Aldon Hynes at orient-lodge points to an important story about how the NYPD stole a video camera from a “Citizen Journalist” at a demonstration.
On October 30, 2006 at a demonstration protesting the murder of journalist Brad Will in Mexico, members of the NYPD assaulted an independent videographer and stole his videocamera.
That’s right, stole. The filmmaker, FluxRostrum, was not arrested. He did not receive a receipt for seized property. He was not even directly asked for his camera. Instead, without any warning, he was jumped by two police officers, one of whom is an NYPD captain, and knocked down onto the asphalt of 39th Street. One police officer was succcesful in wrenching the camera out of Flux’s hands. As Flux crawled around on the ground looking for the eyeglasses which had been knocked off his face during the attack, the cop with the camera quickly conferred with another officer. Then he ran off to hide the camera.
More Below
The big problem for the NYPD here: They forgot to steal the video evidence of their theft and assault from other people with cameras at the demonstration.
The video is worth checking out and demonstrates the need for Citizen Journalists and Video Bloggers to take precautions and always watch each others’ backs when they are in politically charged situations.
x-posted at Drinking Liberally in New Milford
[updates][update]The YouTube videos:
Who is FluxRostrum?
Courtesy of Scarce at MLN
A quick look around to make sure that the NYPD aren’t nearbye to steal it from me.
POP!
lol
This was incredible. I am at work so no sound right now. Will review it again when I get home. When are people going to wake up and realise this country is at war….with its own government that is out of control?
It is scary stuff…
Thanks CM1,
Both videos worth watching. And I’ll send the link to my daughter who is writing an article on netroots, touching upon citizen journalism for her school magazine.
Police abusing power is obviously nothing new, but as you point out in the entry, there is now video proof of this abuse. Do you know if a complaint was made? I couldn’t find any reference.
I don’t know much beyond what the links talk about. The site I quoted from promised updates so it might be worth following. This slipped under a lot of peoples radars. Scarce (at MLN) had the YouTube links but apparently didn’t use them yet OR if he did it slipped off the page unnoticed by many. FluxRostrum had sent some links to him (or the Nedheads group at YouTube) during the campaign.