Some Police Officers Believe We're Living In A Police State
And act that way, too. Detroit cops wrestle the phone away from a Detroit Free Press journalist filming their arrest of a suspect and then arrest her, too. Jim Schaefer and Gina Damron write for the Freep:

Detroit police and the department's internal affairs officers have launched investigations following the arrest of a Free Press photographer who was filming a police action on a public street last week.

Police said they are looking into the conduct of photographer Mandi Wright and the actions of an officer who ordered her to stop filming and wrestled her phone away from her. They also are looking into the disappearance of a memory card from her newspaper-issued iPhone and whether she was briefly left alone with the crime suspect whom she had been filming.

Details about that at the link. More from the piece:

Later, police returned the phone, but the SIM card had been removed. Still, the video remained on the phone's internal memory. After the discovery that the card was missing, internal affairs officers were summoned to interview Wright and Gray.

Tolbert arrived after the interviews with internal affairs, and he was apologetic to Free Press editors who had gone to the precinct. He said police were embarrassed. Wright was released around 11 p.m.

Tolbert said Monday he expects a department-wide directive will go out soon to remind officers they cannot prevent anyone from videotaping them in public.

Paul Anger, editor and publisher of the Free Press, said the situation should not have escalated as it did.

"First, our photographer was doing what any journalist -- or any citizen -- has a right to do in a public place," he said. "All she knew was that someone had grabbed her and her phone. We understand the difficult job that police officers do, and we understand how tensions can rise. Yet some of the police actions all through this incident need scrutiny -- not the actions of our photographer."

Hershel Fink, Free Press legal counsel, said courts in the U.S. have consistently agreed that "citizens, much less the press, have a right to photograph police officers in public places. The video shows she did not interfere with the police action and the officer had no right to order her to stop filming and to confiscate her camera."

What's happening now is that there's evidence of police misconduct -- in this case, unconstitutionally stopping a citizen from videotaping police in a public place (not only our right but important to do to keep policing fair and constitutional) and the unreasonable seizure of this woman's property.

Think of all the misconduct that has gone on and that goes on that is not videotaped. Think of the cases that don't have a news organization behind them and a very, very good First Amendment attorney.

On a kind of cute side note, I heard Herschel P. Fink, the Freep's attorney, talk about his Dr. Dre First Amendment case at the alt weeklies conference in Detroit last year, and went up afterward to talk to him. I'd thought he looked familiar but brushed the thought aside. Well, he remembered me -- from University of Michigan family camp, Michigania, from when I was 8! (My parents used to go there with us every year. It's nerdcamp for parents -- lectures from professors in the evenings -- and there's horseback riding, archery, a shooting range, canoeing, and other events for kids.)

via Jay J. Hector