Cops now Reaching for Guns Against Citizens who Video Record them
Two short videos posted on Youtube in recent days, one from California, the other from Florida, resulted in police reaching for their guns against the citizens who were recording them.
In the shortest video, which lasts only 12 seconds, a man gets confronted by San Francisco cops who surround him as he pulls out his camera phone with one of them telling him, “put that thing away.”
He responds by saying, “I have the right to document,” but his phone is snatched away.
In his Youtube description, the man says he was stopped by a motorcycle cop for jaywalking, then tried to pull out a camera, which incidentally, didn’t have a memory card, so he resorted to his Android, but that resulted in him being handcuffed and detained.
I hurry across so as not to block traffic since the light turned green, 2 seconds later as I step onto the curb the officer on the bike barks at me to stop as he climbs off his bike. With my back to the officer, I reach for my camera as I always do when confronted by the police, I turn to face him, and he shouts not to reach in the bag after my hand is clearly already in the bag as I pull the camera neck strap out and tell the officer I am pulling out my camera. I look at his hand, on his pistol ready to draw, as I state that I AM going to pull out my camera and the camera is slowly withdrawn by the neck strap and placed over my head. The officer is clearly frustrated, still holding his hand on his gun he asks for my ID, and I reply “its in my pocket but I’m not going to get it out with your hand on your gun”! I then shout cameras up several times as the zombies walk on by… the officer calls for backup as I realize my memory card is no in the camera (DOH)! Thank god I have a backup, squirming I think why me then it hits me I have my DROID! I reach for it in my front pocket just as 7 more cops come screaming up in 2 squad cars and 2 more bikes, I start to punch in the code to unlock it and the officer say don’t reach into your pockets again! Just as I think I’m going to get some good video of police harassment of a homeless veteran, they demand I turn off the camera and in fact as you can see forcing me to, they then put me in handcuffs for detainment, sat me on the curb, and ran my info from my veterans ID.
And in the other video, which is from Palm Bay, Florida, a man walks up to a cop during some kind of traffic stop and asks for his badge number, resulting in the cop pulling out his gun.
The video is dark, so we can’t see the cop pulling out the gun, but we can hear the man saying, “you’re reaching for a gun?”
The cop tells him to back away from him, before accusing him of having made threats against police officers, which the man, Richard Petik, denies in his Youtube description.
Palm Bay, Florida ( brevard county)Cop (car 181)pulls gun on homeowner realizing hes being taped says ive threatened him…to give himself justification. ( sorry for poor quality)
If it was true Petik had made threats against the officer that night, he would have been arrested, but we can see he walked away, even cursing out the cop as he did.
And if was true that Petik had made threats against an officer on a previous occasion, he would have been arrested, which would have been easily verifiable through the Brevard County court public records website.
But all that comes up is the following traffic infraction, which is from February 20, 2014. Considering the video was uploaded on February 22, we can probably assume Petik pulled up in his car and started recording, which led to the cops citing him on the following charges.
Harold
ACGR's "News with Attitude" 