” An 11-year-old Florida girl was suspended from school after she recorded her fifth-grade teacher threatening and bullying other students.
The evidence Brianna Cooper recorded was enough to get the teacher fired from the elementary school in Fort Pierce.
But administrators say it was also enough to earn the student a five-day suspension.
After all, they claim, the teacher, had an expectation of privacy in the classroom.
But how much privacy can a public school teacher expect in a large class filled with students, most of them carrying smart phones?
Also, even before the advent of smartphones, students have long tape recorded classroom lectures by simply placing their recorders on their desks, rarely bothering to ask the teacher for permission to record.
In this case, the teacher, whose name has not been released, threatened a student by saying, “I will drop you,” in front of several other students, so their argument that this was a private conversation is laughable.
The incident took inSamuel Gaines Academy, which is part of the St. Lucie Public School District, where officials refused to comment to the media because it is “an ongoing investigation.”
But considering they already fired the teacher and suspended the student, their ongoing investigation is nothing more than an excuse to shun the media in the hopes it goes away.”
Apparently the school continues to maintain the ex-teacher’s right to privacy because after reviewing a dozen or more articles on this incident we failed to uncover her identity . Read on
” A Texas cop placed a woman in a chokehold because she was video recording some type of police activity in the parking lot of what appears to be a fast food restaurant after she refused to provide identification.
It started when Corpus Christi Sergeant J.E. Lockhart stormed up to Lanessa Espinosa, who was standing a good distance away from the investigation, accusing her of interfering – after a nearby cop from another agency accused her of being a “jailhouse lawyer.”
“ There is a probable cause for us to be out here,” Lockhart said. “I want to know who you are, so I’m requesting your ID. You fail to ID, I’m going to take you into jail. And that’s law.”
“What’s my charge?
“You’re not being charged with anything.”
“Then I don’t have to show you my ID, sir.”
“ You’re involved in an investigation. You want to interfere with an investigation, you’re going to jail for interfering with a police officer in performance of his investigation. Do you understand that? DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?”
Espinosa understood that Lockhart was out of line, so she said she was in fear for her safety and took a step back, which was when another cop placed her in a chokehold.”
” A horrifying video has emerged showing St. Petersburg police forcing a man out of his car before pouncing on him, leaving him hospitalized with several injuries, all because the cop claimed he was in fear for his life.
At least that what he says in his report, where he wrote the following:
I exited my marked patrol cruiser and walked towards the vehicle and I noticed the driver staring at me with a blank stare as he continued revving the engine louder and louder. I thought by his actions the subject was going to attempt to hit me with his car.
The video, however, shows it was Curtis Shannon, a young man from Florida who was probably fearing for his life during the arrest.
It also shows that he remained professional as he tried to hand the cop his license and registration through a small opening after the cop pulled him over for what he claimed was erratic driving. “
” A Miami police officer pulled a car over for speeding last month, which turned out to be a plainclothes internal affairs lieutenant who shoved the door open on the officer after refusing to provide his drivers license, leading to a struggle on the side of the road that was caught on camera.
As the two were on the ground wresting, another three Miami cops who just happened to be in the area pulled up and piled on the screaming driver– only to pull off when they realized the man at the bottom was an internal affairs lieutenant from their own department.
That was when the officer Marcel Jackson, the cop who initiated the stop, was sent to his patrol car and internal affairs Lieutenant David Ramras assumed control of the situation.
Realizing the outranking officer with more than two decades of seniority over him was going to turn him into the aggressor, Jackson pulled out his cell phone and began taking photos of the officers that began arriving.
But then a cop ordered him to stop. And another cop later ordered him to delete the photos.
However, unknowing to the other officers at the time, Jackson had video recorded the entire incident with his GoPro camera, which he had attached to his dash, but shoved in between seat after realizing they were turning against him, keeping it recording to capture the ensuing conversations. The department does not use dash or body cams, so it’s not something they would expect.”
” The rapid emergence of smart phones with high definition cameras leads to consequences for law-breaking cops. Recently, law enforcement has throughout the country has been trying to pass laws that would make it illegal to film them while they’re on duty. But Apple is coming out with a new technology that would put all the power in a cop’s hands. Check out the video and the link below for more information: “
” As a drill instructor in the United States Marines, Natalie Barber learned she can get people to do what she wants by yelling at them.
And that technique probably still works for her today as a deputy with the Onslow County Sheriff’s Office.
But it didn’t work Saturday night when she tried using it on Carlos Jaramillo, a former United States Marine combat instructor and longtime Photography is Not a Crime reader.
Frustrated that he didn’t obey her unlawful orders to “put the phone down” as he was recording her from his front porch, she ended up snatching the phone and handcuffing the 35-year-old father in front of his wife and kids, then snatching his son’s phone when he tried recording the detainment, injuring the teen’s hand and damaging his phone.
But she was unable to snatch a third phone belonging to his wife, which his son picked up and began recording from behind the screened door after his own phone was snatched.
All three clips survived, proving that Barber lied in the incident report, posted below, where she accused Jaramillo of “being aggressive” and “causing commotion and distracting me from doing my job.” “
” A secretive Florida company called the Harris Corporation has been supplying federal, state and local law enforcement agencies with cell phone tracking devices that allow authorities to collect information from citizens without the annoying requirement of having to obtain a warrant.
But when PINAC correspondents Jeff Gray and Thomas Covenant pointed the cameras towards the facilities from a public sidewalk this week, company security guards called the cops.
However, when the cops arrived, they pulled up behind Gray’s vehicle, taking notice of his license plate, and drove off, speeding right past a Harris Corporation security guard trying to flag them down.”
The apparent special relationship between Harris Corporation and Florida law enforcement has not escaped the attention of the ACLU :
” The ACLU, which has been trying to pry open the details of this relationship foryears, is still hammering away, focusing on a recent case out of Florida.
As revealed in a recent opinion of a Florida appeals court, Tallahassee police used an unnamed device — almost certainly a stingray — to track a stolen cell phone to a suspect’s apartment. (The case’s association with stingrays was first pointed out by CNET’s Declan McCullagh in January). They then knocked on the door, asked permission to enter and, when the suspect’s girlfriend refused, forced their way inside, conducted a search, and arrested the suspect in his home. Police opted not to get warrants authorizing either their use of the stingray or the apartment search. Incredibly, this was apparently because they had signed a nondisclosure agreement with the company that gave them the device. The police seem to have interpreted the agreement to bar them even from revealing their use of stingrays to judges, who we usually rely on to provide oversight of police investigations.
When the suspect’s lawyer tried to ask police how they tracked the phone to his client’s house, the government refused to answer. A judge eventually forced the government to explain its conduct to the lawyer, but only after closing the courtroom to the public and sealing the transcript of the proceedings so the public and the press could never read it. “
A visit to the company website revealed no reference to the “Stingray” tracking device and as a matter of fact the search bar does an auto-correct to “string” and will not even allow the word stingray to be typed into the box . It comes as no surprise that the watchers do not like being watched .
Here is a screenshot of the company board of directors while you can read the corporation’s 2013 annual report here . They do approximately five billion dollars a year in business supplying the government with all manner of state of the art communications gear . The have fingers in every pie , from drones to stealth technology to satellites and ground troop communications .
Here is a photo of the Stingray cellphone tracking device that Harris does not manufacture … at least according to their products and services page …
… while this image shows how the non-existent “Stingray” works …
Bear in mind that this “non-existent” device is regularly being used to eavesdrop on unsuspecting cellphone users without benefit of a search warrant and so is just another means of law enforcement breaking the law and violating our rights and the Constitution . The police are even lying to judges regarding the existence and use of this tyrannical technology .
If you do not believe the “Police State” is here and growing in America you are a fool .
” At 17 years of age, Addison Mikkelson is on a mission to keep police in Topeka, Kansas honest.
But the more he tries, the more he realizes he has his work cut out for him.
As you may remember, Mikkelson was arrested for jaywalking in December when he crossed the street to try and video record cops at a convenience station.
Then in January, he was confronted by police officer who used every line in the book to try to keep him from video recording a security checkpoint in the state’s capitol building.
His latest run-in involves him video recording a Topeka police officer who had been speeding ten miles over the speed limit, then didn’t use his turn signal and didn’t come to a complete stop at a stop sign.
When the cop, whose last name is Cartmill , noticed Mikkelson video recording from his car, he gave him two citations; one for “inattentive driving,” another for having a “TV screen in view of the driver.” “
” And in the other video, which is from Palm Bay, Florida, a man walks up to a cop during some kind of traffic stop and asks for his badge number, resulting in the cop pulling out his gun.
The video is dark, so we can’t see the cop pulling out the gun, but we can hear the man saying, “you’re reaching for a gun?”
The cop tells him to back away from him, before accusing him of having made threats against police officers, which the man, Richard Petik, denies in his Youtube description.
Palm Bay, Florida ( Brevard county)Cop (car 181)pulls gun on homeowner realizing he’s being taped says I’ve threatened him…to give himself justification. ( sorry for poor quality)”
” In a chaotic video out of Maryland, a horde of cops were struggling to arrest two suspects in the middle of a road for unknown reasons when an officer storms up to the videographer standing on the side of the road and tells him, “get out of my face.”
The sergeant walks away and the videographer asks if he had committed a crime, prompting the sergeant to walk back to him, grab him arm and twist it behind his back.
“Don’t open your mouth,” the cop barks.
“I thought I had freedom of speech,” the videographer responds.
“You don’t, you just lost it,” the cop says.”
“You don’t , you just lost it .” ?
WTF ?
The sheer arrogance of today’s police is incomprehensible . Do they really believe that our rights are something that we enjoy at their discretion ? More and more the police , and the authorities in general , display a glaring lack of knowledge regarding the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights . Shame . Read more on this shameful display at PINAC .
” A New York City cop beat up and arrested a man for video recording him inside a subway station from 30 feet away Saturday night, walking up to him and getting in his face all while claiming the man was invading his personal space.
Officer Rojas, shield number 23404, then deleted the video, never mentioning the camera once in his arrest report, claiming the man had physically interfered with another arrest he was making.
But after spending 24 hours in jail, Shawn Randall Thomas managed to recover the deleted footage, proving that Rojas is not only a liar, but a bullying thug as well.
Thomas also obtained footage from another man who had recorded Rojas with his knees on Thomas’ back as he lay face down on the sidewalk just outside the sub station, seconds after Rojas had bashed his face into the pavement, busting his lip.”
If you’d like to voice your complaints about Officer Rojas’ behavior his superiors may be reached at: (718) 221-6600 attention Deputy Inspector Michael A. Davidson . Thank goodness for Recuva . The memory hole is a lot smaller for it .
” Increasingly, and openly, ordinary Americans are committing a legal act that some police nonetheless regard as among the most heinous of all offenses: it’s called contempt of cop.
It’s otherwise known as asserting your constitutional rights.
Citizens, feeling empowered, are pointing smartphones, rather than just an accusing finger, at abusive authorities.
Civil libertarians with hidden cameras are challenging the so-called “suspicion-less” roadblocks that police set up to catch lawbreakers. Motorists and others are fighting back in the courts and online against police shakedown rackets on U.S. highways and elsewhere.
Everywhere, it seems, Americans are openly challenging arbitrary behaviour by those in authority.
Furthermore, they are winning. Not since the late 1960s have those in authority, from heavy-handed cops to the federal operatives sifting metadata in super-secret intelligence installations, been exposed to so much disinfecting sunlight. “
” We’ve seen so many police abuse lawsuits settled before making it to trial where cops admit no wrongdoing while guiltily dishing out thousands of taxpayer dollars that it’s surprising to see one actually make it to trial.
And it’s absolutely flabbergasting to see it result in a cop ordered personably liable.
The cop is none other than Sterling Wheaton of the Atlantic City Police Department, whom we became familiar with back in September when he drove up to a group of five fellow officers beating on a suspect and sicced his dog on him in an incident caught on surveillance video.
Then we later learned that Wheaton was already named a defendant in three unrelated lawsuits alleging abuse over the five previous years, including one where he is accused of ripping the phone out of the hands of woman recording him, only for her never to see the phone again.”
The story starts out with a Louisiana woman (Theresa Richard) being arrested by Crowley Police Dept. officers for recording inside a police station. This was the latest in a long line of attempts by the CPD to silence and intimidate Richard after she filed a lawsuit against the department for false arrest and imprisonment stemming from an incident last year, when she (along with other members of her family) were accosted by police officers and accused of stealing a safe.
Richard’s husband and brother were confronted by cops for removing a safe from [Richard’s] burned house after the fire inspector had deemed the investigation over.
The two men had wheeled the safe over on a dolly because the house was only down the street from where Richard lived.
But police arrived and accused them of stealing the safe. Richard said they also assaulted her and ordered her back inside her home. However, they ended up leaving without arresting anybody.
Richard couldn’t get anyone at her local paper to cover the lawsuit against the CPD, so she took her story to a neighboring town’s paper. Once it was published, she purchased copies to hand out, including one which she attempted to give to the Crowley police chief. That’s when things went downhill.”
” Carlos Miller is not one to back down. As the founder and publisher of Photography is Not a Crime, a leading blog about free speech and press rights in the U.S., Miller has made it his mission to publicize examples of government overreach and the suppression of journalists’ and other news gatherers’ rights. And although he frequently finds himself taking law enforcement officials to task through a combination of original reporting, analysis and activism, Miller never expected that his work would lead to a criminal charge punishable by a decade’s imprisonment.
A veteran reporter, Miller has covered breaking news as both a full-time staff reporter and a freelancer with news organizations in several states, including several years on the police beat for the Arizona Republic. Miller founded Photography is Not a Crime after he was arrested for photographing a group of police officers while he was on assignment in Miami six years ago, an arrest for which he was ultimately vindicated. “I’m very careful of not breaking the law,” Miller told the Committee to Protect Journalists. “If I had broken a law, then I would just admit to it, ‘Okay, you got me,’ and then I would have to deal with the consequences. But if I’m not breaking the law, then I’m going to be very adamant about it. I’m going to stand up and fight it.”
The story of how Miller came to face such a serious charge — which police dropped on Nov. 15 after a massive backlash from free expressionadvocates and members ofthe press — is as convoluted as it is improbable.”
Carlos Miller and PINAC are godsends in the fight for freedom and against the police state . Please visit his website , support it if you can afford it and keep your camera ready to record and share public officials behaving badly . “Sunshine is the best disinfectant”
” An Oxnard police officer attacked a man for attempting to video record an arrest last week, twisting the man’s arm behind his back and violently shoving him against a bench after the man had placed the phone in his pocket.
The cop threatened to arrest the man for refusing to hand over his phone as “evidence” before a commanding officer intervened, telling the cop he was out of line.
The man, who goes by Angel B on Youtube, said he was allowed to leave, but he never did get the name of the officer.
And that is important if we want to at least try to hold him accountable.”
Read the post for the videographer’s written account of what transpired and if you live in or frequent the Oxnard California area please watch this video and contact PINAC if you know the identity of the offending officer . This affront to personal liberty must not go unchallenged .
” For more than eight long minutes, Raymond Rodden, who is no strangerto PINAC, was allowed to stand on a public sidewalk and video record a woman going through a sobriety test with a Tucson police officer.
Rodden continued recording even after the woman’s friend walked up to him, telling him he was not allowed to record her friend.
Rodden calmly assured her he was allowed, not even getting upset when the woman kept placing her hand in front of his lens.
A nearby police officer, of course, sided with the woman, telling him to turn off the camera.”
” Canadian photojournalist Francis Vachon was in Massachusetts earlier this month on assignment for a travel website when he came across a pair of ACLU workers asking people to sign some kind of petition in downtown Pittsfield.
Vachon lifted his camera and snapped a photo, only for the woman in the above picture to inform him that he was breaking the law.
I tell her that I am in a public place and I can do whatever I want, but then she tells me with a straight face that in Massachusetts, a law prohibit you to take a photo without first having a consent. I don’t know if she really believed that or if she was lying to me, but either way it was really weird coming from a member of the The American Civil Liberties Union
Perhaps she joined the ACLU after the civil liberties organization published its Know Your Rights: Photographers webpage along with the video below(above).”
If you like to photograph in public , and these days we all need to watching the watchers , but are not sure of your rights you can find out more about them in these articles. The Photographer’s Right is a downloadable pamphlet in PDF form provided free of charge by the law offices of Bert P Krages
” The right to take photographs in the United States is being challenged more than ever. People are being stopped, harassed, and even intimidated into handing over their personal property simply because they were taking photographs of subjects that made other people uncomfortable. Recent examples have included photographing industrial plants, bridges, buildings, trains, and bus stations. For the most part, attempts to restrict photography are based on misguided fears about the supposed dangers that unrestricted photography presents to society.
Ironically, unrestricted photography by private citizens has played an integral role in protecting the freedom, security, and well-being of all Americans. Photography in the United States has an established history of contributing to improvements in civil rights, curbing abusive child labor practices, and providing important information to crime investigators. Photography has not contributed to a decline in public safety or economic vitality in the United States. When people think back on the acts of domestic terrorism that have occurred over the last twenty years, none have depended on or even involved photography. Restrictions on photography would not have prevented any of these acts. Furthermore, the increase in people carrying small digital and cell phone cameras has resulted in the prevention of crimes and the apprehension of criminals.
As the flyer states, there are not very many legal restrictions on what can be photographed when in public view. Most attempts at restricting photography are done by lower-level security and law enforcement officials acting way beyond their authority. Note that neither the Patriot Act nor the Homeland Security Act have any provisions that restrict photography. Similarly, some businesses have a history of abusing the rights of photographers under the guise of protecting their trade secrets. These claims are almost always meritless because entities are required to keep trade secrets from public view if they want to protect them.”
The good people at Krages’ law office also provide various other resources on the subject ,including the laws for a few other places outside the US , some of which we have included below .
Don’t be intimidated when you wish to take a photo or video in a public place . Know your rights and film , film , film and in the process you will be protecting everyone else’s rights along with your own . Remember “Sunshine is the best disinfectant”
” Another Pennsylvania cop tried to convince a citizen that audio recording him in public is a felony, an act of intimidation that doesn’t carry the same weight as it did a couple of years ago when they would actually carry out arrests on these charges.
But the citizens are getting much smarter about these things, so the cops are just making themselves look stupid.”
” Less than a week after a Pennsylvania man posted a video showing a Lancaster cop refusing to take an accident report because the man insisted on his nephew recording the interaction, a story that was picked up by a national technology site as well as the local newspaper, another Lancaster police officer threatened to arrest the man on wiretapping charges, indicating a clear pattern of abuse of authority when it comes to the Constitutionally protected act of recording cops in public.
Fortunately, Paul Dejesus knew his rights and was not afraid to assert them, even after the cop gave up on the wiretapping threat and began threatening him with disorderly conduct, which is the usual catch-all charge for contempt of cop.
But Dejesus slapped that threat down by pointing out he was recording from his own yard.
” A Pennsylvania cop responding to a report of an accident refused to talk to the citizen unless his friend turned off the camera.
The citizen insisted on his friend recording, so Lancaster police officer Philip Bernot walked back to his car and drove off, refusing to take the report.
The citizen said he called the desk sergeant to complain, but was told it is a departmental policy not to be recorded.
A departmental policy has to be in writing, so will someone please call them and ask for a copy while recording the conversation?
If you live in a two-party consent state, which you can find out through this link, inform them that you’re recording and just start asking them questions. “
” Two men were viciously attacked by bouncers in a Fort Lauderdale bar over the weekend in an incident caught on video.
However, when one of the men returned to the scene to explain to police what had taken place, he was arrested on charges of assault on an officer and disorderly conduct.
That video is not available at this time, if there is even one, but there is no question the two bouncers should have been arrested as well.
In fact, there is a strong chance that Alexander Coelho, the man who was punched and kicked in the head by one of the bouncers, did not do anything remotely close to what police blame him for, going down as another example of why we should never depend on the police for anything.”
” Three police officers have been pulled from street duty for their safety in Southern California after a video of them shooting a dog dead as they arrested its owner hit the internet.
A cellphone video that had more than 3.7 million views on YouTube by Thursday morning shows the dog, named Max, being shot after scrambling out of a car’s back seat through a window and lunging at officers who had handcuffed its master.
The dog’s owner Leon Rosby had been filming a police raid in Hawthrone California, and was arrested for alleged obstruction of justice.”
” A video showing a Hawthorne police officer fatally shooting a dog is drawing outrage on the Internet, and its owner claims he was targeted because of pending claims against the department.
The shooting Sunday occurred after a standoff between police and armed robbery suspects near the intersection of 137th Street and Jefferson Avenue.
Officers handcuffed bystander Leon Rosby, 52, after he walked close to the scene with an 80-pound Rottweiler on a “long leash-line,” creating “an increasingly dangerous situation,” the Hawthorne Police Department said in statement.
The 2-year-old Rottweiler, named Max, whom Rosby had put in his car before being cuffed, then jumped out of the vehicle. Officers tried to grab the dog’s leash and then opened fire, “fearing that the attacking Rottweiler would imminently bite the officer(s),” according to the department statement.
The officers fired four shots, said Michael Gulden, an attorney for Rosby. Video footage shot by a witness and posted on YouTube shows the dog writhing on the pavement as onlookers shriek. “
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