A string of repulsive videos has been posted to YouTube in the last 24 hours of police officers violating the rights of people who choose to film them. The videos are of police encounters from California all the way to Florida.
Apparently there are still cops across the country who haven’t heard of YouTube yet. Well, these four videos will serve to enlighten them.
The first of the four videos comes from Lakeside, Colorado. A man shopping at a Wal-Mart saw police arresting a shoplifter. When the man filming, Chris Hoover, started recording this altercation with police, he had no idea that he would end up in handcuffs too.
The video starts off with two police officers wrestling a man on the ground. When they get the man in cuffs one officer realizes there is a camera. During the commotion, the officer points at the camera and says “that phone is evidence. I want it.” Hoover then says, “it’s mine.”
“So he snatched it out of my hand… I wasn’t going to resist. He grabbed my wrist, and then he put me in cuffs,” Hoover said.
“He said, ‘look, you have two choices,’” Hoover explained. “He said, ‘either I will arrest you right here, right now for obstructing justice, and then we will get a search warrant, and we will get your phone, and we will get that piece of video as police evidence.’”
Arrogantly enough, the police stand by their actions captured on film in the video below.
The second video is an infuriating instance that happened in California.
Several teens were parked on the side of a residential road in Orange County. Orange County deputy Valdez claimed that the teenagers in their vehicle were suspicious, and they may be gang members. So, for their “safety,” he and another deputy decided to harass them.
The YouTube description of the video is as follows:
I was in front of my house on my own drive way when two Orange County police officers walked up and started to harass my friends and I. I told the officers my rights as I was recording. I was later placed in handcuffs and harassed until I told them my rights . Know your rights!!
When the teen began filming the officer tried to snatch the phone, but was too slow. He then pulled the teen from the car and cuffed him.
According to PINAC, one of the teens admitted to possessing marijuana, but apparently had a medical marijuana card.
The third video comes from Multnomah County, Oregon. Several young men were being investigated for allegedly spray-painting a fence. One of the men being arrested decided to film the incident.
The Multnomah County sheriff’s deputy apparently did not like being filmed, so he slapped the phone out of the man’s hand.
This would-be tyrant’s temper tantrum was captured in the video below.
The fourth video is from Pinellas County, Florida. You may remember the Pinellas County sheriff’s department from last month when Sheriff Gualtieri, threatened to illegally arrest citizens if they tried to exercise their constitutional rights.
Apparently arresting people for exercising their constitutional rights is a policy of the entire department.
A Pinellas County man was arrested for obstruction after he decided to film a traffic stop in front of his house. He was asking the people whose car was being searched if they gave consent when he got the attention of a deputy on a power trip.
The deputy tells the man to move back, and we can tell from the video that the person complies. He continues to walk backwards as the deputy threatens him with arrest. Apparently the man filming wasn’t complying fast enough, and the deputy arrested him.
According to the uploader, the officer lied in his report to get the obstruction charge.
It is important to note that these four videos only deal with the 1st Amendment violations caught on film in the last several days.
Also caught on film this week was the public execution of a man who ran from police with his hands up.
Police were caught on film ignoring a stabbing victim who lay bleeding out on the ground. They were seemingly more interested in arresting his family members than saving his life.
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