Question for your further experimental verification, if you don’t mind. When you are recording with one hand and packing with the other, does the recording show some evidence of it? I’m thinking that the camera jiggles, moves, gives some indication that the person that is holding it is packing a field kit? Or is it indistinguishable, a video taken by someone who is packing one-handed and someone who isn’t?
Two things: 1) Waste of resources. Police in Augusta, Maine have all been equipped Kevlar vests. No policeman in Augusta, Maine, has been killed in the line of duty in 125 years. Fargo, North Dakota, averages two homicides a year and has never had any terrorism threats, much less incidents. But …
Two: increased aggressiveness and violence against civilians. When you have a tank or a surveillance blimp or a heavily armed SWAT team, you have justify the budget for it. So you send them out on missions that are really inappropriate for their capabilities.
SWAT teams for everything, eh, Smapti? I don’t think you’ll find a lot of followers for your line of thinking here or anywhere, Smapti.
Jeeze, I’d think killing 250,000 Iraqis was enough toughness for ANYONE.
Right, CRIMINALS are the enemy, but police culture is making the cop treat EVERYONE as the enemy.
You are unprepared to accept the validity–or even existence–of any morality other than your own?
ETA: Or, indeed, any shades of gray? Any nuance? Any relativism?
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…its morning in NZ, and I’m just heading off on a headshot job and out for the rest of the day. Won’t be able to confirm this until this evening, which could be your morning! (I get confused about these things.) But it is something you can try yourself.
No, this is not true. The police may have probable cause to arrest, but then make a policy decision to release without charges. That would make the arrest lawful, even though no charges were brought.
Why does this question matter, given that you appear to be satisfied that even if he were packing with one hand, that would be sufficient to consider him to be non-compliant?
And there had never been a riot in Ferguson before this one, and I’m sure the families of the police that haven’t been coming home in body bags are glad that their loved ones didn’t have to go into battle with blue uniforms and batons.
In a country where corporate admen have convinced millions that they have a God-given right to fully automatic weapons of mass murder and that we don’t need any safeguards to keep them out of Tue hands of criminals? Absolitely.
Maybe if we hadn’t been as gentle as you say, we wouldn’t now see ISIS committing genocide.
I have never once been treated as an enemy by the cops. Maybe that’s because when they ask me a question or ask me to do something, I smile and say “yes, officer” instead of shoving a camera in his face and attempting to discuss the finer points of constitutional jurisprudence with him.
The police will not view you as the enemy unless you MAKE yourself their enemy.
There is no mention of the press, but I have no idea where you got the idea that the press has some special immunity to laws, so that it’s necessary to name the press specifically before it becomes effective. Where did you get that zany idea?
A quick look at the Missouri trespassing statute shows no explicit exception for the press either. But here you seem to understand that the law applies to the press, even without that exception. Why is that?
I’m assuming that you’re not talking a complete absolute, here, so; roughly what percent would you say of police “viewing [someone] as the enemy” comes about not because of the person in question making themselves an enemy in some way, and what data are you using to come up with your statement?
No, if he’s packing with one hand, and that’s just as effective as packing with two hands – in other words, if he’s expeditiously complying with the order to disperse – then he’s not delaying.
Now, even if he’s not delaying, the police could have believed he was. Like me, they could have viewed one-handed packing as intentionally slow. But probable cause requires a look at the totality of the circumstances. It doesn’t help the police if the reporter can show that he was packing at a reasonable rate.
“Delaying” doesn’t appear to be included as a term in the statutes you just posted. Perhaps there is some next part to the cited text that includes it, but I don’t see any onus towards expeditious dispersal in there.
I consider most laws with no qualifications to be vague and un-Constitutional, not just against the press but against the population at large. The Supreme Court has ruled pretty decisively on them, but some might have still been on the books in Missouri and exploited.
The one you cited requires an unlawful assembly or a riot, neither of which was the case here. Note “knowingly” and the stipulation about planning to commit a crime. Probably still used to illegally make arrests where there would never be a conviction.
Er, knowingly in the assembly and riot definitions, not knowingly in the dispersal law.
I agree with andros that this is all nitpicking semantics anyway, and that at least for the press corps, justice and common sense have prevailed. Fingers crossed that tonight, it will prevail for everyone.
It would have been even faster for the police to demand that they abandon their gear. Would that have been a reasonable request? The cop was just looking for an excuse to harass these reporters and not moving fast enough was a convenient excuse.