Constitutional Rights and Searches

A simple reminder of citizens' rights that the Bush administration down to the average American cop these days seem to have been forgotten.

Just something interesting I found on the Internet. Doesn't mean that the cops won't simply beat your ass because they want to, but you should at least know your rights.

The last video is just crazy – that girl is crazy naive, and is going to jail for a LONG time. I like the style of the ACLU guy's frank talk and pretty realistic situations. I also like the fact that in all the case, the kids in question are actually guilty of committing the crimes they are suspected of, and it's not some afterschool special.

I suspect the cops wouldn't be quite so gracious in the last scene about not being given consent to search, but at least she didn't basically put herself in jail, if she was going anyway.

And when I was in Oakland, I had a subletter who liked to smoke out, combined with a vindictive neighbor who always used police noise calls to compensate for his inability to move out of a student apartment with paper-thin walls. I was Valerie, and had I not known my rights, this Metropolitican may have been liable and convicted for some dumbass subletter whom I got stuck with for a month – and I have never smoked pot in my life.

Had I been Valerie in the first scenario, the combination of being black, living in Oakland, living in a student apartment, and having my name on the lease may have landed my ass in serious trouble.

The same knowledge of Korean law has similarly kept me out of trouble with Korean cops, once when cops were manhandling some foreigners whom they were blaming for a fight started by a Korean – when I was photographing them shoving them into the car, one cop came over to me and told me to stop taking pictures.

I asked him in Korean, "Are you arresting me?" and "I'm not interfering" (I was standing on the sidewalk along with 50 other gawkers, clearly not interfering) and "I have the right to take pictures. I'm a journalist" (which is a stretch, but he doens't know that and it's not a completely untrue statement in my eyes, since I do at least technically publish).

Actually, I didn't actively know whether these laws protected Korean citizens, but if you read the Korean constitution and read the laws pertaining to citizens' rights, it's surprising how similar they seem (to my lay eye) to the principles of American law, so I just made the same assumptions and waited to see what happened.

The cop was pissed, but he shut the hell up and I continued to take pictures – with flash – the entire time. And with so many witnesses, as well as the camera angle I was shooting from, I doubt he could have argued that I was actually "obstructing a police officer."

That was interesting.

In any case, some neo-con, arch-conservative, don't-question-authority types out there might look at this as "young punks making it tougher for the cops" but hey, cops get paid to uphold and behave according to the law. I don't get paid, nor have any responsibility to do anything other than comply with police orders that are legal and constitutional.

And given the egregious violations that police are committing these days, as well as the fact that they are getting caught for them more often, even the rudest police thug may just choose easier prey if you have the gleam of your rights in your eye and a saccharine-sweet, courteous demeanor.

These days, that may be all you got between you and a jail cell, or even worse.

Oh, and perhaps a mini-cassette recorder kept in the dash or armrest compartment, started well before the cop comes to the car. [If you click on any link in this post, this is the one you should read. ]

And given what you saw in the video, one can see how that can be a lot more helpful than you might have initially thought.

Comments

[wo]

seriously...you don't think that the cops' trampling over our rights started with the Bush administration, do you? I'm pretty sure he wasn't in the white house when The Black Panther Party formed because they were tired of seeing black folk getting their heads bashed in by the cops...
Nice video, though.

[sky]

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