, government agencies are eavesdropping on Americans without warrants, personal data is being pulled into government databases, and security paranoia is reaching nearly hysterical levels. The fact is that the police are committing crimes – including murder – at an alarming rate. Cops are using violence against innocent demonstrators. They are killing helpless people in the subways of Oakland. They are beating homeless people to death in Fullerton, California. They are raiding political activist groups before and during public events on the chance that these groups might be planning something illegal. Filming these cops is absolutely the least that citizens should be doing.

The Court has made it abundantly clear that citizens have always had the legal right to use video cameras on the police and that arrests of citizens in these circumstances is illegal.  That is why all cases nationwide that police forces have brought against people with video cameras have been thrown out of court.

It should now be clear that police departments arresting people for filming are liable in civil courts.

The Court went further than its decision on filming police activities. It also stated that citizens recording police or government officials have the same legal protections afforded to the press. In other words: citizens are journalists.

The Court said:

Moreover, changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw. The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status.

There is no legal definition of or requirement for being a journalist.  In fact, much of CNN’s video coverage comes from ‘iReporters’ who are citizen journalists filming events around the world and sending in their footage via the CNN web site.  Those people are fully protected by all the same laws that protect journalists and their sources.

I think this is a long-overdue and definitive ruling that clarifies legally what has been obvious all along.  People always have the right to film their police officers doing the public duties that public monies pay for.

Finally, and most important: People Are the Press.

 

Police in Fullerton, California Commit Organized Brutal Murder of Homeless Man

by Cimaxion | 7 Comments

A group of at least six Fullerton, California police officers brutally beat an ill homeless man to death on July 5th, according to witnesses and news reports. The story is exploding across the national news media because of some video that shows witnesses at the scene of the beating talking about what they saw moments before. They describe a group of officers stomping and beating a helpless Kelly Thomas to death as he screamed for help.  Here is an extremely graphic close up picture of what these police did to the head of their victim.  This was an extremely brutal and extended crime in which a human being was beaten into a pulp by sociopathic murderers.

When a small police force in a small Southern California city can put six murderous cops on scene at one time you know you have a real statistical problem. In other words, you can bet your life that you have a police department that is a very clear and present threat to the lives of the citizens.

The FBI has now joined the investigation and will probably extend its inquiries deep inside the Fullerton department.  What they will find there one can already guess at.

The story has reached the national news. I saw Brian Williams do a story on it tonight. In that story, the mayor of Fullerton says he thinks people should calm down because things are reaching almost ‘lynch mob’ proportions. Oh yuh think? Really? And how does the mayor of Fullerton think people should react to a group of brutal thug cops murdering a helpless man? Does he think they should allow a Fullerton court to handle the situation? Cops murder people and nothing happens. It’s common. Courts have serious problems handling cops who murder. They simply can’t deal with the problem.

In Syria, government forces – cops and soldiers – are shooting and beating people to death every day. We have no problem when the Syrian people pick up guns and shoot those cops. Why should we object to the citizens of Fullerton fighting back against an armed force of violent murderers? There’s absolutely no reason to trust a cop in Fullerton. The city is just a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles, right off an exit on the Five freeway. You certainly don’t want to get pulled over by these guys. I’d approach a Fullerton cop with extreme caution and preferably with a gun in my hand (I obviously mean that as a general attitude and not as an actual course of action!).

Shooting cops who are murdering someone is legal, by the way. Another cop can do it. A citizen can do it. It may be a very risky proposition and I would certainly not recommend it, but it is just as legal as shooting a regular citizen if one sees that a murder is imminent. Quite simply, it is always legal to prevent a murder through any means necessary.  It would have been perfectly legal for someone to have walked up and done something to those Fullerton cops while they were committing murder.  Remember that.  It’s actually a prediction.

For now, we have citizens using the power of the cell phone camera to shoot cops who are committing crimes and atrocities. Those cameras in the hands of people everywhere need to roll every time someone sees a cop beating or killing someone. But beyond that, there is a serious argument to be made for armed confrontation against a police force that is fielding dangerous killers. After all, you cannot deny the numbers. If multiple squad cars in Fullerton pull up to a scene and the accumulated force of cops on hand decide to beat a man to death, then you can safely assume that those cops represent the fundamental picture of that police force. At that point, the Fullerton police force becomes an armed group occupying a city. They can and should be resisted by every means available, legal and physical. People will start killing killer cops. It’s inevitable in a world where a cop can shoot a bullet through the back of an unarmed man on a subway platform in Oakland and get off in court with a relatively minor conviction. Cops carry guns. They are dangerous people. Their training is suspect. Their histories are often suspect. They become cops for reasons other than wanting to protect people. They should not be viewed with the respect generally afforded to them. They should be viewed with suspicion. They should be treated as potential threats.

Cops who kill are actually pretty easy to identify and find. They are also easy to destroy financially. The cops on scene at the killing on July 5th should spend the rest of their lives in jail and should lose their homes, their finances and everything else they may hold dear. Pro bono legal services to such ends should be provided to the family of the dead man by major law firms. One way or another, killer cops must be destroyed.

So, pigs of Fullerton, squeal for the camera!

NYPD Moron Gives Bicyclist Ticket for Not Riding in Bike Lane

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

Casey Neistat is a New York bicyclist who got a ticket from some moronic New York City police officer who felt that Casey should ride in the bike lane… no matter what. So the camera-wielding rider made a video about the whole affair and why the cop was totally wrong. But look at this drooling goober hired by New York to wear a uniform. If this is the standard of police intelligence in good old NY, then god help those poor island dwellers! A bicyclist can be killed by staying in a bike lane, as this video so clearly illustrates. You do not have to stay inside a bike lane. Bikes are legally entitled to occupy traffic lanes if the rider determines that to be the safest course.

Arizona State Government Starts Terror Campaign Against Non-Whites

by Editor | 16 Comments

Cancel your trip to the Grand Canyon.  In fact, if you’re in Arizona right now, get the hell out as quickly as you can.  The state of Arizona has passed a measure, signed into law by its governor, Jan Brewer, that requires police to determine the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally.  All immigrants will be required to carry their proof of legal immigration on their person at all times.  This means that a police officer standing on a street corner drinking a cup of coffee can spot a person across the street and decide, based on anything the officer chooses (skin tone, for example) that the person might be an illegal immigrant.  The officer can then walk across the street, say he suspects the person of ‘loitering,’ and demand proof of their legal status in the United States.  If that person cannot produce the paperwork, the officer can arrest them.  The loitering thing is key because the Arizona law supposedly requires that the police be investigating some possible infraction before they can ask for proof of legal immigration.  But a cop can find almost any reason to suspect almost anyone of some minor infraction like ‘loitering.’  I loiter all the time.

Arizona, by enacting such a law, has aligned itself with similar laws in Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union, apartheid South Africa, and the post-slavery American South which used ‘vagrancy’ laws to arrest black people who could not prove that they were employed.  Apparently, the majority of residents in Arizona approve of the new law.  By definition, Arizona becomes Bigot Land.  One of the most important protections offered by a free democracy is the protection against unreasonable search and seizure.  No police officer anywhere in the United States can simply demand that a person produce papers proving their legal status.  But they can in Arizona as soon as this law goes into effect sometime in the next few months.

Nobel Peace Prize winner, Desmond Tutu says:

I am saddened today at the prospect of a young Hispanic immigrant in Arizona going to the grocery store and forgetting to bring her passport and immigration documents with her. I cannot be dispassionate about the fact that the very act of her being in the grocery store will soon be a crime in the state she lives in. Or that, should a policeman hear her accent and form a “reasonable suspicion” that she is an illegal immigrant, she can — and will — be taken into custody until someone sorts it out, while her children are at home waiting for their dinner.

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Message to Pittsburgh Police: We’re All With The Press

by Editor

The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania police have arrested a 41-year-old man for using Twitter to post messages about police movements during the recent protests surrounding the G20 Summit.  Also, FBI agents entered the man’s home in New York City and confiscated computer equipment.  The man is charged with directing others to avoid apprehension.  The police declared the entire protest in Pittsburgh illegal, giving themselves the apparent freedom to charge anyone who helps the protesters.  But anyone could have read the Twitter postings anywhere in the world.  It was a public announcement about what the police were doing in plain sight.  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has stated that if this were happening in Iran or China, it would be condemned as a human rights violation.  It most certainly is.

Police movements are public knowledge.  Posting to Twitter about the whereabouts of police during a protest is simply the publication of public information.  There is absolutely nothing illegal about it.  If I stand on a street corner with my cell phone and Twitter about the movements of police cars, I’d be doing exactly what this man was arrested for.  If those cars happened to be on their way to intercept a criminal, could the police come and arrest me for aiding that criminal?

The problem of police brutality and illegal actions against protesters is wildly out of control all over the nation.  In Los Angeles you have the police violently attacking a peaceful gathering of immigration protesters in MacArthur Park.  The riot police beat up television journalists and smashed their cameras.  Later, the department had to pay over fourteen million dollars to private citizens and has even more to pay to the journalists they attacked.  In Minneapolis the police burst into a home containing the organizers of a peaceful group planning protests for the Republican National Convention.  The police held the organizers at gunpoint, tied-up on the floor for hours, just to keep them away from the convention. These were young highly-educated people with attorneys present on scene being held at gunpoint by a police force with no other intention than to prevent the exercise of their right to free speech and public assembly.

Look at this video from the G20 protests in Pittsburgh.  Pay special attention during the arrest and assault on some protesters at the 5 minute and 12 second mark.  What do you see?  It’s a press photographer clearly wearing some sort of credential on his chest.  He saunters through the melee without concern.  He’s carrying a camera.  The cops ignore him because he’s got that press credential. Then at the 6 minute and 15 second mark you hear a cop arresting someone and he says: ‘You’re with the press?  Who are you with?’  Presumably, he’s going to let a member of the press go instead of arresting him.

I think this video is fascinating because it shows who the free press really is.  Look at what the protesters are doing. They are using cameras against the police. Everywhere you look someone is trying to point a camera at the police.  The press is the people with all the cameras pointed at the cops.  The credentialed press photographer is walking around with his credential.  He’s filming nothing at a moment when protesters are being abused, beaten with sticks, and pepper sprayed.  The press is the other people.  The ones with the cameras who are being chased and beaten.  That’s the press.  We are the press.  We film bovine imbeciles with sticks and helmets and we upload our movies to YouTube.  There’s always something to film when a cop’s got a stick in his hand.  Everywhere you turn someone with a camera is catching some jackass cop murdering or beating someone.  It’s a war.  Cameras against cops.  And the big one hasn’t hit yet.  It’s coming.  Something will snap and when it does it will be covered by the free press on the ground live in the struggle right up close in a cop’s face.

The fact of the matter is that most of these G20 protesters are highly educated literate people. They are vastly more intelligent than the cops. The cops actually know that. It irritates them and they are itching to beat people up.  It’s universal to all police forces.  When you get a crowd of these people in body armor with sticks and guns you have an extremely volatile situation on your hands.  The masks confine the cops’ breathing and vision, increasing anxiety and tension.  These cops don’t think well and they are far more dangerous than the crowds they are trying to control.  I’m all for sticking cameras in their faces.  And Twittering about their movements.  It’s legal.  It’s free speech and it’s protected.

And yessir, Mr. Pittsburgh cop, we’re with the press.

We’re All With The Press.