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Alabama ACLU and Newspaper Criticize Police for Arresting Citizen Journalist by Bama Camera
The Alabama police department that had a man arrested on a felony charge of jamming up their emergency lines – even though he did not make a single call – is now taking heat from the local ACLU as well as the local newspaper.
But the Wetumpka Police Department is still sticking to its guns, threatening to arrest anybody else who posts their non-emergency phone number of (334) 567-5321.
They claim that by calling that number, it somehow leads turns into a 911 call, which they claim makes it difficult to respond to actual emergencies.
But all they were doing were exercising their First Amendment right to petition for redress of grievances by complaining about how officers ripped a camera out of Keith Golden’s hands for recording the police department from public property.
First Amendment Audit (Wetumpka PD) "I don't care about your 1st Amendment Rights"
Arrest Update by Bama Camera
**UPDATE**FPS-USMS-BAM CAMERA by News Now Houston
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tractatus_techno_philosophicus on Tuesday June 14 2016, @03:29PM
I live here in Alabama, not far from Wetumpka. At a simplistic level, it's ironic that the institution who's job it is to keep me safe makes me feel as though I'm a prisoner in my own community. However, don't just blame the cops for this martial law-esque situation we have down here. The pervading mindsets of the community, including the cops, start at home. I was raised a conservative, Republican, Southern Baptist, and let me tell you from experience that it's a horrible, horrible upbringing to have. The racism, bigotry, and perverse reverence people have for police brutality, all instilled into their minds at childhood, feed into an attitude of paranoia and hopelessness. The paranoia manifests itself in isolationist, NIMBY-style attitudes towards everything around you. I've had the police called on me for walking around my own neighborhood because apparently I wasn't supposed to be outside in the sunshine. I never see people going on walks here, interacting with one another or engaging in any sort of communal activity which requires so much as an inkling of trust on the part of those around you. People go to work, operate as capital-generating cogs in a machine and then return home, too scared of media-sensationalized terrorists and black people to even walk out onto their own lawn. The hopelessness is seen in the defeated attitudes people here have towards everything. They've been taught that disobeying the arbitrarily-defined laws of the establishment will send them to hell, and that's just sick. In summation, the police here in Alabama believe they are ordained by God himself to do whatever they hell they want, and pity on you if you defy them with such heinous acts as exercising your freedoms, questioning why certain laws are on the books, attempting to be sociable or pointing out the inherent evils of perpetuating this sorry state of affairs. My solution to the problem is to place a higher emphasis on eduction. The teachers here are so neglected and underpaid that the critical-thinking and reasoning skills which one should develop via an education are never being cultivated, leading to a society ruled by ignorant, blind faith and dogmatism, doubly enslaved by a police state they created in their own homes.