But it is okay for them to have Big Brother cameras at every intersection, huh?
Only in Massachusetts!!!
"Police fight cellphone recordings; Witnesses taking audio of officers arrested, charged with illegal surveillance" by Daniel Rowinski, New England Center For Investigative Reporting | January 12, 2010
Yeah, I guess they wouldn't want you to see things like this.
Simon Glik, a lawyer, was walking down Tremont Street in Boston when he saw three police officers struggling to extract a plastic bag from a teenager’s mouth. Thinking their force seemed excessive for a drug arrest, Glik pulled out his cellphone and began recording.
Within minutes, Glik said, he was in handcuffs.
“One of the officers asked me whether my phone had audio recording capabilities,’’ Glik, 33, said recently of the incident, which took place in October 2007. Glik acknowledged that it did, and then, he said, “my phone was seized, and I was arrested.’’
The charge? Illegal electronic surveillance.
Un-flipping-real!!!
That from a spying, untrustworthy, and law-breaking government!
Jon Surmacz, 34, experienced a similar situation. Thinking that Boston police officers were unnecessarily rough while breaking up a holiday party in Brighton he was attending in December 2008, he took out his cellphone and began recording.
So the BRUTALITY HAPPENS a LOT MORE than you would think.
For the record, readers, I was worked over pretty good one night after a DUI.
Never did anything about it; who is going to believe the citizen over the cop in AmeriKa?
Police confronted Surmacz, a webmaster at Boston University. He was arrested and, like Glik, charged with illegal surveillance.
There are no hard statistics for video recording arrests. But the experiences of Surmacz and Glik highlight what civil libertarians call a troubling misuse of the state’s wiretapping law to stifle the kind of street-level oversight that cellphone and video technology make possible.
Seems that the authorities are ALWAYS INVOLVED in troubling misuses of law, doesn't it?
“The police apparently do not want witnesses to what they do in public,’’ said Sarah Wunsch, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, who helped to get the criminal charges against Surmacz dismissed.
Boston police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll rejected the notion that police are abusing the law to block citizen oversight, saying the department trains officers about the wiretap law. “If an individual is inappropriately interfering with an arrest that could cause harm to an officer or another individual, an officer’s primary responsibility is to ensure the safety of the situation,’’ she said.
By standing there running a recording?
In 1968, Massachusetts became a “two-party’’ consent state, one of 12 currently in the country. Two-party consent means that all parties to a conversation must agree to be recorded on a telephone or other audio device; otherwise, the recording of conversation is illegal. The law, intended to protect the privacy rights of individuals, appears to have been triggered by a series of high-profile cases involving private detectives who were recording people without their consent.
In arresting people such as Glik and Surmacz, police are saying that they have not consented to being recorded, that their privacy rights have therefore been violated, and that the citizen action was criminal.
“The statute has been misconstrued by Boston police,’’ said June Jensen, the lawyer who represented Glik and succeeded in getting his charges dismissed. The law, she said, does not prohibit public recording of anyone. “You could go to the Boston Common and snap pictures and record if you want; you can do that.’’
Ever since the police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991 was videotaped, and with the advent of media-sharing websites like Facebook and YouTube, the practice of openly recording police activity has become commonplace.
And the GENIE is NOT going back into the bottle, sorry, coppers!
But in Massachusetts and other states, the arrests of street videographers, whether they use cellphones or other video technology, offers a dramatic illustration of the collision between new technology and policing practices.
“Police are not used to ceding power, and these tools are forcing them to cede power,’’ said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Ardia said the proliferation of cellphone and other technology has equipped people to record actions in public. “As a society, we should be asking ourselves whether we want to make that into a criminal activity,’’ he said.
In Pennsylvania, another two-party state, individuals using cellphones to record police activities have also ended up in police custody.
But one Pennsylvania jurisdiction has reaffirmed individuals’ right to videotape in public....
Massachusetts has seen several cases in which civilians were charged criminally with violating the state’s electronic surveillance law for recording police, including a case that was reviewed by the Supreme Judicial Court.
Michael Hyde, a 31-year-old musician, began secretly recording police after he was stopped in Abington in late 1998 and the encounter turned testy. He then used the recording as the basis for a harassment complaint. The police, in turn, charged Hyde with illegal wiretapping. Focusing on the secret nature of the recording, the SJC upheld the conviction in 2001.
“Secret tape recording by private individuals has been unequivocally banned, and, unless and until the Legislature changes the statute, what was done here cannot be done lawfully,’’ the SJC ruled in a 4-to-2 decision.
In a sharply worded dissent, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall criticized the majority view of a law that, in effect, punished citizen watchdogs and allowed police officers to conceal possible misconduct behind a “cloak of privacy.’’
WTF is WRONG with you, Massachusetts?
“Citizens have a particularly important role to play when the official conduct at issue is that of the police,’’ Marshall wrote. “Their role cannot be performed if citizens must fear criminal reprisals when they seek to hold government officials responsible by recording, secretly recording on occasion, an interaction between a citizen and a police officer.’’
Since that ruling, the outcome of Massachusetts criminal cases involving the recording of police by citizens has turned mainly on this question of secret vs. public recording.
Jeffrey Manzelli, 46, a Cambridge sound engineer, was convicted of illegal wiretapping and disorderly conduct for recording MBTA police at an antiwar rally on Boston Common in 2002.
Yeah, the WAR LIES are GREAT, huh?
Though he said he had openly recorded the officer, his conviction was upheld in 2007 on the grounds that he had made the recording using a microphone hidden in the sleeve of his jacket.
Okay, so when the FBI frames their patsies with secret recordings, blah, blah, blah, that all gets tossed, right? RIGHT?
Peter Lowney, 39, a political activist from Newton, was convicted of illegal wiretapping in 2007 after Boston University police accused him of hiding a camera in his coat during a protest on Commonwealth Avenue.
Sensing a PATTERN, here?
Charges of illegal wiretapping against documentary filmmaker and citizen journalist Emily Peyton were not prosecuted, however, because she had openly videotaped police arresting an antiwar protester in December 2007 at a Greenfield grocery store plaza, first from the parking lot and then from her car. Likewise with Simon Glik and Jon Surmacz; their cases were eventually dismissed, a key factor being the open way they had used their cellphones.
Yes, that was a big flap in town.
Surmacz said he never thought that using his cellphone to record police in public might be a crime. “One of the reasons I got my phone out . . . was from going to YouTube where there are dozens of videos of things like this,’’ said Surmacz, a webmaster at BU who is also a part-time producer at Boston.com.
It took five months for Surmacz, with the ACLU, to get the charges of illegal wiretapping and disorderly conduct dismissed. Surmacz said he would do it again.
“Because I didn’t do anything wrong,’’ he said. “Had I recorded an officer saving someone’s life, I almost guarantee you that they wouldn’t have come up to me and say, ‘Hey, you just recorded me saving that person’s life. You’re under arrest.’ ’’
Right! They would have wanted to use it as a PR piece!
Problem was they arrested the wrong guy:
"Man arrested for taping police sues city, officers; Case challenges wiretap statute" by John M. Guilfoil, Globe Staff | February 2, 2010
Oh, so NOW TAXPAYERS are going to be FORCED TO PAY for police misconduct as we are already bleeding red ink around here?
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts filed a civil rights lawsuit yesterday against the City of Boston and three Boston police officers on behalf of a man who was arrested for video recording police officers making an arrest near Boston Common in 2007.
Simon Glick, 33, has said he was walking on Tremont Street on Oct. 1, 2007, when he saw three police officers making an arrest. He heard another man apparently yelling, “You are hurting him, stop.’’ Glick, thinking that police might have been using excessive force, pulled out his cellphone and began to record the arrest.
When police noticed Glick was recording video and audio instead of just snapping pictures, they arrested him for allegedly violating the state’s wiretapping law, which outlaws secret audio recordings.
The criminal case was later dismissed. Now, Glick - a criminal defense attorney, according to his lawyer - is suing the city and the officers who arrested him....
Yeah, they ARRESTED the WRONG GUY!!
“Just because it’s upsetting to the police officers and they’re unhappy about being recorded, doesn’t allow them to make an arrest,’’ said Howard Friedman, an attorney working with the ACLU to represent Glick. “If a person is standing, as Mr. Glick was, many feet away and simply recording, that’s not a crime, even if the officers don’t like being recorded.’’
--more--"Of course, it is okay to record some stuff: Send photo, get action; Residents use iPhone to report street-level woes
Maybe someone should have recorded this:
"Calls for change after trial shows police misconduct" by Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | February 6, 2010
REVERE - The trial of a gang member who killed a Revere police officer ended yesterday, when a Suffolk Superior Court judge sentenced him to life in prison. But the deeper issues that the case exposed - of drunken police officers exchanging gunfire and epithets with gang members behind a local high school - continue to reverberate in this working-class city.
Several city councilors said they want to meet with the police chief to discuss the police misconduct described in the trial. And residents interviewed in coffee shops and on the street said they believe the department should work to regain the public’s trust.
“It’s really taken us all aback,’’ said Councilor Robert J. Haas Jr. “It’s really a black eye for the community, no question.’’
Yesterday, Judge Patrick F. Brady imposed the mandatory life sentence on Robert Iacoviello Jr., 22, who had been convicted Tuesday of second-degree murder in the killing of a Revere police Officer Daniel Talbot, 30. Iacoviello will be eligible for parole in 15 years.
“Every decision we make, whether it be as irresponsible as drinking in public or as drastic as grabbing a gun because of a verbal altercation, affects everyone around us,’’ Paul Talbot, Daniel Talbot’s younger brother, told Brady before the sentencing as part of a victim impact statement. “Like the Iacoviellos, who instead of looking forward to grandkids and a life with their son, now will spend the next 15 to 25 years visiting their son behind bars. . . . Or me. When I need advice from my big brother, I have to go talk to a stone with his name on it.’’
*********************************
According to testimony in the trial, the shooting occurred behind Revere High School, where Talbot, his fiancee, and three other officers went to drink beer. Iacoviello, a reputed gang member, shot Talbot after the officer taunted a fellow gang member, using gang slurs and epithets, according to witnesses.
The trial raised questions about the professionalism of officers in the Revere Police Department.
It was disclosed that in addition to public drinking, at one point that night one of the officers with Talbot was drinking a beer as he drove.
Yeah, those laws are only for us and the dead Ken Howe.
The defense raised questions about how well police secured the scene of the murder. And Police Chief Terence Reardon, who was subpoenaed as a witness for the defense, acknowledged giving Talbot’s gun to another officer and then misidentifying that officer in a report he wrote several months later.
Translation: they tried to cover it up like they always do.
Councilors said they would like to hold a closed session with Reardon to ask about the trial and the department. Several councilors said they want a closed session because defense attorneys have said they will appeal the verdicts and an open hearing could compromise the case.
“I’m not looking for a witch hunt,’’ said Council President Anthony T. Zambuto. “I’m not looking to micromanage the department either. But it’s never a bad thing to sit down with those involved and to find out what we have in place to prevent something like this from ever happening again.’’
*************************
People who live and work in Revere said the department needs to do better.
On Broadway, a bustling commercial strip of shops and restaurants, Vivanh Dinh, 23, a site coordinator for an after-school program in the city, said many parents he talks are appalled by the officers’ behavior that night.
“It’s just something that police shouldn’t be doing, public drinking,’’ Dinh said. “It’s something that a role model for the community shouldn’t be doing.’’
And Joe Demattio, 47, interviewed as he finished his breakfast at the Bagel Bin, said the Revere police “have a little repair work to do.’’
But Tony Barbaro, 73, who sat next to Demattio, said it is time to move on.
“Let’s just get beyond it,’’ he said.
Easy for him to say; his relative isn't dead or in prison.
I'm no help, either.
FLASHBACK:
"Slain officer’s fiancee recalls drunken taunting by victim; Incident preceded shooting near high school baseball field" by John R. Ellement and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff | January 9, 2010
The fiancee of a slain off-duty Revere police officer described for the first time yesterday in court the drunken taunting that preceded the fatal shooting near a high school baseball field.
Daniel Talbot and three other off-duty but armed police officers had been drinking in a restaurant bar until 1 a.m. on Sept. 29, 2007, but they wanted more and lugged beers to the bleachers behind Talbot’s alma mater, Revere High School, accompanied by his fiancee, Constance Bethell.
WTF? What are they 16-years old?
“I didn’t understand why we had to go to the field,’’ Bethell testified yesterday in Suffolk Superior Court. “We had a house. We were adults, but I was overruled.’’
Bethell told the jury that her 30-year-old fiance was “not sober’’ that morning and initiated the dispute by loudly mocking and taunting Derek Lodie, an alleged gang member who was then 17, as he walked by. The incident led to a confrontation between Talbot and Lodie, and the officer was shot soon afterward. Robert Iacoviello Jr., an alleged fellow gang member, is accused of the shooting. Bethell also described holding Talbot’s hand while he gasped for breath as he lay dying from a gunshot wound to the head....
I'm sorry, but the a**hole sort of got what he deserved, didn't he?
BULLIES never seem to LEARN!!!!!!
--more--"
Related: Man is convicted in death of officer
Update: Police exodus stirring concern
Good.
