Why cops fear cameras

[Pat McCotter]

Why cops fear cameras
March 25th, 2009
By Carlos Miller

The headline in today's New York Times' article sums up perfectly why so many cops feel threatened by photographers: When Evidence From Surveillance Cameras Leads to Charges Against Officers.

The article highlights several cases where police officers ended up facing criminal charges for lies exposed on video cameras, either though surveillance cameras or citizen videos. A couple of the incidents have been reported on this blog.

• New York City detective Debra Eager was indicted on three felony perjury charges after her testimony before a grand jury about a 2007 drug arrest "starkly contradicted" video surveillance of the event.
• New York City police officer Patrick Pogan, who was caught on video assaulting a bicyclist,  was indicted in December on charges of assault and filing false paperwork, and has since resigned.
• New York City narcotics officers Henry Tavarez and Stephen Anderson, were charged with official misconduct and conspiracy in January after prosecutors said they lied about a "buy and bust" operation at a bar in Queens. One of the men they had arrested, on charges of selling the officers drugs, produced video evidence showing that the officers had had no contact with him or three other suspects, prosecutors said. The charges against the men were dropped.
• New York City police officer Maurice Harrington was caught on citizen video hitting Michael Cephus 10 times with a metal baton before charging him with assault. Charges were later dropped. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office is now investigating Harrington.
• New York City police officer David London was indicted on charges of assault and filing false records after surveillance video showed he pulled a man he had accused of resisting arrest out of an elevator and beat him 18 to 20 times with a baton.

These incidents, which are hardly contained to New York City as any reader of this blog knows, demonstrate why we all need to arm ourselves with compact video cameras when leaving our homes.

It also goes to show you why a South Florida model felt compelled to bring a video camera when she went to pick up her son who had been detained by police earlier this month.

According to Bronx District Attorney Robert T. Johnson: "untruthful testimony" from law enforcement officers "strikes at the very heart of our system of justice and seriously erodes public confidence in our courts."

[Lloyd Danforth]

Oh! I thought:

[Puke]

Yep, if I was a violent, lying scum-bag I too would not like evidence showing the truth.
Lucky for the pigs they can get their politician buddies to make rules against us peons from using evidence against them.

[AntonLee]

scarier than a gun.  I love my camera.

[Russell Kanning]

and these are the cases where there was a recording and they were convicted
some of them just led to the government "dropping charges"

[thinkliberty]

and these are the cases where there was a recording and they were convicted
some of them just led to the government "dropping charges"

These cops are public servants. If I can't video record you , I don't want to pay you to be a Police officer.   If they don't want to be video taped they should go work for a private security firm and not try to make a living as a public servant.

[David]

Spot on Pat.  It goes deeper though.  Even where cops aren't lying, they know damn well they do things to people as part of their 'job' that most do not like.  The cop who gave the football player a ticket outside of the hospital that his mother in law was in dying, literally as the ticket was being written.  The cop threatened to arrest him because he kept pleading to go see her.  She died as the ticket was being written. 

[KBCraig]

Reporter faces felony charges, has photos deleted.

[Sam A. Robrin]

I was thinking of a sort of smock one could carry around to don when recording police.  The caption would read: "COPWATCH--IF YOU DO NOTHING WRONG, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT."

[Kat Kanning]

I like that idea.