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Police who raided a marijuana store, destroying security cameras and the DVR, harassing the store's customers, consuming edible marijuana products, and playing darts, were caught on camera. The cops claim that said recording is illegal because the cops had an expectation of privacy after destroying all of the security cameras.
I wish I could make up this stuff.
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Police Claim Recording of Marijuana Dispensary Raid is Illegal
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Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CRCulver on Sunday August 09 2015, @06:01PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by tathra on Sunday August 09 2015, @09:04PM
spoliation of evidence [wikipedia.org] and perverting the course of justice [wikipedia.org] are crimes. a lawyer telling his clients to hide or destroy evidence is also likely guilty of obstruction of justice and probably willing to commit perjury too, not to mention the whole thing is a criminal conspiracy. a defense lawyer's job is to defend his clients, yes, but actively advising them to destroy evidence is criminal.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday August 09 2015, @11:16PM
Did the defense attorney tell them to break the cameras? At the point the cameras were being broken there were no criminal charges against the officers pending. The officers broke the cameras because they knew they would be used as evidence. It's unlikely they would be charged with that other than as a matter of damage to property.
The attorney is only arguing that the remaining camera shouldn't be included as evidence because it's allegedly illegal. AFAIK, there's no particular law that says that a motion like that has to be legal, the judge will rule on that as a matter of law and most likely accept the recordings. The notices on the wall should be sufficient to allow the video in, as long as it's accompanied by the usual testimony to the completeness and handling of the tapes.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Monday August 10 2015, @12:01AM
my comment was based on "the lawyer who suggested the legal course of action they are seeking to hide all the evidence". hiding evidence is spoliation. lawyers always make motions to try to prevent evidence from being admitted to court, thats what they do, but advising their clients to hide the evidence is a crime.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Monday August 10 2015, @12:03AM
...i think it might just be a parsing error on my part. if he didn't actually advise them to hide the evidence but is trying to "hide" the evidence by preventing it from being admitted to court, then there's no crime.