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UPDATE: On 9/12/2012 the Dallas Sheriff's Office suspended Deputy Westbrook for 38-days without pay. ***

This is a raw video. The highlights of this video sections can be found here:
- 3:28 Initial interaction
- 6:31 Arrest
- 7:59 Final Interaction

On Memorial Day Weekend, motorcycle rider Chris Moore was arrested by Dallas Deputy Sheriff James Westbrook. The arrest was part of crackdown against sport bike riders. Moore says Westbrook made up a charge in order to gain access to the video camera mounted on his helmet.

Sheriff suspends deputy who seized biker's camera
http://www.wfaa.com/news/crime/Sheriff-suspends-deputy-who-seized-bike
rs-camera-169543346.html

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – On Memorial Day weekend, Chris Moore was riding his motorcycle down Interstate 35 in West Dallas with a gaggle of other bikers when he was pulled over.

He said he’d just bought a Go-Pro camera and strapped it atop his helmet to document the ride, which was “a Memorial ride for some fallen riders,” Moore said.

“Just riding with a group, going down the highway, then the mayhem started,” Moore added.

Dallas Sheriff’s Deputy James Westbrook pulled him over. Moore’s camera captured about a dozen riders headed down the freeway. The deputy then pulls up behind, Moore pulls over and then Westbrook tells him he needs to take the camera as evidence.

Here’s the full conversation:


Moore: Was I doing something wrong? What am I being pulled over for?

Westbrook: The whole group of you, yes.

Moore: No, I was not individually sir; how can you pull me over?

Westbrook: The reason you’re being pulled over is because I’m going to take your camera and we’re going to use it as evidence of the crimes that have been committed by other bikers.

Moore: I have not committed any crimes and you cannot take my personal property from me, sir.

Westbrook then goes back to his squad car for a few minutes. When he gets out, he tells Moore he’s being arrested for having an obstructed license plate.

“I was in shock,” Moore said. “Totally surprised; I didn’t think anything I did deserved an arrestable offense.”

The thing is, Moore’s camera may have only caught about a dozen riders, but dash cam footage from a deputy squad car shows it being surrounded by more than 100 bikers. When Westbrook pulled Moore over and told him he was taking the Go-Pro camera, the deputy was hoping it caught higher quality footage that could help incriminate some of that group.

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/06/20/sheriffs-office-biker-disagree-on-m
emorial-day-arrest/

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Man who filmed plainclothes cop pulling gun on him now threatened with prison

The audacity of the Maryland State Police is not that one of its plainclothes officers pulled his gun out on a motorcyclist after pulling him over for speeding.

We wouldn’t expect anything less from them.

The audacity is that they are threatening the man with prison for posting a video of the incident online.

The motorcyclist, an Air National Guardsman named Anthony Graber, was wearing a video camera on his helmet when he was pulled over. Not much different than the dash cams the cops use in their cars.

And the cop, as thuggish as he came across in the video, had absolutely no expectation of privacy when he pulled Graber over and pulled his gun out on him.

But now police are claiming that Graber recorded the cop illegally because Maryland is a two-party consent state when it comes to recording people, according to WJZ-13.

However, that law usually applies to when people have an expectation of privacy. Not when they are pulling a gun out on a citizen on the side of a busy road in broad daylight.

Here is an analysis of the Maryland law posted on the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which reveals that these Maryland cops are pulling laws out of their asses.


State courts have interpreted the laws to protect communications only when the parties have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus, where a person in a private apartment was speaking so loudly that residents of an adjoining apartment could hear without any sound enhancing device, recording without the speaker’s consent did not violate the wiretapping law. Malpas v. Maryland, 695 A.2d 588 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 1997); see also Benford v. American Broadcasting Co., 649 F. Supp. 9 (D. Md. 1986) (salesman’s presentation in stranger’s home not assumed to carry expectation of privacy).

The obvious truth is that these cops are embarrassed about coming across as thugs on video. In fact, Graber thought he was about to get murdered.


“I was afraid. I thought the person, at the time I didn’t know it was an officer, was going to shoot me,” Graber told the TV news station.

Graber was cited on location for traveling more than 100 mph on his bike. He was also accused of popping wheelies. And Graber apparently paid the fines because the case was then closed.

But police showed up to his house more than a month later after they saw the video he had posted online.

Then they threatened him with prison after accusing him of breaking the wiretapping law.


Maryland is a two-party consent state. That means you can’t record somebody without telling them. It’s a felony to break that law.

That’s exactly what state police told the motorcyclist when they came to his house more than a month after he’d been pulled over.

“I don’t want to go to jail. I haven’t really done anything wrong. It wasn’t a violent crime. No one was injured. No one was hurt,” said Graber.

The Harford County state’s attorney is handling the case but has not charged the motorcyclist.

We’ve seen cops use that same law several times in several states only for it to be thrown out of court. This one shouldn’t even make it to court.

http://www.pixiq.com/article/man-who-filmed-plainclothes-cop-pulling-g
un-on-him-getting-threatened-with-prison

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