Recording the Police

Florida cops arrested seven volunteers from an activist group called Food Not Bombs for feeding homeless people in a park Saturday afternoon.
Tampa police say they made the arrests because the group doesn’t have a permit to serve the food, which requires an insurance policy.
But Food Not Bombs has served food in the same park more than 100 times without problems, according to cltampa.com.

A man who was video recording from a public sidewalk outside a California police station was confronted by a cop, who “asked” him to sit down on the sidewalk while grabbing his arm, threatening to arrest him for the crime of recording police cars, which is not a crime.
But the man with the camera, whose YouTube username is Robbie Estabrook, remained calm, refusing to sit while telling the cop to stop assaulting him.
Oxnard police officer Thomas Payn claimed he was not assaulting him while maintaining a firm grasp on his arm.

Buffalo police responded to a call of a suicidal man threatening to kill himself with a butcher knife Saturday, running him over with a patrol SUV when he failed to drop the knife upon commands.
The incident was recorded by a witness, Sheila Woodard, who was live streaming it on Facebook where it quickly went viral with many criticizing the officer’s actions.
But police say they had to run the man over because he not only threatened an officer with the knife, causing them to fear for their lives, but they did not have a taser gun with them at the moment.

South Florida cops detained a man after he recorded several officers running a stop sign outside the police station where his wife works last month.
The Delray Beach cops never admitted they detained him for recording them blatantly violating traffic laws.
But a recording of the call to dispatch reveals a department employee placed the call to report a “suspicious man” she observed backed into a parking spot “pointing a Sony camera where police vehicles are exiting.”

NYPD cops brutally beat 19-year-old Jateik Reed for resisting arrest and carrying drugs in 2012. Drugs were never found and the case was dismissed in court. Reed then filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city.
Now New York City has settled the lawsuit with Reed, who is now 24, for the amount of $614,500, his lawyers announced earlier this month.

A man who was taking photos in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant ended up detained by cops demanding his identification, telling him they were investigating burglaries in the area.
It is not clear how they took the leap from questioning a man for taking photos in public to investigating burglaries, but “burglaries in the area” is an old standby excuse frequently used by police to detain and harass innocent people, even if there have not been a rash of burglaries.

A Texas sheriff’s deputy detained a teenager going for a jog, ordering him down on the ground while threatening to taser him, handcuffing him when the teen refused to say where he attended school.
The teen began recording the encounter but the video turned off after five minutes when the deputy cuffed him.
The Harris County sheriff’s deputy said the teen matched a description of a person who had just robbed a nearby Walgreens, but the deputy did not even appear very sure of the suspect’s description when he radioed dispatch to inquire about a description.

A Texas cop lost his head after the woman who called him for help told him her neighbor did not have the right to grab and choke her seven-year-old son.
Even if the kid did litter as the man claimed.
“Why not?” responded the Fort Worth cop who has yet to be identified.
The video from the ordeal had over 200,000 views on Facebook before Craig and her daughter were even released from jail. They have already spoken with police about the incident with their attorney, Lee Merritt, present.

The Miami police union president who retaliated against a woman earlier this year for pulling over a cop for speeding was reprimanded by internal affairs last week.
Miami Police Lieutenant Javier Ortiz, president of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police, was reprimanded for “discourtesy” and “improper procedure,” according to the internal affairs report completed on December 15.
When contacted for comment Tuesday afternoon, Ortiz said he was not even aware of the decision but provided the following statement:

 
Homestead Police Department (HPD) has silenced the First Amendment with false stalking charges and restraining orders.
Their abuses leading to two of my three false arrest, and to me being served with four frivolous restraining orders.
Sadly, such abuses are not limited to Florida, and occur nationwide.
I have researched this new trick in the police playbook being used to stalk away the First Amendment.
PINAC presents this series as a case study on such stalking abuses in Florida and across the country.