Someone is facing potentially 16 years in prison....

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skafather84
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21 Jul 2010, 10:55 am

Who and why?







[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7PC9cZEWCQ&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]


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AngelRho
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21 Jul 2010, 11:44 am

Oooooh, THAT guy.

Dude, someone needs to take away Anthony Graber's driver's license. He admits to reckless driving, popping wheelies, and so forth.

Now, I'm not going to say it's OK for random guys to jump out of cars with guns (how do WE know they're cops?). I'm not even going to say it's right to penalize someone for videotaping police confrontations. But I WILL say it's pretty stupid to set up that kind of scene for the express purpose of making cops look like idiots (what did you THINK would happen?).

It's probably wrong to set a penalty just because the guy put the video on youtube. But given the blatant stupidity that led up to the police confrontation in the first place, Anthony probably had it coming.


FYI: I've had a couple of bad experience by one particular SUNY rent-a-cop who attempted to bust me not once, but TWICE for drunk driving. My real crime? Being out late. The first time I passed a field test (nobody EVER passes field tests, just so you know) and THEN the cop tried to pull some garbage about how he COULD have written me a ticket for a completely made-up violation. The second time, the SAME GUY busted me for failing to make a left turn signal. Well, I was SURE that I'd signaled as it is my habit to do so. But if it was true that I hadn't signaled, there were no other vehicles on the street on that part of campus at that time, and the cop had obviously been far enough away that he broke a few traffic rules himself to make sure he caught up with me before I could get out of my car since, after all, I was in a PARKING LOT. I mean, I've never even HEARD of people getting "pulled over" for parking their cars!! !

So don't think I'm ignoring the fact that cops can be real jerks. I've been there. But I'd never intentionally do something that was against the law KNOWING that my actions could result in some altercation with the po-po.

Well... There was that ONE time my wife was bleeding profusely while she was pregnant with my daughter. YES, I was going WAY too fast for any ordinary situation, and I may even have driven over a few curbs along the way to get to the hospital. I like to think that situation is understandable in light of the circumstances, and I was lucky to not get caught by state troopers or city police. In doing so I saved my daughter's life, and I feel that's perfectly justified. I think even the cops would agree.



skafather84
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21 Jul 2010, 12:50 pm

Yeah but he's facing 16 years for videotaping the incident...which was more a coincidence than anything. He deserved a ticket for his driving, sure. He didn't deserve having a gun pulled on him by a plainclothes officer who didn't present a badge or have a car that indicated in any way that it was a cop car (there are civilian looking cars with flashers). He didn't deserve to be basically cut off and nearly hit by the cop car. And he doesn't deserve prison time especially given how the video brought to light some pretty abusive actions by the officer who didn't feel the need to show his badge but did feel the need to act phallicly challenged.


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AngelRho
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21 Jul 2010, 1:39 pm

Phallicly challenged? LOL Yeah, you're probably right.

I think they might just be trying to make an example of him. Quoting wiretap laws seems to be a stretch here, but wiretapping IS a pretty serious crime. I just don't see how it could work in this case, though.

The only thing I could see as being a legit problem, though, is that showing the video is nothing more than a ploy to gain public sympathy for the guy. Manipulating the PUBLIC means manipulating the jury if he has to face a jury trial. It means that, no matter what, no jury trial could possibly end as anything other than a mistrial. A better solution, I think, would have been to just pay the fine, relocate outside the jurisdiction, and THEN release the video. That way, he'd never have to face reprisal, he'd expose the extreme, unnecessary tactics of the state fuzz, and he might actually manage to force some change in regulation.

Undermining the authority of the po-po DOES present a danger to society at large. If law enforcement can't enforce laws without fear of reprisal, then everyday Joes like us have no protection under the law. For my money, whether he deserves 16 years is not the issue. It's whether the law has the authority to "stick it" to idiots like that to keep the same thing from happening again.

Another thing: Ever hear of the legal doctrine of "unclean hands"? It's something that comes up in court every now and then. It happens whenever you have a situation in which one person cannot accuse someone else of wrongdoing without exposing the accuser's OWN wrongdoing. What we have HERE is a case in which a man was caught behaving badly and, in the process of being caught, catches law enforcement behaving badly also. The argument becomes would he have been caught had he been obeying the law? And if he hadn't been behaving badly, would the situation that followed have happened? I'm sure not likely.

I mean, I'd like to say I agree with how law enforcement handled the situation and that the possible punishment is fair, but it doesn't seem so. But I also can't agree that his actions were appropriate either. There's honestly no real way for me to choose sides on this one.



xenon13
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21 Jul 2010, 2:13 pm

James O'Keefe broke that very same law in Maryland for fraudulent purposes and he has not been charged. This shows that the law is not equally applied. The motorcyclist here served as a whistle-blower exposing dangerous activity by the police, O'Keefe served to smear an organisation with edited footage misleadingly packaged. Seems to me that the message is that it's OK to smear groups like ACORN but don't you dare expose the police wrongdoing. In other words, things are as expected.



Jono
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21 Jul 2010, 2:23 pm

skafather84 wrote:
Yeah but he's facing 16 years for videotaping the incident...which was more a coincidence than anything. He deserved a ticket for his driving, sure. He didn't deserve having a gun pulled on him by a plainclothes officer who didn't present a badge or have a car that indicated in any way that it was a cop car (there are civilian looking cars with flashers). He didn't deserve to be basically cut off and nearly hit by the cop car. And he doesn't deserve prison time especially given how the video brought to light some pretty abusive actions by the officer who didn't feel the need to show his badge but did feel the need to act phallicly challenged.


What is being charged with to face 16 years in prison? It couldn't of just been for something that he could of gotten a ticket for.



AngelRho
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21 Jul 2010, 4:11 pm

xenon13 wrote:
James O'Keefe broke that very same law in Maryland for fraudulent purposes and he has not been charged. This shows that the law is not equally applied. The motorcyclist here served as a whistle-blower exposing dangerous activity by the police, O'Keefe served to smear an organisation with edited footage misleadingly packaged. Seems to me that the message is that it's OK to smear groups like ACORN but don't you dare expose the police wrongdoing. In other words, things are as expected.


Well... James O'Keefe is known for going after some pretty ugly organizations. He takes risks, sure, and I think he's to be admired for exposing corrupt practices of these people. Graber, on the other hand, did something that might be seen by state troopers as an act of provocation. I'm not saying I'm siding with the police officer here, I'm just saying that what he DID might have caused the misperception that Graber was dangerous. My personal opinion on this is that Graber's video would have been inappropriate for public release prior to a jury trial. It WOULD, however, have been admissible as a means of convincing a jury that police had acted inappropriately and that the case ought to have been thrown out based on an illegal arrest--same as when evidence is gathered without probable cause or a warrant obtained from a judge. Releasing a video to the public, as I've said before, makes it impossible to believe that an impartial jury can truly be selected.

If you look at O'Keefe as an independent investigative reporter, what he's done is really no different than all those Dateline stings that caught all those online child molesters. The activities of ACORN have long been suspect. Planned Parenthood is another slimy organization. I'm not trying to get into pro-life/pro-choice here, but I would think even the choicers would see the problems with Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics. All O'Keefe did was bring the facts to such public view as to make it impossible to ignore.

O'Keefe is not without his faults, either. Going after Landrieu was probably the stupidest thing he could have done. My wife is perhaps the only paralegal I know who actually spends a lot of time in the courtroom and is no stranger to a "Federal Building." These guys don't play around, and it's hardly likely that O'Keefe didn't know that what he was doing was illegal. It was OBVIOUS. I'm a fairly conservative guy and even I can see that. But speaking from a conservative point of view, I will say it's interesting that O'Keefe was only caught in a time when the political climate had turned against him. What if O'Keefe had succeeded and it had come out that Landrieu really was ignoring constituent objections to health care? Evidence of that might have staved off the so-called "Louisiana Purchase" and possibly proved damning to Obamacare. Assuming O'Keefe was right, it would have been a political disaster for Landrieu and potentially the presidency. All things considered, it wasn't O'Keefe's best moment. He shouldn't have wasted his time with Landrieu, and he should have found a more creative way of proving his point.



skafather84
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21 Jul 2010, 6:34 pm

Jono wrote:
skafather84 wrote:
Yeah but he's facing 16 years for videotaping the incident...which was more a coincidence than anything. He deserved a ticket for his driving, sure. He didn't deserve having a gun pulled on him by a plainclothes officer who didn't present a badge or have a car that indicated in any way that it was a cop car (there are civilian looking cars with flashers). He didn't deserve to be basically cut off and nearly hit by the cop car. And he doesn't deserve prison time especially given how the video brought to light some pretty abusive actions by the officer who didn't feel the need to show his badge but did feel the need to act phallicly challenged.


What is being charged with to face 16 years in prison? It couldn't of just been for something that he could of gotten a ticket for.


Wiretapping laws. Filming a law officer without permission falls under many wiretapping laws. The maximum penalty the law carries is 16 years.

Edit: and let's not forget that even if he doesn't get that, it's a criminal charge which means he has to shell out money for a lawyer.


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skafather84
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21 Jul 2010, 6:36 pm

xenon13 wrote:
James O'Keefe broke that very same law in Maryland for fraudulent purposes and he has not been charged. This shows that the law is not equally applied. The motorcyclist here served as a whistle-blower exposing dangerous activity by the police, O'Keefe served to smear an organisation with edited footage misleadingly packaged. Seems to me that the message is that it's OK to smear groups like ACORN but don't you dare expose the police wrongdoing. In other words, things are as expected.


He got a slap on the wrist for trying to wiretap a senator's office and trying to enter a federal building with fraudulent credentials here in Louisiana. He's a rich white kid so of course the laws don't apply the same.


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NeantHumain
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21 Jul 2010, 7:00 pm

16 years is obviously grossly excessive (unless there's something missing from that video).



xenon13
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21 Jul 2010, 7:11 pm

AngelRho wrote:
xenon13 wrote:
James O'Keefe broke that very same law in Maryland for fraudulent purposes and he has not been charged. This shows that the law is not equally applied. The motorcyclist here served as a whistle-blower exposing dangerous activity by the police, O'Keefe served to smear an organisation with edited footage misleadingly packaged. Seems to me that the message is that it's OK to smear groups like ACORN but don't you dare expose the police wrongdoing. In other words, things are as expected.


Well... James O'Keefe is known for going after some pretty ugly organizations. He takes risks, sure, and I think he's to be admired for exposing corrupt practices of these people. Graber, on the other hand, did something that might be seen by state troopers as an act of provocation. I'm not saying I'm siding with the police officer here, I'm just saying that what he DID might have caused the misperception that Graber was dangerous. My personal opinion on this is that Graber's video would have been inappropriate for public release prior to a jury trial. It WOULD, however, have been admissible as a means of convincing a jury that police had acted inappropriately and that the case ought to have been thrown out based on an illegal arrest--same as when evidence is gathered without probable cause or a warrant obtained from a judge. Releasing a video to the public, as I've said before, makes it impossible to believe that an impartial jury can truly be selected.

If you look at O'Keefe as an independent investigative reporter, what he's done is really no different than all those Dateline stings that caught all those online child molesters. The activities of ACORN have long been suspect. Planned Parenthood is another slimy organization. I'm not trying to get into pro-life/pro-choice here, but I would think even the choicers would see the problems with Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics. All O'Keefe did was bring the facts to such public view as to make it impossible to ignore.

O'Keefe is not without his faults, either. Going after Landrieu was probably the stupidest thing he could have done. My wife is perhaps the only paralegal I know who actually spends a lot of time in the courtroom and is no stranger to a "Federal Building." These guys don't play around, and it's hardly likely that O'Keefe didn't know that what he was doing was illegal. It was OBVIOUS. I'm a fairly conservative guy and even I can see that. But speaking from a conservative point of view, I will say it's interesting that O'Keefe was only caught in a time when the political climate had turned against him. What if O'Keefe had succeeded and it had come out that Landrieu really was ignoring constituent objections to health care? Evidence of that might have staved off the so-called "Louisiana Purchase" and possibly proved damning to Obamacare. Assuming O'Keefe was right, it would have been a political disaster for Landrieu and potentially the presidency. All things considered, it wasn't O'Keefe's best moment. He shouldn't have wasted his time with Landrieu, and he should have found a more creative way of proving his point.


Breitbart, who ran the O'Keefe videos, has been caught passing fake videos for the third time. First it was the video where he falsely accused black New Orleans people of worshipping Obama. Second was the O'Keefe videos that were fabricated. Now, for the third time, he released a doctored video that caused a US Department of Agriculture person to be fired. When the administration found out that it was faked, they apologised to her and are going to hire her again.

So it's clear that Breitbart has no credibility and when those ACORN videos were passed he already had been caught lying about black people worshipping Obama. Despite this he got away with it. Breitbart even has transcripts from the original ACORN footage that prove that the whole thing was fabricated through creative editing. ACORN was a group that helped protect people from the predatory actions of legal loansharks and the like. O'Keefe himself said that their crime was that they got black people to vote.



skafather84
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21 Jul 2010, 7:34 pm

I'm pretty sure Briebart and O'Keefe are racist scum.


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21 Jul 2010, 9:22 pm

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k6tTyRiXME[/youtube]

Breitbart should have been discredited with this video and this video alone. It came out on 29 September 2009, 20 days after the first of the ACORN videos were released. This blatant fake should have had alarm bells going off about the ACORN videos.



Last edited by xenon13 on 21 Jul 2010, 9:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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21 Jul 2010, 9:28 pm

skafather84 wrote:
He didn't deserve having a gun pulled on him by a plainclothes officer who didn't present a badge or have a car that indicated in any way that it was a cop car (there are civilian looking cars with flashers).


I have always heard an officer must be in uniform before making a traffic stop even if driving an unmarked car. Nevertheless, the cyclist did about the same thing as calling in a false alarm.


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skafather84
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21 Jul 2010, 10:13 pm

leejosepho wrote:
skafather84 wrote:
He didn't deserve having a gun pulled on him by a plainclothes officer who didn't present a badge or have a car that indicated in any way that it was a cop car (there are civilian looking cars with flashers).


I have always heard an officer must be in uniform before making a traffic stop even if driving an unmarked car. Nevertheless, the cyclist did about the same thing as calling in a false alarm.


I saw a regular-looking car recently with flashers in the head and taillights had pulled someone over and the officer was in uniform. The car itself was otherwise unmarked other than the flashers. To be honest, if it were me, I might not pull over unless I saw the uniform and even then, it could still be a scam. Undercover isn't supposed to be used on a day-to-day basis against citizens.


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22 Jul 2010, 7:01 am

skafather84 wrote:
I saw a regular-looking car recently with flashers in the head and taillights had pulled someone over and the officer was in uniform. The car itself was otherwise unmarked other than the flashers. To be honest, if it were me, I might not pull over unless I saw the uniform and even then, it could still be a scam.


Correct, and it is permissible to continue driving to a place of high visibility or some other sense of safety (such as other people who might observe) before even stopping at all.


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