Charges Dropped Against Priest Who Taped Police

By TChris, Section Civil Liberties
Posted on Sat Mar 28, 2009 at 08:18:00 AM EST
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James Manship is a Catholic priest. He videotaped two police officers in East Haven, Connecticut as they removed license plates from the wall of a store owned by a Hispanic couple. Manship was trying to document the alleged harassment of Hispanics by the East Haven police. The officers took offense.

The officers said in their reports that Manship was holding an "unknown shiny silver object" and struggled with one of the officers who tried to take it from him. But a 15-second video released by Manship's attorneys earlier this month shows one of the officers, before the arrest, asking the pastor, "Is there a reason you have a camera on me?"

Manship was charged with disorderly conduct and interfering with the police. The video ends as the officer approach Manship, but Manship denies struggling with the officer. The discrepancy between the police report and the video apparently convinced prosecutors that they had a weak case. The charges have been dropped.

Meanwhile, parishoners in Manship's church have filed a civil rights complaint with the Justice Department. [more ...]

The Justice Department complaint, filed with the help of Yale Law School students, alleges that police have subjected Latino residents and visitors in East Haven to violence, including beating people in custody. The complaint also says police have been making traffic stops based on race, using racially charged language and retaliating against Latinos who have reported stories of alleged police misconduct to the media.

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Charges Dropped Against Priest Who Taped Police | 3 comments (3 topical)

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Police Crime . . . (5.00 / 4) (#1)
by Doc Rock on Sat Mar 28, 2009 at 09:41:06 AM EST

. . . weakens the fabric of our society mightily. While police need protection against unfounded accusations used to counter charges, when they are clearly caught red-handed abusing their powers, harassing the people they are meant to protect, and, most especially fabricating charges and/or evidence, they must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

: Police should be held (5.00 / 3) (#2)
by Amiss on Sat Mar 28, 2009 at 10:46:46 AM EST

to a HIGHER standard of behavior, not a lower one as these officers seem to think.

[ Parent ]

dropped (5.00 / 1) (#3)
by wg on Sat Mar 28, 2009 at 12:51:58 PM EST

"the charges have been dropped" is ENTIRELY insufficient - there are way too many "thoroughly alitolized" judges out there in the wilds of America each more than willing to sentence harshly in cases like this, for this situation to be tolerated.

These two cops should be terminated immediately and if not (as is likely) the local ACLU should refer the case to the local district attorney for criminal prosecution. The issue is that serious IMHO. For these reasons:

a) there is no law against videotaping in public in this country yet. Permitting police to invent restrictions on video-taping or anything else at their whim is something that wasn't even tolerated in East Germany. Either we are a country of laws or we are not.

b) the police all over the world is rather inventive in coming up with excuses for imposing themselves on people but this "unknown shiny silver object" cannot be tolerated. Imagine the following scene in a court of law - "defendant: is this some unknown shiny silver object that you are pointing at me your honor, because if it is I'm going to take it away from you and if you resist I will have to execute a citizen arrest on you". Unthinkable but that's exactly the logic displayed by these two cops here.

In another words if a cop pretends that he is too dumb to recognize a video camera he doesn't belong there and should be terminated (fired) immediately, for public safety reasons.

c) the state does monitoring of us on a massive scale already these days - my little burg for example has hundreds of cameras all over the place and hires a large number of watchers to monitor them 24/7. To ensure that the government stays clean it is ABSOLUTELY essential that the citizenry be free to monitor the government on its own and that especially include police for the police in this country, as sad as it is, has a richly deserved reputation for being one the most abusive, overbearing police forces in the western world (lack of supervision mostly I think). So yes there are plenty of reasons to "have cameras on them", 24/7 preferably, and any attempt by them to shield themselves from it should be immediately fully prosecuted if we want to keep some semblance of democracy and civil rights here.