Rapper Afroman uses baseless cop-raid footage in music videos, is sued by cops

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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So rapper Afroman suffered a baseless raid (for narcotics and kidnapping) that resulted in no charges, and used footage of the raid in two music videos. Deputies from the sheriff’s department decided to sue because their faces were in the footage and they say they suffered harassment and emotional damage.

Here’s the news article:

Here are the two music videos:

Fuck these cops. Good for Afroman. The videos are hilarious too. I hope the judge throws out the case and awards Afroman damages for legal bills.

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And to repair his door.

And the money they stole from him.

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Meanwhile, of course, they’re also Streissanding themselves.

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I do wonder exactly what kind of legal issue is involved here, and if they have any sort of case that their likeness was used.

If so, I say replace all the faces with pig faces, and keep the videos as is otherwise.

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Give him a break. He was high!

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Now I’m getting SLAPPed and I know why-y!

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He is making money through the use of their images without permission or compensation. They should have the same rights as any other person in that situation.

Am I actually reading this?! That term is from 50 years ago, isn’t it?

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He’s using their images as they appeared in his own home. It’s kind of hard to argue that someone else is violating your privacy, when you were in their home.

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They were in his house without his permission, and acting as official agents. IANAL, but ISTM that it ought to be legal under the first amendment to use footage of official agents in one’s own home for satirical purposes.

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A lawyer I’m not, LOL, but I’d like to think that, as police officers, they would know enough to run it past the city’s lawyers and not go off “half cocked” and embarrass themselves.

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Oh, we’d all like to think that.

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Okay, so let’s say I break into your home, and you catch me on your security cameras. What rights do you think that I should have over how you use that footage?

Lots of terms come from the past. Are you trying to imply that it is still not in use?

If you think that home invaders should have their identities protected, what would you suggest is used to conceal their identities? I guess it could be amusing to replace them all with kitten heads as well.

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“Cop” is over 100 years old.

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It’s a very derogatory cop-hating term. I’m surprised and disappointed at seeing it used at the SDMB.

“Home invaders” are criminals. These were police officers acting on police orders. Ironically, the people really responsible for screwing that up are safe and anonymous at police headquarters. Pretty unfair and potentially dangerous. The video stirs up hatred against those officers and basically says, “Here they are!”

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Have you seen what the cops have been up to lately?

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Maybe the officers should sue those guys.

Let’s be fair, it’s going to take a lot of convincing to get me to believe that the team of “public servants” who busted down Afroman’s door and trashed his house are mad at their superiors for ordering them to raid an innocent man’s home.

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I’m surprised and disappointed whenever cops raid the homes of innocent people as well. (Well, maybe not surprised, but that just makes me more disappointed.)

Home invaders are people who come into your home without your permission. Bonus points when they do so by breaking down your door.

“Just following orders” was deprecated as a valid legal defense over 70 years ago.

I mean, there’s nothing stopping these cops from calling out those who gave them the orders to bust down the door of an innocent man.

I’d say that invading people’s homes is what stirs up hatred. Maybe they should stop doing that, rather than whining about the public finding out about it.

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What evidence do you have that it was a “baseless search”? The article indicates that it had probable cause but neither provides evidence for that or refutes it.

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The complete lack of evidence that they found of any sort of wrongdoing on the part of the person whose door they broke down.

Whatever “cause” they had was baseless.

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I consider baseless to mean, “have no reasonable justification for” This search was unsuccessful, but not necessarily baseless, at least from the information in the article.