Know Your Rights!

It was 2012 when Indiana police entered a home without a warrant and shook awake a sleeping 18-year-old high school student, punching him six times, then tasering him before dragging him outside and stuffing him into a patrol car.
Handcuffed in the back of the car, DeShawn Franklin demanded to know what he had done wrong.
A South Bend police officer told him he had matched the description of a man they were looking for, specifically, he had the same hairstyle; dreadlocks.

A man who entered a Chicago police station Saturday to report that he had been robbed at gunpoint ended up pulling out his phone to start recording when officers refused to take his report.
Police then ordered him to leave, telling him he was not allowed to record inside the building, still refusing to take his report.
But at the time, they had no clue the man was Che “Rhymefest” Smith, an award-winning hip artist and songwriter who once ran for office in Chicago.

Jonathan Newton was a cop in Georgia when he blew the whistle about misconduct in the department.
He ended up pursuing a law degree from the University of the District of Columbia and launching the National Association Against Police Brutality, which is an organization to combat racism and abuse in police work as well as to protect police whistleblowers.

UPDATE: Wednesday, August 24, 2016, 10:50 p.m.
PINAC reporter Eric McDonough was arrested Wednesday after entering the city council meeting, then being ordered to leave. He was live streaming that part, but they arrested after he had stepped into the parking lot when he had turned his camera off. It appears they are charging him with disorderly conduct, which is a contempt-of-cop charge. He is currently in jail and should be released Thursday.

The federal Department of Justice just made a landmark filing declaring that bail systems which don’t take into account the suspect’s ability to repay are unconstitutional.
The motion seeks to end the practice of jailing people who cannot afford bail if they are not an actual flight risk.
It’s also a major blow against the parasitic bail bonds industry which privileges a few private companies to pocket bond money from poor people who cannot afford high bail for minor offenses.

Now that Comply or Die has become the standard with American police, Illinois will begin teaching high school students how to conduct themselves during traffic stops to keep from being killed.
The mandatory training will go effect for the 2017 school year after it was signed into law by Governor Bruce Rauner Friday.
The new measure states that students will now be taught “a demonstration of the proper actions to be taken during a traffic stop and appropriate interactions with law enforcement.”

A New York district attorney accused a citizen journalist of stalking a Syracuse police officer by recording him from across the street last week, prompting the cop to walk across the street, punch him in the face and arrest him in a video that ended up going viral.
The only problem is, the evidence on that video does not match the “harassment” charge as it is described in the New York statute.

A New York cop finished making an arrest Thursday before turning to a man recording the arrest from across the street – a man who had not said a word to the officer – and threatened to arrest that man if he said another word.
Maurice “Mo” Crawley did not understand what the cop had just said, so he asked him to repeat himself.
And that was enough to get him arrested.
It was a blatant violation of Crawley’s Constitutional rights as well as a clear case of retaliation from a cop who did not appreciate being recorded.

A New Jersey man is $175,000 richer after settling with the capitol city of Trenton after officers kicked and punched him while siccing a police dog on him for recording their vicious assault of a woman while calling her a “bitch” and “cunt”.
Police also confiscated his camera and deleted his footage, but were unable to delete footage from another man recording as well as footage from a surveillance camera. Both those videos are below.

A New York cop told a teenager in a park that if he did not stop using foul language, “I will kick your ass.”
When the teen pointed out that the Cuba police officer was himself using foul language, the officer accused the teen of being “mouthy,” then demanded to know his name.
The teen pointed out that although New York is a stop-and-identify state, the officer must still have a reasonable suspicion that he is committing a crime in order for him to be legally obligated to provide his name.