9 months ago
Monday, March 1, 2010
respect my authority
This was all about making an example out of someone and not about enforcing the law. Especially telling is how he continued to selectively pick out laws and throw out threats of arrest in order to get the camera guy to shut up and stop questioning. A great example of why no one wants to step up and work with OPD on the CM ride...
**edited to show video**
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
does anyone know what came of this? from the comments on FB i'm guessing he got a ticket which he intends to fight in court. updates would be great.
pretty disturbing video... do we live in communist china now??? Updates would be awesome..
thanks to Christopher on the commute orlando forum, here's the link to this vid on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKzDLCB9n-E
That is some dirty shit! Pig Punks!
http://jitenshawayabaidesu.blogspot.com/2010/03/blog-post.html
Really nice.....opd showing us whats up...? maybe he didnt have his donut yet ?
I like the part where he tells the other people who stopped to move along because they were blocking the sidewalk ...? what ? huh ?
given, the officer was being a dick i dont feel like this helped anything. if anything it made riding on the street more of a problem now. i feel that a civil argument could have been made without pissing off the cop. fuck the police but i am just saying that i feel that this hurt cycling in orlando more than it helped
Hamez I see your point but thats not my motivation for posting this video. I never posted this with the intention of trying to use this confrontation as a "victory" for cycling rights but rather to show why so many who do participate in the CM ride are hesitant to work with OPD on this issue...
To reiterate my point, what I find really obnoxious about this confrontation is the conduct of the police officer. He is a paid professional, the camera guy is not. They, as paid civil servants, are expected to maintain a certain standard when interacting with the public they serve. Using your position of state sanctioned authority to win a pissing contest is not part of that job description. While you may feel mr camera guy was being belligerent, IMO he still acted within the bounds of his civil rights (we'll see what the lawyers say). Questioning authority and their actions is not against the law regardless of what some will try to insinuate. BTW, its also perfectly legal to video tape a police officer performing their duty as long as you maintain a 20 ft distance and you do not interfere with them. Threatening to cite someone for merely observing is a gross misrepresentation of this...
Like I said before, I understand your point. Had it been me, I would have handled it a bit different but I still would have questioned the police officer actions as they seemed transparent. While I'm not about to generalize all of the officers that make up OPD, I have had some run ins with a few that took the same attitude as the officer in the video. As paid professionals, they should not assume the worst in everyone and drop this us vs. them mentality towards the people they serve...
ez!
i totally understand where you are coming from too. it just kind of reminded me of back in the day when i didnt have a car and we rode our bmx's everywhere and after years of us being dick heads to every security gaurd and cop we could we couldnt really ride anywhere without instantly being told to leave because of the way we had acted previously.
not saying that the camera man was a dick at all, and i agree that he wasnt doing anything worth the trouble the cop gave him but i think that it is going to be hard to get OPD to take cycling seriously and give it any consideration. with that being said i feel like this incident may have set things back a little.
i feel like a lot of good could and possibly will come from this video. opening the eyes of people who, otherwise, would over look any issue like this. this is something that a news channel might be interested in helping you guys with. dont know if that is anything you guys would even be interested in but the more people that become aware of the problem, the more people can help
I wish this didn't happen.
Cole, email me when you get a chance.
Post a Comment