So let me fill you in on my first minute or two with Officer Mario Pinto #54. He pulled up as I was walking down the street and said " What are you doing? I want to talk to you". Before I could ask if I was being detained, he said" Let me see your ID or you're going to jail for obstruction and you can tell it to a judge". I was then escorted to the cruiser and he rifled through my pockets looking for an ID. At this point I turned on my camera and started to record. Officer Chris Monek #21 (sp?) then showed up along with Sgt. Gartner #16. And you can see the fun here.
I was not on my liberty game today and didn't feel like challenging the obstruction idea, also I made a few mistakes by talking about complaint & info requests. Around here if one gets arrested on a Friday they usually have to wait in the "clink" till around Monday or Tuesday due to MLK day on Monday. Did you notice the part that Pinto asked Monek to make sure I was not recording? I did misquote the request from the DOJ to the judge, it was, if an Officer interferes & seizes a recording device without a warrant that would be unconstitutional. Read about it here.
Anyway if the SRPD thinks they can bully me into not photographing around town, they are mistaken. It has made me want to flex my rights even more and I found some interesting things about Officer Monek.
UPDATE: My inquisitive nature decided to check PTL. Pinto's claim that I was in a high crime rate area. This screen shot is from City Data and in my opinion he is full of it as you can see not much goes on around here.
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