Chicago Police Delete Journalism Professor's Video Footage Of Arrest

ralph_braseth_soc1.jpg

A journalism professor from Chicago says he was video recording police making an arrest Saturday night when the cops deleted his footage and threatened him with arrest.

Ralph Braseth, who teaches journalism at Loyola University, wasted no time in filing a complaint against the officers, which he sent to Jonathan Turley, who posted about the incident on his blog this morning.

Braseth was producing a documentary on African American teenagers from the Southside that gather on Michigan Avenue on Saturday nights. He was shooting an arrest on Saturday, November 12, 2011 when he says officers spotted him and took him to their cruiser. They allegedly asked for his camera and erased the arrest footage and “told me I was lucky I wasn’t going to jail and let me go.”

Considering the incident took place in Illinois, he is indeed lucky they didn’t put him in jail and charge with felony wiretapping. Perhaps his footage did not contain any audio.

Regardless if it did or not, they had no right to delete his footage.

But when you cops investigating cops, especially in Chicago, you already know his complaint is going nowhere.

I hope he had enough sense to attempt to recover the deleted files.


Please send stories, tips and videos to carlosmiller@magiccitymedia.com

 

Comments

Carlos Miller - Photography is Not a Crime
Pixiq Expert

Alvarez vs ACLU is still pending. It could be any day now they come out with a decision.

hal

was he shooting tape, digital, or hard drive? or what, if it was tape, it may not be able to be recovered, what camera was he shooting with? [make and model]

I've been absolutely amazed at what ddrescue and PhotoRec can recover... hopefully he was shooting digitally and he can recover the footage and file suit after the 7th Circuit sides with the First Amendment.

JdL

Typical thug cop behavior. Scum of the earth!

tz

Perhaps an Eye-Fi (with wireless tether) is in order, or perhaps I or someone should write apps which would in the background monitor and make encrypted backups of photos and/or videos in innocuous places.

edit - I should also note that even reformatting a typical card doesn't erase the data, you need a special erase utility. "Delete" usually leaves the data where it isn't hard to recover.

Good luck to any cop trying to delete footage shot with my camera; it HAS no 'delete' function, by deliberate design -; to ensure accidental deletion of footage on set is impossible. Once shot, files can only be deleted when the magazine is put in a special reader attached to a computer.

Mike

Good Luck with that one.

Knowing "Badge Bully" cops, you'll just find your camera confiscated (er.. I mean held for evidence) and next thing you know it'll come up missing or have been accidentally dropped and broken.

Rail Car Fan

hal

mike, i want that camera, make and model please. send to rebeldslr@gmail.com please, thank you.
[and also, please dont give this email out to just anyone, only other fellow photographers that do shoots with nude and/or topless shoot of hard bodied very young women, hal]

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