In a US federal civil rights lawsuit, a Connecticut man has shared footage to bolster his claims that police illegally confronted the pedestrian because he was filming one of them. Authorities seized Michael Picard's camera and his permitted pistol, and the officers involved then accidentally recorded themselves allegedly fabricating charges against the man.
Picard's police encounter began as he was protesting a sobriety checkpoint while lawfully carrying a handgun in a holster. The plaintiff often protests near sobriety checkpoints in the Hartford region and is known by locals and police in the area, according to court documents. "Cops Ahead: Keep Calm and Remain Silent," read the 3-foot-by-2-foot sign Picard held up to motorists ahead of the checkpoint in West Hartford last year.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 22 2016, @10:15PM
On the racial perspective of "out of service," the paradox of modern american policing is that non-white communities are simultaneously over-policed for minor things like jaywalking, public intoxication, etc and under-policed for serious crimes like assault, robbery and murder. That encourages violence by discouraging trust in the police. When people don't trust the police to provide justice they take things into their own hands. This state of affairs was documented in Ghettoside [washingtonpost.com]