Friday, September 9, 2011

What Good Is a Legal Right to Record Police Activity - If the Cops Target You When You Do It?

Posted: 08 Sep 2011 07:00 AM PDT
By Susie Madrak



This is the kind of tough journalismI'd like to see in more urban dailies. This Philadelphia Daily News reporter takes a national topic (the legal right to record police action) and looks at whether the right is even applied in day-to-day police work in the city's police force:

TAMERA MEDLEY begged the police officer to stop slamming her head - over and over - into the hood of a police cruiser.

Thinking they were helping, passers-by Shakir Riley and Melissa Hurling both turned their cellphone video cameras toward the melee that had erupted on Jefferson Street in Wynnefield, they said.

But then the cops turned on them.

Riley had started to walk away when at least five baton-wielding cops followed him, he said, and they beat him, poured a soda on his face and stomped on his phone, destroying the video he had just taken.
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