“You can’t have a camera?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m being told,” said Mike aka “Clutch1st,” the motorcyclist pulled over by NYPD.
“Oh shit! I never heard of that,” replied the witness sitting in his air conditioning truck.
That’s because it was another NYPD cop on a fishing expedition, who had no reason to pull over the v-logger as he rode his motorcycle on New York’s city streets.
We don’t advise making video blogs while riding motorcycles for safety reasons, but certainly there’s nothing illegal about speaking while on a motorcycle, or recording your surroundings, because photography is not a crime.
But we do advise to keep the camera rolling like Mike did.
Even after the NYPD cop said to turn it off.
The action starts two minutes into the video below entitled, “WTF?!? COP PULLS OVER BIKE FOR GOPRO.”
A New York City police officer in a marked cruiser blared his lights once after crossing a double yellow sign, stopping his car in front of a waiting cab.
Mike kept blogging until saying, “Me?” as the officer gestured that he was being pulled over, and the v-logger rode up to the officer who ordered him to “Shut down,” the bike, which he did promptly.
“I pulled you over for the GoPro,” said the NYPD officer, “You can’t have a GoPro on you. You can’t have a GoPro.”
Clearly, the NYPD officer wasn’t talking about any prohibition from the New York state code on motorcycles, but knowing how important CompuStat is for these cops, he probably needed to pull someone over for any reason and a GoPro seemed like a good enough reason at the time.
“I’m sorry for doing that to you,” said the cop in apparent reference to his dangerous driving maneuver to cut off the motorcyclist, “because bikes like to run.”
But this biker didn’t run, and Mike delivered license and registration promptly too.
“I always have my GoPro on,” Mike told the officer, “mainly for safety,” presumably implying that should a hit and run driver knock him off the bike, which happens all to often to motorcyclists, he’d have had at least a video record of the ordeal.
“I understand what safety is, but there are people who want to use it for performance,” said the burly NYPD officer, “you can’t even have it on.”
Traffic was stopped dead for 90 seconds as the officer collected Mike’s information and ran it.
Mike had the following to say about the situation after the fact on social media:
Honestly guys, I had no clue where this cop car came from. Smh, he stopped traffic as if I was popping wheelies and already running from him. As always, I keep my calm nature especially when dealing with NYPD or any law enforcement for that matter. I was so amazed he pulled me over in that way, just because I had a GoPro. There is no law in New York State banning GoPros while on a vehicle. So I really had no clue when I was being pulled over.
In the end, according to the video, the NYPD officer kept him on the side of the road asking numerous questions and running his name and information for warrants, without any probable cause to question or search the v-logger.
This misinformed cop just wasted your tax dollars on what was nothing more than an attempt at a shakedown.
Because without probable cause, any form of detainment, no matter how brief is wrong.
And after telling this v-logger that photography is not a crime, he wisely refrained from ticketing the cyclist, but still needs a lesson in the First Amendment if he’s going to safely patrol the streets of New York City.
The post NYPD Officer Chases Down Cyclist Over GoPro Helmet Camera, Says Photography is a Crime, Releases Him appeared first on PINAC News.