Teh One Who Knocks
04-12-2013, 11:38 AM
Casey Chan - Gizmodo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qbUvvyXoExI
Cameras are the new weapons, or at least that's what it seems like in the eyes of the police. Police officers from the San Diego Police Department pretty much attacked and arrested a man for recording them with his cell phone camera. Watch the video, it's pretty awful.
How did this all happen? It started when the police were writing a citation for Adam Pringle (for smoking on the boardwalk). That's completely fair. But while getting written up, Pringle decided to pull out his Samsung Galaxy phone and record the whole situation. This is when things turn ugly. You can see the police officer fill out all the details on the ticket and then when he realizes he's being recorded, tells Pringle to put the camera away because it could be converted into a weapon. When Pringle declines to put it away, the situation escalates and the police officer knocks Pringles' phone down to the ground.
Pringle claims that one officer slapped the phone out of his hand while the other cop slammed him down onto the boardwalk, opening a gash on his chin. Pringle told Photography Is Not a Crime:
"Blood was everywhere. I was laying on my stomach and he had one knee on my back and the other knee on the side of my face. They kept telling me ‘to calm down,' that ‘you're making this worse for yourself,' that ‘you have no right to record us.'"
The whole ordeal starts a little before the 1:00 minute mark in the video. Pringle sounds a tad abrasive in his remarks to the officers but it's obvious that the police officer's reaction was more than a little excessive. What's worse is that Pringle actually spent a night in jail because of this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qbUvvyXoExI
Cameras are the new weapons, or at least that's what it seems like in the eyes of the police. Police officers from the San Diego Police Department pretty much attacked and arrested a man for recording them with his cell phone camera. Watch the video, it's pretty awful.
How did this all happen? It started when the police were writing a citation for Adam Pringle (for smoking on the boardwalk). That's completely fair. But while getting written up, Pringle decided to pull out his Samsung Galaxy phone and record the whole situation. This is when things turn ugly. You can see the police officer fill out all the details on the ticket and then when he realizes he's being recorded, tells Pringle to put the camera away because it could be converted into a weapon. When Pringle declines to put it away, the situation escalates and the police officer knocks Pringles' phone down to the ground.
Pringle claims that one officer slapped the phone out of his hand while the other cop slammed him down onto the boardwalk, opening a gash on his chin. Pringle told Photography Is Not a Crime:
"Blood was everywhere. I was laying on my stomach and he had one knee on my back and the other knee on the side of my face. They kept telling me ‘to calm down,' that ‘you're making this worse for yourself,' that ‘you have no right to record us.'"
The whole ordeal starts a little before the 1:00 minute mark in the video. Pringle sounds a tad abrasive in his remarks to the officers but it's obvious that the police officer's reaction was more than a little excessive. What's worse is that Pringle actually spent a night in jail because of this.