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Tuesday November 13, 2007
All charges against Jeff Weinsier have been unceremoniously dropped. It is now this guy’s responsibility as a journalist to sue the police for false arrest. Update: Bob’s got the full text of the SA Maggie Gerson’s memo. I love her for her common sense (Rick should read this twice): “As to the . . . Failing to Obey a lawful command charge, the arrest may have been lawful had there been a lawful command. However, the command does not appear to be lawful in this case since being on the sidewalk in and of itself is not illegal.”
Tags: civil liberties, media, police · Comment feed: RSS, atom
As always the police can arrest you for no good reason, throw you in jail, require exorbitant bail, take your cameras and threaten you with charges, all before the “legality” of what they are doing is even considered.
I strongly believe that there should be department penalties for officers who make arrests with no merit that are thrown out on cursory inspection by the prosectors.
Alesh: I read it a number of times before I posted it at SotP. I’ve always used the “lawful order” verbiage when discussing the commands of law enforcement officers.
BTW, another officer was buried in Broward yesterday. The third SoFla officer to be buried in the last 4 months. I’m not really sure how many have been charged with false arrest or have done something else that catches your attention and fancy, Alesh, but do you think when the 4th cop catches a bullet and winds up dead at the hands of another guy, like you, who thinks nothing of cops, that you’ll at least mention his or her name on the pages of CM?
Maybe?
.
Rick~
The point being that when you say something is a ‘lawful order’ it doesn’t necessarily make it so!
My heart goes out to the family and friends of t