Loss of Privacy

With the anniversary of the Patriot Act upon us, it’s important to revisit and understand exactly what your rights are and how to express them. One of the most controversial of those rights in the last ten years is the right to videotape the police. In the video below, NBC Nightly News takes a look at the increasing use of video cameras being used to record the actions of the police.

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So, what are your rights when filming the police? The ACLU’s Jay Stanley explains.

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A police officer is a public servant and is supposed to uphold the law. The problem arises when the police act like the mafia and insist that you do as they say while they can do whatever they wish. No officer is above the law, yet alone 16. To think anything different is to realize that the police think themselves above the law and beyond reproach.

The unsealed indictments contained more than 1,600 criminal counts, the bulk of them misdemeanors having to do with making tickets disappear as favors for friends, relatives and others with clout. But they also outlined more serious crimes, related both to ticket-fixing and drugs, grand larceny and unrelated corruption. Four of the officers were charged with helping a man get away with assault.

Why do police officers not only think it’s okay to commit misdemeanors in fixing tickets, but that it’s also perfectly fine with helping someone get away with assault? Fixing tickets is corruption and fraud and it exposes the fact that the police believe they are above the law.

Jose R. Ramos, an officer in the 40th Precinct whose suspicious behavior spawned the protracted investigation, was accused of two dozen crimes, including attempted robbery, attempted grand larceny, transporting what he thought was heroin for drug dealers and revealing the identity of a confidential informant.

Five civilians were also arrested in the case. Among them was Officer Ramos’s wife, charged with participating with him in an insurance scam.

And how did the police departments react to hearing of these crimes?

Members of the news media were prevented by court officers from walking down the hallway where more than 100 off-duty police officers had gathered outside the courtroom.

The assembled police officers blocked cameras from filming their colleagues, in one instance grabbing lenses and shoving television camera operators backward.

The police are acting like thugs, defending their gang from anyone who is attempting to get at the truth and report the story of their corruption.

The case, troubling to many New Yorkers because of its implication that the police officers believed they deserved special treatment, is expected to have long tentacles. Scores of other officers accused of fixing tickets could face departmental charges. Some officers have already retired. Moreover, the indictments may jeopardize thousands of cases in which implicated officers are important witnesses and may be seen as untrustworthy by Bronx juries.

Federal agents earlier in the week arrested eight current and former officers on accusations that they had brought illegal firearms, slot machines and black-market cigarettes into New York City. Recently, other officers have been charged in federal court with making false arrests, and there was testimony in a trial in Brooklyn that narcotics detectives planted drugs on innocent civilians.

A lieutenant, Jennara Cobb, worked for internal affairs and leak information to other police officers. How can anyone ever trust internal affairs ever again when you can’t trust those who are supposed to keep information in internal investigations secret?

The ticket-fixing investigation began serendipitously in December 2008, after investigators began looking into accusations that Officer Ramos allowed a friend, Lee King, to sell drugs out of two barber shops named Who’s First that the officer owned in the Bronx. A wiretap was placed on Officer Ramos, which yielded conversations about fixing tickets.

The authorities said Officer Ramos provided Mr. King with an apartment, a cellphone, a car and a parking placard. He was one of the civilians arrested.

We all know that not every cop is corrupt, but when police officers defend those who are, just who are we supposed to respect in uniform and why is it justifiable that they can break the law simply because they are the police and corruption has been around for thousands of years? The levels of self-entitlement is reason enough that these officers should be fired.

On Friday morning, on the street outside the courthouse, some 350 officers massed behind barricades and brandished signs expressing sentiments like “It’s a Courtesy Not a Crime.”

When caught actually committing a crime, the police attempt to claim it’s just a courtesy and nothing for civilians to worry about. The audacity to claim, “we’re just following orders,” is an attempt to throw blame off themselves. After all, they’re just doing what they’re told, so they can’t possibly understand why people are angry at them. To them, it’s a perk of the job.

If you can’t understand that it is a crime to purposefully break the law to aid people close to you, then you will never convince the public that you are not corrupt. It’s evident that the corruption is endemic in the NYPD. The only way to root it out is to completely clean house and start over.

Those that stand idly by and do nothing should also think twice about the careers they’ve chosen as standing by and doing nothing is just as bad as helping in the corruption. Until then, whenever a citizen encounters a police officer, they will assume that they’ve run into a corrupt officer instead of one of the few good ones out there, something that never ends well.

The Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, was designed to be used against America’s enemies on naval ships. It wasn’t supposed to be used in America against its own citizens. However, we have seen time and again that weapons designed for military use often come back to be used on the streets of America. LRAD is a particularly effective weapon because it damages an entire crowd’s hearing all at once.

The major problem with device such as LRAD is that they are being used for purposes for which they were not designed and they are affecting people who have nothing to do with the protests. An English professor is suing the Pittsburgh police, claiming that her hearing was damaged by the LRAD and she was not even part of the protest.

Karen L. Piper was trying to avoid a threatened tear gas salvo as police and protesters jockeyed on the streets of Lawrenceville during the G-20 Summit two years ago, when a piercing sound went right through her body.

She felt sudden nausea, a headache and fluid flowing from one ear. Her hearing, she said Wednesday, has never been the same.

“I have trouble distinguishing sounds,” she said. “I have high-frequency hearing loss that’s consistent with the LRAD sound.”

Ms. Piper wasn’t even part of the protest. She was behind police lines and she had complied with the police when they warned her they were going to start using tear gas and tried to leave the area, however, that’s when the LRAD was used and she was struck.

According to the lawsuit [PDF], Ms. Piper’s field of interest includes studying whether or not protesters have any impact on the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. She was writing a book about this issue when the protests occurred and, naturally, went outside to film what was happening. She had been with other journalists behind police lines when the LRAD was turned on.

Pittsburgh police have used the LRAD before in 2009 during the G20 summit. It was the first time LRAD was used in the United States against its own people.

Denys Lopez Moreno says her son got into a fight, punched a kid once, then fled, which led to a police officer killing her son over the incident.

Denys Lopez Moreno sued the Northside Independent School District, of San Antonio, the district’s Chief of Police John Page and the alleged shooter, Daniel Alvarado, in Federal Court.

Lopez says her son, Derek, got into a fight with another boy at a school bus stop and punched the other boy once, in November 2010.

“Defendant, Alvarado, having responded to a call regarding a bus with a flat tire, witnessed Derek strike the other boy. He ordered Derek to ‘freeze.’ Derek hesitated and then ran from defendant Alvarado,” according to the complaint.

“In his patrol car, Alvarado began chasing Derek in the neighborhood across the street from the high school. Alvarado lost sight of the boy in the neighborhood and returned to the location of the school boy fight. At that time, he called dispatch. Dispatch recordings reflect that his supervisor directed Alvarado to stay with the other boy and to ‘not do any big search over there.’

“Ignoring his supervisor’s orders to ‘stay with the victim and get the information from him,’ Alvarado placed the second boy into the patrol car and sped into the neighborhood to search for Derek.”

Lopez says her son jumped over a fence and hid in a shed in the back yard of a house.

The police were alerted to where Lopez was, at which point, Alvarado went to the area and shot the boy who was unarmed and still hiding.

“In approximately a four (4) year period leading up to the shooting, defendant Alvarado had been reprimanded sixteen (16) times,” the complaint states. “Specifically, he had been reprimanded for insubordination and failure to follow supervisors’ directives seven (7) times. Due to his poor service record, Alvarado was suspended without pay on five (5) occasions. On May 21, 2008, Alvarado was recommended for termination by Page. Despite being recommended for termination for insubordination and for refusal to follow supervisor directives, Alvarado remained on the force without remedial training.”

Rather than fire Alvarado, the district transferred him to patrol, “an area of duty with less supervision,” according to the complaint.

If these allegations are true, then the police department is in some serious trouble for allowing a person such as Alvarado to remain in his position for so long.