At the 2010 Preakness at Pimlico, a 22 year-old woman allegedly punched someone and then struck a police officer. She ended up being charged with 3 counts of second-degree assault and one count of resisting arrest.
Christopher Sharp happened to record the incident, which looks like cops were indulging in an unnecessary force sort of situation, on his phone.
Unfortunately for Sharp, the cops noticed him doing so.
In a lawsuit filed on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, Sharp says he was detained and harassed by Baltimore's finest as they confiscated his phone, accessed his data and deleted the video of this event as well as numerous other personal videos unrelated to this event.
Sharp says:
"I’m heartbroken over the videos I lost of my son and I doing things together,” Sharp said. “The videos were keepsakes of memories like his soccer and basketball games, times at the beach and the Howard County fair. It kills me that the police acted as if it was okay for them to could just wipe out some of my fondest memories. ... I used to trust police, but now I don’t anymore, because of how wrongly the police acted here, and because it seemed like this was just routine procedure for them."
Thankfully, these days there are more cells with video cameras than there are abusive, over-reaching cops. So they neglected to wrongfully delete this video from someone else who quickly uploaded it to You Tube.
Sadly, I would have to resist arrest and say 'no, i won't stop filming'.
Posted by: simply scott | August 31, 2011 at 11:01 PM
Nice investigative work B.
Wish inestigative reporters were not such an oxymoron.
Posted by: Ted Wedel | September 01, 2011 at 02:19 PM
Wait - did I just get called a moron?
Posted by: Benn | September 01, 2011 at 05:13 PM