Cops seem to be the same the world over. In the UK we have recently had a spate of deaths at the hands of the cops and this article from the other side of the world just goes to prove, a cop is a cop is a cop.
"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. Meanwhile, two officers approached
Hurling, urged her to leave and, after exchanging a few words,
slammed her against a police cruiser, Hurling said. They pulled her
by her hair before tossing her into the back of a cop car, she said.
Although it's legal to record
Philadelphia police performing official duties in public, all three
were charged with disorderly conduct and related offenses, and
officers destroyed Hurling and Riley's cellphones, erasing any record
of Medley's violent arrest, the pair said.
Charges against Hurling and Riley
were dismissed, but Medley was found guilty last month of disorderly
conduct, resisting arrest, harassment and related offenses. She was
fined $500 but has filed an appeal. Echoes of the incident, which was
corroborated by a half-dozen witnesses, have been reverberating
nationwide in recent years as the combination of cellphone video and
police officers has simmered into what is an increasingly explosive
formula. A growing number of bystanders have been misled, arrested or
worse for using their cellphones to record what they perceive as
excessive force by cops making arrests, watchdogs say.
"I grew up in the neighborhood
and I saw stuff go down but it never happened to me," Riley said
recently, adding that he did nothing wrong. "They stomped my
phone and said it was a federal offense."
'Relevant for integrity'
The issue is gaining national
attention. The American Civil Liberties Union has civil lawsuits
pending in Washington, D.C., Florida, Illinois and Maryland. Last
week, a federal appeals court in Boston ruled that police had
violated the First Amendment rights of a lawyer who was arrested
after filming cops arrest a teenager. Suits have been settled in
Pennsylvania, and this year, the ACLU plans to file a lawsuit on
behalf of several Philadelphians."
ann arky's home.
