Cop Block

Here is a video I took of 3 cops trying to intimidate me into self-censorship in order to cover up crimes of Federal District Judge A. Howard Matz

Needless to say I blocked them.
http://www.thecopwhisperer.com
http://www.killercop.com

This post was submitted using CopBlock.org’s Submission Tab. Feel free to share your thoughts, encounters or tactics on police issues with CopBlock.org readers. It’s easy, free and could help inspire others to come forward.

This video was posted on Filming Cops – the Facebook page – and shows several police officers (the youtube video claims these are Bronx cops) hitting a man who’s clearly outnumbered.

If you have more details on this story please send an update to CopBlock.org via the submission tab. We’ll post it accordingly, thanks.

This cop stopped at the DMV for awhile this afternoon. The location is just inside the city limits. It appeared to me that his only business was to laugh and chat with the front desk gal.

fromjanesville2waukesha

Always film the police, for your safety and theirs. Then send the video to CopBlock.org via the submission tab.

One of the most common statements I hear about CopBlocking (monitoring the police) is, “we don’t have enough people.” If that is the case where you live, considering moving to the Shire (aka New Hampshire). Liberty minded folks are moving here daily to live better lives, one where the government isn’t always sticking its nose in thier business, and CopBlocking is a major part of that. Check out these two CopBlocking videos from local Shire residents Ian and Derrick.

By Ian Freeman, via FreeKeene.com

Nemi is pulled over on the way back from Concord by a statie for her outdated inspection sticker. The statie attempts what is becoming a common intimidation tactic: claiming to a cameraman he’ll be arrested if recording continues. I continue anyway and he backs down from the threat, just like happened to Ademo and Luthor & Derrickr ecently in other incidents.

 

By Derrick Freeman, via LiveFreeorDance.com

I was pulled over while driving 50 mph in a 55 mph zone. The officer alleges I was going 72. That is impossible because I was stuck behind a slow-moving pickup truck for about 20 miles, and that truck was keeping me slowed at a pace of 50 mph.

I was driving from Keene to Manchester with Luthor Kingsley of the Shire. We were about halfway there when I passed a cop. Luthor pointed him out; he was hiding on the side of the highway with his lights off. I checked my speed and was relieved to notice that I was going 50mph. I almost certainly would have been going faster if not for the truck in front of me holding me up in the single lane of traffic. Then I saw the blue lights behind me. I fired up my camera and asked Luthor to record.

The cop told me I couldn’t see the radar, that Luthor had to turn off the audio on the camera, that Luthor had to give the cop his ID, and that it was illegal wiretapping to record audio of him without his permission. We gave him a bit of a schooling in the law with polite refusal to comply with his demands. He returned with a ticket for $103.33.

I’ll be seeing him in court. I would rather be left alone. I don’t enjoy giving up my valuable time and energy and resources to defend myself against being extorted by agents of the state. I’ve already spent about 24 hours in filming, editing, researching law, and posting about this event. Now I’ll have a day in court, travel expenses, plus the opportunity costs of a day’s work in order to attend court, or I will have a warrant out for my arrest. Then, in court, if I am found guilty, I will likely face 2 days in jail to pay off the fine at $50 a day.

Some stranger with a badge is incentivized by a quota system to spend his time pulling over people like me who haven’t victimized anyone. For him, it’s 15 minutes and he can wash his hands of the situation and collect his paycheck–unless someone takes the issue to court rather than paying the fine. In that case, he is rewarded for his victimization by being paid time and a half for his appearance in court. The taxpayers of his town will be forced to foot the bill for that expense. As a result of his actions, I could be put in a cage (again at the expense of the taxpayer) for what was a non-situation.

The absurdity makes my head spin. If you’d like to help me meet expenses to handle this case successfully and document the process with video, please donate at LiveFreeOrDance.com

By Ian Freeman, blogger at FreeKeene.com:

Back in 2010, on a visit to the NH Attorney Genital’s office, we met “investigator” Dick Tracy. More recently, Copblock’s Ademo and I were in the area so we dropped in again with some more questions, this time meeting “investigator” James Brown. Neither man was interested in speaking on the record and Brown attempted to intimidate us into not recording. We did not stop. Here’s what happened:

Remember, it is supposed to be your right to record government bureaucrats in public places. Though, we know they don’t care about what your rights are, so there’s always a chance you could be aggressed against and caged. Sometimes it can be scary when they threaten you, but if you have backup also willing to not back down, your odds of walking away without being caged increase.

Just say NO – to demands you quit recording them.

I was on my way home from work when I noticed some police activity. So I stopped and got out my camera. It wasn’t long after I started recording that I drew the undivided attention of Deputy Krow of the Clay County Sheriff’s office. Deputy Krow seems to be genuinely puzzled by the concept of a citizen recording public officials performing their jobs. Deputy Krow demands some ID and I decline. At that point, in Deputy Krow’s mind, I have committed CONTEMPT OF COP! Deputy Krow provides us with some hilarious content! Enjoy.

HONORYOUROATH

This article was cross-posted at Massachusetts Cop Block

In October of last year, UMass Lowell student Brendan Brown was threatened by a campus police officer for video-recording a group of police officers who were responding to a fight that had taken place outside an apartment. Brown was approached by UMass Lowell Police Officer Noberto Melendez who told him to “Shut that fucking thing off before I slap you.” Brown decided he’d rather not be arrested, so he left the area, but he did upload his video to YouTube and later shared it on my Facebook wall.

After I saw the video, I brought it to the attention of Police Chief Randolph Brashears. Chief Brashears subsequently launched an investigation which resulted allegations of misconduct being sustained against Officer Melendez. As you may remember, I was able to get the University to agree to disclose their investigation report by making a public records request, however, the University told me I needed to pay a $235 fee to have a copy made. Luckily, some generous Cop Block readers donated the money.

After I sent in the money to the University, they engaged in a long and unlawful delay before sending the documents out to me. On January 6, about 3 weeks after the University received my payment, I still had not received the report, so I called to complain. I contacted Jack Giarusso, the head of Human Resources at UMass Lowell, and asked him why it was taking so long for the documents to be mailed to me. He told me that he was just about to send them out. I pointed out to him that he was violating the law because the Massachusetts Public Records Law requires that records custodians comply with requests within 10 days without any unreasonable delays and it had already been more than a month. Giarusso gave me an excuse about how he hadn’t been able to mail the records on time because he had to move to a different office, but I told him that the Public Records Law does not mention this as a legitimate reason for taking so long to comply with a request.

I finally received a copy of the investigation about a week later. Unfortunately, I’ve been having problems with my scanner, so I wasn’t able to scan the report until several days ago when I found time to go to the local public library. You can find a copy of the report at the bottom of this post.

I don’t want to discuss everything about the report in detail. After all, you can read the entire thing yourself. But there are a few aspects of the report that I wanted to draw some attention to.

One of the first sections of the report describes how Chief Brashears interviewed Officer Noberto Melendez, the police officer who threatened Brendan Brown. Chief Brashears describes how he called Officer Melendez to his office and advised him that he could have a union representative there to officer guidance. Melendez returned with an Officer Soucey. According to the report:

Officer Soucy asked if there were any criminal charges being considered against Officer Melendez and if so would “Garrity Rights” be used. I advised both of them that there criminal charges are not being considered in this incident but to ease their concern I advised that nothing said during this process could be used against Officer Melendez in any criminal proceedings.

So, we learn here that criminal charges were never considered against Officer Melendez. It didn’t matter that Officer Melendez threatened to physically assault Brendan Brown. It didn’t matter that he deprived Brown of his constitutional right to observe and record police activity. Criminal charges were just never even on the table. But what do you expect when cops are “investigated” by other cops?

Next, Chief Brashears informed Melendez that he watched Brown’s YouTube video and asked him to describe what happened that night from his own perspective. Officer Melendez told Brashears that he was responding to a call from other officers. When he arrived at the scene, he witnessed a large crowd.

Officer Melendez states that when he got out of his cruiser he immediately tried to move the crowds by giving commands to leave the area. Officer Melendez stated that he could hear the sirens of the Lowell police department’s cruisers that were responding to this incident.

Officer Melendez stated that it was at this point that “I became very frustrated” because of the lack of response from the crowd. I observed the subject videotaping the event; he was standing on the sidewalk. I went over to him and stated, “Turn that fucking thing off before I slap you”, he further states that “I never had any intention to strike the person but was only trying to get this persons attention; I then immediately went over to another crowd down the street to disperse them”.

The above quote is where Melendez offers a ridiculous explanation for his thuggish behavior. Melended was just trying to get Brown’s attention, so he threatened to assault him? Huh? Usually when I’m trying to get a stranger’s attention, I opt for an “excuse me, sir” or something along those lines. If the roles were reversed — if Brown had threatened to assault Melendez — would he buy the “I was just trying to get his attention” excuse?

And if Officer Melendez was trying to get Brown’s attention, why did he walk away “immediately” (his own word choice) after threatening him without saying anything else? What was he trying to get Brown’s attention for? Apparently nothing.

Let’s read on:

Officer Melendez stated that he regrets saying what he said to the student and knows that some type of discipline will result from this incident. He further said that this is not at all like him, that he always treats the students and public with respect. Officer Melendez further stated that he remembers the Chief either talking about this type of issue or remembers an email from the Chief. Officer Melendez realizes that the public has the right to videotape police activity and that he has no excuse for his behavior, but didn’t remember if this was covered in in-service training.

The above passage is worth taking notice of because it shows that Officer Melendez was already aware that people have the right to video-record the police. There was no confusion about the law on his part. He was not only acting unlawfully, he knew damn well that he was acting unlawfully.

And yet, even though Officer Melendez admitted to knowingly breaking the law, he expects us to believe “this is not at all like him, that he always treats the students and public with respect.” Officer Melendez will have have to forgive me for being skeptical.

At the end of the investigation, Deputy Police Chief Dickerson writes that he sustained all the allegations against Officer Melendez. This means Melendez was found to have used profane and abusive language, engaged in conduct unbecoming of an officer, and violated the civil rights of Brendan Brown.

Unfortunately, we still do not know what punishment Melendez has been subjected to for his behavior. As I explained in an earlier post, the University claims that information is confidential and has refused to disclose it to me. I have exchanged several emails with Deirdre Heatwole, the lawyer who represents the University of Massachusetts system, but I have been unable to convince her to release the information and do not think that I will ever be able to.

In any case, I want to again thank the donors who helped get this report released. I think it’s important that information like this is available to the public and I think it’s a crime that the government makes us jump through so many hoops to get it.

Documents (.pdf format)

• Cover letter
• Training document about “Unlawful Secret Recordings”
• Investigation Report

Above is the video encounter with myself and the Londonderry police officer who claims audio recording him is illegal.

An unknown, because I forgot to get his name (major fail), Londonderry Police officer tried to tell me that audio recording police doing their public duty was illegal. At one point stating, “check yourself.” Since I’m already facing three counts of wiretapping, and have spent the last year caught up in court cases, I turned the camera off. I told the officer that he was wrong and left to seek the others who came to support Kelly and her TSA activism – see this video of the demonstration.

It amazes me that public officials (especially police officers) still feel they have an expectation of privacy while conducting public duties. Again how, after the national publicity Glik received and the ever growing cell phone technology, can anyone – let alone police – have any expectation of privacy while in public or open space is beyond me. If the bank on the corner isn’t filming you, the gas station is and if  not those I bet someone is near by with a smart phone. Unless you’re in your own home, on your own property, you have no expectation of privacy, sorry.

The solution to this would be to rid ourselves of public servants and replace them with privately run businesses. This way when officer Londonderry tells me I can’t film the actions which I pay him for, I can simply stop paying him and find someone who provides the service I want. You don’t see me making videos about Piggly Wiggly (grocery store chain) and the bad service I feel they provide. Why is that? Because I’m able to go to Market Basket (another grocery chain) instead and Piggly Wiggly isn’t allow to force me to pay for their service (which is food distribution). If only policing were the same.