Some clown assaulted by the man for wasting the presidents time with their lame photo op.Though I think this has less to do with the President that our nation’s trend toward arrogant, overbearing law enforcement in general. We’ve seen multiple incidents of people being accosted, and even arrested, by police for filming them while they’re working. This just appears to be the latest:
HONOLULU — A public access television crew complained of police mistreatment Thursday, after trying to get a picture of President Barrack Obama.Just after dawn Wednesday, the three-woman crew for a Big Island public access program called “We Are Change Hawaii” drove up to the barricade near the president’s vacation home in Kailua.Host B.J. Hampton was told they couldn’t stay, so she spoke into the video camera as she returned to the car.“OK, you know it Obama we’re OK with you, you OK with us,” Hampton said on the tape, provided to KITV. “We just wanted to get a glimpse of you but we’re moving on because this is a private street and we don’t want to make anybody nervous. Aloha!” She waved to the Secret Service agents at the barricade as she climbed back into the car.The crew was video-taping vehicle searches along the potential motorcade route as they left the neighborhood. They noticed a van behind them.At this point Sherri Kane, who describes herself as an investigative journalist, looked intothe camera and said, “Behind us we have the Secret Service following us now so this is kind of exciting.”Exciting turned to scary after they pulled into a gas station. On their video, a police officer approached the car and said, “Stay in the car. Put that camera off of me.”Producer Sativa Jones can be heard saying “OK.”The women said police vehicles and up to five officers surrounded the car, demanded IDs and registration without explanation. Then without warning an officer reached into the car and grabbed Jones’ camera.“He grabbed it out of my hand and then he slammed it on top of the car,” Jones said. She said the camera was damaged – the automatic lens cover no longer worked.
There seems to be an attitude among some in law enforcement in this country that citizens do not have a right to record their interactions with police. This is, of course, utter nonsense. Not only do citizens have every right to record the police, I think every citizen should record the police.
We have granted some rather broad authority to the police (too broad in some instances I think). They need the very thinnest of excuses to pull us over on the roads, and in the case of DUI checkpoints no excuse at all. The courts have granted them the authority to search our persons with no probable cause on the basis that we may have weapons that could harm them. If we refuse to allow them to search our vehicles they can call in a drug dog to suggest that there may be drugs in the vehicle which, of course, justifies a search.
Now, I’m not suggesting that most cops are looking for an excuse to bully you and invade your privacy. I think most cops are good people just trying to do their jobs. But good people or not, they are agents of the government with broad powers over we citizens. For the sake of transparency, if nothing else, not only can we record them doing their jobs we should.
Bad, arrogant, abusive cops should live in fear of their misdeeds being caught on someone’s cell phone camera. When a cop says “get that camera off of me” the proper response is, “No.”
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