Fraternal Order of Police Supports 15 Years in Prison For Taping Cops in Public

[Crazed Rabbit]

Taping as in recording the audio of police officers in public in the trash heap of corruption known as Illinois.

Or, how the Chicago PD aims to send a sexually assaulted woman to jail for fifteen years for recording the cops trying to stop her from filing a complaint against the cop who assaulted her.

Christopher Drew is a 60-year-old artist and teacher who wears a gray ponytail and lives on the North Side. Tiawanda Moore, 20, a former stripper, lives on the South Side and dreams of going back to school and starting a new life.

About the only thing these strangers have in common is the prospect that by spring, they could each be sent to prison for up to 15 years.

“That’s one step below attempted murder,” Mr. Drew said of their potential sentences.

The crime they are accused of is eavesdropping.

...

“Before they arrested me for it,” Ms. Moore said, “I didn’t even know there was a law about eavesdropping. I wasn’t trying to sue anybody. I just wanted somebody to know what had happened to me.”

Ms. Moore, whose trial is scheduled for Feb. 7 in Cook County Criminal Court, is accused of using her Blackberry to record two Internal Affairs investigators who spoke to her inside Police Headquarters while she filed a sexual harassment complaint last August against another police officer.

...

Mark Donahue, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said his organization “absolutely supports” the eavesdropping act as is and was relieved that the challenge had failed. Mr. Donahue added that allowing the audio recording of police officers while performing their duty “can affect how an officer does his job on the street.”

The police have realized that video and audio is exposing their criminality, and naturally they strike back by punishing those who could expose them. Like gangs trying to intimidate witnesses into silence.

A law [allowing secret recording of conversations with police] like that is likely to face fierce opposition from law enforcement organizations. Jim Pasco, executive director of the national Fraternal Order of Police, says he sees no problem with arresting people who photograph or record on-duty cops. Pasco says his main concern is that activists will tamper with videos or use clips out of context to make police officers look bad.

“There’s no chain of custody with these videos,” Pasco says. “How do you know the video hasn’t been edited? How do we know what’s in the video hasn’t been taken out of context? With dashboard cameras or police security video, the evidence is in the hands of law enforcement the entire time, so it’s admissible under the rules of evidence. That’s not the case with these cell phone videos.”

But Carlos Miller, proprietor of Photography Is Not a Crime, says that’s no reason to prevent people from taking video in the first place. “If a video has been altered or edited, that’s a pretty easy thing to discern,” he says. “That’s going to come out in an investigation. And just because a video has only been in police custody doesn’t mean it hasn’t been altered or edited. Police can edit videos too.”

Or delete them entirely. In the College Park case, a campus police surveillance camera was pointed at the area where Jack McKenna was beaten. But there’s no security video of the incident. Campus police say the camera coincidentally malfunctioned at the time of the beating. A local news station reported that the officer in charge of the campus surveillance video system is married to one of the officers later disciplined for McKenna’s beating.
...
Pasco, the head of the Fraternal Order of Police, says cases where video contradicts police testimony are rare. “You have 960,000 police officers in this country and millions of contacts between those officers and citizens,” he says. “I’ll bet you can’t name 10 incidents where a citizen video has shown a police officer to have lied on a police report.”

Carlos Miller says it would take him just a few minutes to pull 10 such incidents from his archives. He mentions the case of Fort Lauderdale police officer Jeff Overcash, who was forced to resign just a couple of days prior to our conversation. Overcash had claimed in an arrest report that a man was drunk, belligerent, and resisting arrest. Cell phone video taken by the man’s girlfriend showed the officer was wrong on all three counts.

“Letting people record police officers is an extreme and intrusive response to a problem that’s so rare it might as well not exist,” Pasco insists. “It would be like saying we should do away with DNA evidence because there’s a one-in-a-billion chance that it could be wrong. At some point, we have to put some faith and trust in our authority figures.”

Michael Allison, who has some reason to mistrust authority figures, says he won’t accept the sort of plea bargain Illinois prosecutors have offered in similar cases. “Under no circumstances,” he says. “I’ll go to prison before I plead guilty to a crime for exercising my rights. Not even a misdemeanor.”

I ask Pasco if he believes someone like Michael Allison should go to prison, potentially for the rest of his life. “I don’t know anything about that case,” Pasco replies, “but generally it sounds like a sensible law and a sensible punishment. Police officers don’t check their civil rights at the station house door.”

CR

[a completely inoffensive name]

There are trash police officers everywhere. This kind of stuff happens across all of the US. I really don't know why people put up with this ****.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Pfff.....


You need to do something about this, Rabbit. This is intolerable. People are having revolutions in Tunesia and Egypt over exactly this sort of corrupt abuse.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Few people in the US seem to care.

Reading comments on news articles online in the past, a lot of people just automatically back the police to the hilt. Seemingly an extension of the thought the police enforce the laws and therefore are good, and therefore whatever they do is right.

CR

[a completely inoffensive name]

Few people in the US seem to care.

Reading comments on news articles online in the past, a lot of people just automatically back the police to the hilt. Seemingly an extension of the thought the police enforce the laws and therefore are good, and therefore whatever they do is right.

CR

People don't care about criminals. We are supportive of the "tough on crime" motto so much that no matter what you have done, from murder to petty theft, if the cops beat you while arresting you it is probably because that "criminal scum" deserved it.

[Louis VI the Fat]

If I were a spin meister, I'd start to descibe the police forces as 'Washington's strong arm'. The police as the actual face of the corrupt lawmakers in Washington.

People hate the federal government, hate the politicians, hate government regulation. One could try to portray the police as 'a politician with a taser', strongarming you into submission to the federal government.


Hey, it's what all those agencies in Washington do. People get payed to come up with narratives such as 'Obama the socialist'. 'Tea Party against onerous governemt intrusion and taxation'. Poitical ideas are branded and sold by marketing firms as much as goods are.

[PanzerJaeger]

Unbelievable. These people are supposed to work for us.

[CrossLOPER]

I don't think that more viral mud slinging is going to help.

I've lived in fairly liberal areas, so I've rarely come across the "police are always right" or similar groups. In fact, most tend to have a negative view of the law. I'd like to say that I am non-biased in this debate, though I try to avoid dealing with police as much as possible.

The solution could lie in regional, rather than national oversight. Federal initiative is unlikely. With elections, healthcare, war, unemployment and unrest being in the news right now, I can't see this coming to national attention.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I don't think that more viral mud slinging is going to help.

I've lived in fairly liberal areas, so I've rarely come across the "police are always right" or similar groups. In fact, most tend to have a negative view of the law. I'd like to say that I am non-biased in this debate, though I try to avoid dealing with police as much as possible.

The solution could lie in regional, rather than national oversight. Federal initiative is unlikely. With elections, healthcare, war, unemployment and unrest being in the news right now, I can't see this coming to national attention.

This is true, it really does depend on your region. However, I just want to say that police forces for the most part in all of Southern California are inherently sketchy.

[Beskar]

You should send in complaints to the Independent Police Complaints Commission ...

Curses, I forgot, in America, these groups which are independent and ensure transparency and accountability are deemed as "Commie-Nazism".

[Major Robert Dump]

This will be ended at the Supreme Court, eventually.

[Megas Methuselah]

Unbelievable. These people are supposed to work for us.

Really?!

[CrossLOPER]

This will be ended at the Supreme Court, eventually.

I have no doubt of that, though it will undoubtedly take a long time and still fail to affect the root of the problem.

[Major Robert Dump]

If making media is free speech, if campaign contributions (with a swell tax deduction even!) are free speech, then there is no way in Sam Hell that recording a public official performing his/her public duty is not free speech. The law should not apply to every public official EXCEPT police. There is no valid argument for a law prohibiting the recording of cops, only knee-jerk, holier than thou poop talk. Whats especially shocking is that the cases highlighted above were recorded by at least one party involved in the conversation, so normal eavesdropping laws should not rationally apply.

Cameras are everywhere. Cops record YOU. The ball bounces both ways. But I fear with the police in the few states with these laws using wiretap and eavesdropping laws to enforce these ridiculous codes, someone somewhere is going to have to trump them with an even better exploitation of laws already on the books. I think the key is going to end up being in the slander/libel area since thats where the whole "public official is open to public scrutiny" thing arose in the first place.

I still remember the look on Deputy Brown's face when he told me he was recording my interview, and I said "yeah, me too." In Oklahoma it is legal to record ANY conversation you are a part of, regardless of the others expectation to privacy.

When someone makes a real 1st Amendment case out of this, it will end up trumping states rights.

[Fisherking]

The fact that such laws exist only shows how effective courts and government authority is at keeping people ignorant of their rights.

Convicting anyone for recording a police officer should be imposable with a jury trial.

[ajaxfetish]

Mr. Donahue added that allowing the audio recording of police officers while performing their duty “can affect how an officer does his job on the street.”

Is this somehow a bad thing?

Ajax

[Ironside]

Is this somehow a bad thing?

Ajax

Of course, can't have the police acting like decent humans can we?

That's even one of the largest points with having it legal.

[Subotan]

The UK has it as well, with the police officer who beat a man to death in the street mysteriously facing no charges whatsoever as Ian Tomlinson happened to conveniently die of a heart attack about five minutes after being smashed on the head by a truncheon, whilst a student who chucked a fire extinguisher off a building that could have, but didn't, hit a policeman has been jailed for nearly three years. Likewise the five policeman who shot a Brazillian electrician seven times in the head on the London underground were let off completely. There are also loads of examples of individuals who have died in police custody, including one man who was having a fit and was arrested for being "drunk and disorderly", before being allowed to die, unsupervised, in a police cell, without a single police conviction, along with 332 others since 1998.

[Greyblades]

God if thats what western police are like I dont want to know what police do in 3rd world countries.

[Major Robert Dump]

God if thats what western police are like I dont want to know what police do in 3rd world countries.

It's obviously not all western police. But the FOP reps statement that the problem is so rare its almost nonexistent is a vast understatement. I found it ridiculous that he compared it to the margin of error in DNA testing.

Recording police is a way keep them honest, to like with most public officials. HAHA imagine if we had to have 100% consent to record public officials? I seem to recall a certain congresswoman (the one who slapped the DC cop?)who seemed to think that was the case and she was the laughing stock of thenation for her 15 minutes.

[Fisherking]

It's obviously not all western police. But the FOP reps statement that the problem is so rare its almost nonexistent is a vast understatement. I found it ridiculous that he compared it to the margin of error in DNA testing.

Recording police is a way keep them honest, to like with most public officials. HAHA imagine if we had to have 100% consent to record public officials? I seem to recall a certain congresswoman (the one who slapped the DC cop?)who seemed to think that was the case and she was the laughing stock of thenation for her 15 minutes.

Sure just as rare as faulty DNA evidence: http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/

There are no bad cops, just bad people making them look bad by violating their rights, no doubt.

[Strike For The South]

Color me not surprised

[Crazed Rabbit]

The problem is police departments seem not only to think themselves above th law, but absolutely above any suspicion or accountability.

CR