Pixiq

I've long wondered when cops would "wisen up" and decide to destroy SIM and SD cards in a means to destroy evidence. I've got a quick lock system enabled on my phone so I can password lock it in an instant, but I really have no way of quickly and efficiently, without notice, take out my SD card.

While I hope this photographer does get his compensation, I really hope he shares the video with the world, so real justice can be served.

If only Eye-Fi made micro-SD cards. Rumor has it that they will find a stash of narcotics next, and then maybe some spent shells, and a bloody knife from an unsolved murder. They've just begun searching the car.

I'm wondering how he went from filming to getting the sim card out and into his mouth without the officer noticing... Is Narces Benoit a pseudonym for David Blaine?

Rance,

I'm just playing the scene out in my head, but perhaps after they smashed his cell phone he simply grabbed the SD card out of the wreckage and slipped it into his mouth.

I'm glad it survived; I once stashed an SD card in my shoe to avoid police seizure. But the card was corrupt when I finally got it home.

With the amazing success of this community on my project, and thank you so much, perhaps Narces Benoit would be willing to sell that video to the public domain through a Kickstarter campaign...

Are you kidding me? That is some ninja shit right there. He needs to release that video as soon as possible, forget about compensation, that can be used to bring down some serious corruption in that city.

It was an Evo, no SIM card, SIM does not equal SD.
Yes I no it makes little difference in the story, but facts are facts.
Considering how hard the SD card is to get out of the Evo I am surprised he was able to get it.
But I would love to see the video.

I sit here saying to myself, "yep the cops are fucked this time", yet here is a 22 year old man murdered for no apparent reason. There will be no justice and none of these cops will see a single bit of jail time, we will be lucky if they are ever even charged.

Simple fact is I no longer trust anyone in an authority position, I instantly think of what they could be hiding.

What we need is a video camera that directly streams, as you record, to a secure online databank. (where you would have your own account). So if the camera is destroyed the video will be saved.

I'm sure there's already a way to do this but if there is it isn't well known.

Here's another video of the shooting that cops didn't destroy, shot from several stories above the street-

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ef7_1306812064

Could that be Benoit’s white car reversing out of the intersection, top right, 0:10-0:13?The Herald article Carlos linked to mentions him and his girlfriend backing out of the intersection.

Do I remember correctly that witnesses to Oscar Grant's police shooting death said Mehserle's fellow cops followed up by running around the train platform demanding people hand over their cellphones? Wonder if they were ever returned.

Makes you wonder if illegally seizing and destroying video evidence is now a regular part of police officers' off-the-record training.

As usual, I found myself reading about police abusing their power in this manner with a mix of disgust and amazement. But I am curious as to why you chose to end the article with this:

"Also, an hour after that shooting, another officer shot at a man who she believed was driving towards her. But he turned out to be allegedly drunk, which is why he was driving erratically and eventually into a police cruiser."

This sounds like a completely unrelated incident, in which an officer may have reasonably believed her life was in danger (the car did, after all, eventually strike a police cruiser).

These little add-ons make me uncomfortable, and undermine the strength of the rest of the post. It changes the tone from one of attacking police brutality to one of simply attacking police, or authority at large.

Wow, that is a blatant abuse of authority. It can't look good that they were destroying evidence. This is why Qik is a good idea to have, or at the very least, a quick password protect.

(And yes, it was a SD card, not a SIM card. A brilliant move by the guy nonetheless).

Where is Johnny Law when he's needed to explain police actions?

As I've said before the public is more likely to be shot by police officers during a traffic stop than the other way around. In one night they shot 5 people, 4 who's only "crime" was standing on the sidewalk.

From where I sit I think they need to take all the firearms away from the police in South Florida and let them do the job without them. We would all be a lot safer and that's what the police are supposed to be about. Making the public safer.

JL is out there choke slamming the dancing citizens of the United States.

There's smart and nice, dumb and nice, smart and nasty, dumb and nasty ... then there's Miami Beach Police. Thank goodness that at least they're not smart.

Ancient Chinese secret:
Cops can best use the "Fog of War" defense if
all cameras are seized and destroyed.

Whoever has that video better stash away a few copies before the cops show up with a subpoena demanding it as "evidence" that will somehow mysteriously disappear before it sees the light of day.

nothing unexpected.

Nothing to see here.

Move along, move along - and turn in your cell phone on the way out, please.

It seems to me there will come a point in time (which was long before now), when you should be carrying two phones. One that is your every day working phone.. and the other which is your "non-service working beater" that you hand over to the Cops.. or the one they take from you and smash.

They're that dumb that they probably wouldn't know the difference when it happened. It seem like every garage/yard sale has a "beater" phone being sold for a couple of bucks. Cheap insurance I think.

Rail Car Fan

This is why my phone is setup to stream LIVE to (at the moment) USTREAM. Cops would have a harder time deleting it there, and even if my phone is destroyed, the evidence is still there online.

It's possible some officers may go to prison for murder. The officer that destroyed the phone could be prosecuted for destruction of evidence.