Police abuses around the country

In Salt Lake City, Utah, police are illegally targeting minority students for gang membership in high schools.. In fact, they selectively choose minority students for interrogation when they lock down a school. Here is the case of one student, named K.W. and his experience by police:

"Officers searched K.W.'s backpack, interrogated him and asked for his name, race and birth. They wrote the information on a whiteboard, "including his response that his race was 'black and white,' along with the phrase 'gang tagger,'" Winston says. "Officers then required K.W. to stand to have his photograph taken while holding the whiteboard identifying him as a 'gang tagger.' When K.W. hesitated and did not move quickly enough, a police officer forcibly positioned K.W. to be photographed," the complaint states."

By the way, a student of course enjoys the same 4th Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizures as any other citizen or resident. But in reality of course, the police regularly violate it, either openly violating it or pressuring young people who might not fully realize their Constitutional rights. Thankfully the ACLU is working on this case and other civil rights abuse cases.

Now, here are a few cases of the police illegally arresting people for filming them. A Nicholas Tanner was blocked from taking pictures from across the street of EMTs taking someone to an ambulance. He was blocked by police in horses intentionally positioning themselves to block his filming. Whatever one things of filming of these kinds of scenes, it is indeed a Constitutional right and the governmennt cannot censor it, including intentionally blocking a shooting angle.

Here is a classic example of police taking the camera from witnesses and destroying film or erasing video. Happens more then you think. This is after the beating by police in Fullerton, California. This is of course destruction of evidence and should be punished with immediate firing and criminal charges. Which of course, never happens.

Here is a federal corrections official telling someone it is illegal to film prison/jail inmates on the side of a road. Sigh, it isn't. Why do police/government officials must keep making up the law? That's their job, to know the law. Know the law!

In Baltimore, a hotbed of police abuses an Officer Tonks demands identification of a Kerron Fields for filming, across a street. Tonks chased down and this is what happened:

"'The cop told him to turn the phone off, but Fields refused. The cop, whose name is R. Tonks, told him he was not allowed to record the interaction because it was a “field interview.'” He then pulled the phone from Fields’ hand, turned it off and laid it down on the ground.Fields continually asked if he was free to leave, but Tonks said no. More cops arrived and Fields was forced to hand over his identification where they checked him out for warrants, telling him he was being detained because he was acting “suspicious. 'He emptied my pockets, he searched my bags, he kept asking who do I work for. He kept asking if I was with the media trying to get dirt on them'.”

So many violations. First, there was no reasonable suspicion of a crime. None at all. Second, even if there was there was no probable cause to search his bags and pockets. Also, there is a right to film an interaction with police even this illegal interrogation. These abuses must end, now.