Recently, one of New York's intermediate appellate courts, Appellate Division 2nd Department, has made it more difficult to prosecute the "usual" on the menu of police caught in misconduct - charging a person who recorded such a misconduct with "obstruction of governmental administration".
Usually the police arrest people for "obstruction" - and then think how to justify the arrest.
Well, the 2nd Department has made bringing such criminal charges harder - by actually following the law and requiring to provide what the law has required to provide all along - non-hearsay support for each element of the charged crime, and description of the allegedly obstructed government function, in specificity.
Which did not prevent the police in Syracuse, NY, Onondaga County - that is the 4th Department - to concoct charges against an individual who recorded police misconduct.
The interesting point is not only the police that committed misconduct, but the District Attorney's Office of the Onondaga County who went along with it and is pressing charges against the reporter of police misconduct.
But, of course, in the situation where the local judges of federal court are former prosecutors of that office and preside over civil rights lawsuits against that office, invariably ruling for that office, I wrote about that on this blog before - the Onondaga County DA may seem unreachable by any attempts at accountability.
What police was trying to do by arresting the individual for recording them is, of course, destroy the evidence, the videotape.
Yet, that was not possible, because the individual, Maurice "Mo" Crawley, knew those police tricks and, as a precaution against attempts of our noble public servants to falsify evidence, live-streamed his recordings to his Facebook page - a recording that later, reportedly, went viral.
The Onondaga County Chief of Police, after viewing the video made by Mr. Crawley, including the video of his arrest, said one word as to his impression - "Troubling". It is interesting to know what was troubling more to the Chief of Police - the contents of the video or the fact that his "boys" were indiscreet enough to allow themselves to be caught on video recording - and on a live-streamed video-recording, too.
Mr. Crawley was charged with resisting arrest and "interfering with investigation". How can a person interfere with an investigation on a public street by video-recording it from afar, nobody knows, and the Onondaga police force needs to be trained just a little bit better as to "resisting arrest" charges - because in New York, an unlawful arrest can be resisted with deadly force, if necessary, and there was nothing lawful in arresting an individual for recording the police.
So far, Mr. Crawley was arrested, put in jail, released on bail, but charges against him - completely unconstitutional charges - were not dismissed and continue to be pressed by the Onondaga DA's office, which is attorney misconduct.
The court lingers with dismissing the case obviously protecting the police, because once the case is dismissed, the police can be immediately sued in federal court. If a civil rights lawsuit is filed at this time, it will most likely be dismissed on the "Younger abstention" ground - claiming that the state court has an ability to resolve constitutional matters in question as well as the federal court.
We will see just how well the federal court will resolve those constitutional issues - where a man was arrested for asking the officer to repeat what he said, and, mainly, for recording the police.
One lesson Maurice "Mo" Crawley taught all of us though - if you are recording the police, LIVESTREAM it immediately, this way the evidence will be instantly preserved on an independent remote server unreachable by the police.
Otherwise, our noble and brave public servants will try to use their armed force to get the evidence you created against them, destroy it and make up some criminal charges against you in retaliation for filming them in the first place.
So, #LivestreamRecordingOfPoliceMisconduct. It may make a difference between life and death for you and other people.
I will continue to cover this case.
Stay tuned.
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