Man sent to jail for taking picture of police

A 21 year old Penn State University senior,Neftaly Cruz, was arrested for taking a picture of police.

Cruz said that when he heard a commotion, he walked out of his back door with his cell phone to see what was happening. He said that when he saw the street lined with police cars, he decided to take a picture of the scene.

So the cops walk into his backyard after seeing him take a picture and throw him into the cop car/van.Then took him down to the police station.

"They threatened to charge me with conspiracy, impeding an investigation, obstruction of a investigation. … They said, 'You were impeding this investigation.' (I asked,) "By doing what?' (The officer said,) 'By taking a picture of the police officers with a camera phone,'" Cruz said.

Wow thats alot of charges for a picture.
So the ACLU was contacted and stated that:

"There is no law that prevents people from taking pictures of what anybody can see on the street," said Larry Frankel of the American Civil Liberties Union. "I think it's rather scary that in this country you could actually be taken down to police headquarters for taking a picture on your cell phone of activities that are clearly visible on the street."

also the ACLU stated:

"He was unlawfully seized, which is a violation of the 4th amendment the last time we checked," Frankel said

story

And also the cop says later in the story that Cruz was lucky that the supervisor was not there.Because if the super was there he would still be locked up.Sounds like the cop playing him self off as, look im a nice cop so im going to let you go so you better be grateful of how nice I am.

p.s Im truly sorry if I botched on reporting this story. Its my first time reporting a story.If you could U2U me and point out the flaws and how to fix them would be helpful.


[edit on 28-7-2006 by tilldawn]

those cops must think their pretty special that someone with a silly camera is conspiring agianst them

And you wonder who smokes the drugs after they confiscate them

can u say overly paranoid?

I caught this story off another site and was thinking about posting it. I'm pretty neutral when it comes to my feelings about most city/county police, but this is really wrong if they arrested the guy for taking a picture in his own yard. I seem to remember last election cycle (maybe one before) one of the parties had it's convention in Philly and there were some reports i caught about unconstitutional police actities with protesters.

Yeah, I've noticed that police don't necessarily care to be photographed here either. Most of you all probably saw the incident of how our lovely police force here reacted to videorecordings of them beating an elderly man. I've often been curious of why they are so against be photographed these days. I tell ya, I get some looks, and also from the National Guard. You know that it is a risk when you start thinking of cover stories for why you would be taking pictures instead of telling them "I want to expose the reasons I believe you all are really here."

Hope all this pans out for the guy, I personally know of no laws that prevent you from taking pictures of police. Maybe if they were doing a stakeout on someone I could understand, but I doubt they would be so obvious to where someone could ID them. In my cynical mind, of course, I see this as no surprise.

And people get so upset when you suggest it's perhaps not the Land Of The Free... news items like this really bring it home, though.

The big thing that gets me is the part in tilldawn's post about how the cop seems to still defend the decision to bring in Cruz. If this was such an important investigation and all, shouldn't the Supervisor have been down there leading the investigation or operation or whatever was actually going on? All seems a bit strange to me...

btw: great quotes and article tilldawn!