Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Remember the guy who was arrested for "unlawful photography" for taking a picture of the police making a traffic stop? This blog has more details on the case, which goes to trial this week, including an interview with the guy who was arrested, Scott Conover. Turns out there's quite a history of police harassment here. Long excerpt below the fold:
It won't be the first time he's faced off against the Johnson County Sheriff's Office in court."A couple of years ago, we had problems with the sheriff, so we sued them and settled out of court for an undisclosed sum," he said.
But the problems started even before that, after he witnessed deputies beating a man in front of the restaurant/bar he owns.
"They beat the shit out of him," he said. "The guy's lawyer came back and took witness statements. When the statements made it back to the sheriff's department, they came by and asked me why I was getting involved."
Not long after that, deputies started staking out his business, Jammers Rocking Road House, which he said is modeled after the Tiki Bar in Key Largo.
"They were wolf-packing my customers," he said. "They would lie and wait for them to leave and then pull them over to see if they had been drinking."
Conover struck back by suing them.
When he pulled over to take the picture of the officers that night, it was because they had pulled over one of his bar patrons. He knew who they were, knew that the wife, who had not been drinking, was driving while the husband, who had been drinking, was in the passenger seat.
When they arrested Conover, his 12 year old daughter started taking pictures and they threatened to arrest her too. The blog post contains those pictures as well. Here's my favorite part:
At the jail, Conover asked McCloud if had ever heard of the First Amendment."He then turned to me and said, 'I'm charging you with disorderly conduct'."
Thirty minutes later, after McCloud had left the jail - and had time to think of what other charges he could come up with - he called the jailer and added another charge against Conover; pointing a laser at an officer.
The problem is, the IPhone does not even emit a laser. A local TV station even aired a segment where they proved the phone did not emit a laser, Conover said.
Sounds like we have a police officer who should be brought up on charges of filing a false report. I can't believe this case has gone forward. What the hell is the local D.A. thinking?
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He's thinking "I better go after this guy these knuckle-dragger's harassed before they start harassing me too"
He can look good in front of the local cops, even though he knows what they did was laughably illegal. Of course he may be an idiot as well, and he may honestly believe what the guy did was illegal. As Henry Fonda said in Twelve Angry Men "It's also possible for a lawyer to be just plain stupid."
Posted by: random guy | August 8, 2008 10:00 AM
Obviously Medved hasn't read Kuhn. The only way to kill a scientific theory is to replace it with a theory that does a better job explaining.
So even if evolutionary theory was wrong, they wouldn't be able to replace it with a non-explanatory non-theory.
It's nice to see a bit of honesty from them, and from Medved, though. Quite refreshing.
Posted by: James Hanley | August 8, 2008 10:21 AM
Re James Hanley
Mr. Hanley posts on the wrong thread!
Posted by: SLC | August 8, 2008 10:42 AM
Well, the solution will be to publicize this case as much as possible, to the point where it becomes essential for as high an authority as possible to get involved in order to save it re-election campaing. The ideal thing would be for the DA to be fired and disbarred (assuming there was no criminal intent) and for the sherrif to be fired, and sentenced to a good long prison term.
There are few things that disgust more than a dirty cop; show no mercy.
Posted by: Valhar2000 | August 8, 2008 11:44 AM
I do have a camera that has a laser-based auto-focus. If I take a picture of a cop with it, I can be charged with "pointing a laser at an officer"? Seriously?
Posted by: jpf | August 8, 2008 12:03 PM
I did indeed post on the wrong thread, and I'm not sure how I managed to do so. (palm-->head)
Posted by: James Hanley | August 8, 2008 12:06 PM
Found that pointing a laser at an officer is illegal in Virginia.
A funny part to that law is that it also forbids point "any device that simulates a laser". So, technically, I would think a red LED with a tight focuser around it would qualify ... fun
Posted by: Mike Webster | August 8, 2008 12:14 PM
My apologies, it appears html is only for style. Here's the link to the Virginian law:
http://law.justia.com/virginia/codes/toc1802000/18.2-57.01.html
Posted by: Mike Webster | August 8, 2008 12:16 PM
IIRC, a few years back there were a number of cases of people flashing cops with laser pointers, either to blind/disorient them, or to make them think they were being targetted with laser sights. Don't know how many actual cases there were (as opposedto urban legend cases) but I believe that's where these laws come from.
Which IMO does nothing to detract from the stupidity of this specific case.
Posted by: wscott | August 8, 2008 1:48 PM
Mike Webster,
I've found that links whose target URL is not in quotes tend to end up stillborn on these blogs. I don't know if that's an HTML standards thing or something else that's just here to annoy me.
Posted by: Troublesome Frog | August 8, 2008 4:18 PM
It's HTML standard to put the URL in quotes: <a href="http://example.com/">linky</a>
Posted by: jpf | August 9, 2008 1:13 AM
I always consider "disorderly conduct" charges to be a warning sign. While they're often valid they're also police shorthand for "You annoyed me and I can't think up anything good right now."
Posted by: Hypatia | August 9, 2008 9:01 AM
The cops are probably drunk from eating too much semen when eating at the County Jail where jailers and visitors food is prepared by inmates.
Hope the cop gets shot every time he goes on the street. Maybe if enough photos of him start appearing he will get the idea that he is 'fair game' in public. Photoshop a few and put him in the middle of a San Francisco gay orgy or something. Would serve him right.
Lying sack of horse manure in a deputy uniform.
Posted by: Mahonri | August 10, 2008 3:31 PM