Pixiq

How come the police don’t know the “law”? Aren’t the police supposed to enforce the “law” which includes the Amendments to US constitution? So the police are breaking the “law”?

Handing over the camera was probably the prudent thing to do. When you’re alone with no one else to corroborate your story, things can get very bad very quickly for you. Yah, demand the camera back, no need to get a lawyer unless they refuse to give it back.

Hahah, Hazy, this is East Chicago we’re talking about. I doubt he’s getting his camera back with a lawyer.

As near as I can tell, this was a shake down: give us your camera or we arrest you for trespassing (a charge that be unlikely to hold up in court given he was on a public roadway, although it has been closed to vehicle traffic). There’s a fairly decent chance there isn’t even a record of his camera being seized.

I think his best bet is to file a law suit and get it back in settlement money, but unless he has some way to collaborate his story, he may be out of luck (and a camera).
akagoldfish recently posted..Labor Day- an op-ed

Here is the problem. Police can ask for anything they want. They can ask for you to take off your pants and dance like chicken. YOU have to know your rights and deny their request. The hazy part is deciding when police are asking you to do something and when are they giving you a lawful order. Ignoring a policeman’s request is legal. Ignoring a lawful order is illegal.

“There’s a fairly decent chance there isn’t even a record of his camera being seized.”

That is highly likely, especially if the camera was expensive. I’d say there is a very good chance that the police just kept it. The same thing happened in the aftermath of Katrina when the New Orleans police illegally seized hundreds of guns. Many of them were never recorded as seizures and when the residents won their lawsuit to get them back, a lot of the guns went missing because the cops stole them.

When will this terrorism stop against the photographer by these idiot cops ? this should be reported to the news stations nation wide so people can see what kind of jerks are harassing people, this has got to stop.

Just an FYI, East Chicago is in Indiana, not Illinois, so it’s legal to video tape police there, something I’m sure this railfan wishes he’d done.
akagoldfish recently posted..Labor Day- an op-ed

The cops must have liked his camera and wanted one like that so they stole it from him.
duane kerzic recently posted..2010-08-31 Bike Shipping Day

Bob, and where do your rights fit in when you object to an illegal request/demand, and the LEO rests his hand on his gun and starts making noises about taking you downtown?

carlos miller needs to keep his dumbass at home in front of the tv news where he might learn something, instead of ranting about the police who protect him.
Arrested twice, he should know what he _shouldn't do with law enforcement.
he's young and dumb and apparently full of stupid energy.
You need to have your testosterone levels and your iq checked, carlos.

Guy, that’s where your right to due process in the form of access to the courts and tort law comes into play. Which is why it’s so important to be able to video tape police as evidence, and why they hate it so much.

goldfish, true, and I do agree with Bob. Of course, as shown by another article Carlos posted, the so-called due process received in the criminal justice system isn’t always going to respect your rights, either.

http://carlosmiller.com/2010/08/30/n-c-judge-who-convicted-woman-for-vid...

Guy, so that’s when you have an eye-fi card and a cellphone set up as a WiFi hotspot streaming your video to a personal website preferably hosted outisde the country. Then when the terrorists break your camera, you sue them and buy a nice new camera.

I have an Evo, and it uses Qik video streaming.
I did a test, I can stream the video and then pull the battery while it is streaming.
The video on the phone is corrupted, but the video on qik.com is saved and processed and is perfectly fine.

So if a cop wants to harrass me the camera comes out. It begins streaming.
If they break it or otherwise destroy my camera it is recorded on a secure server that they have no access to.
Most importantly, I can “shut the phone off” and it keeps recording.
I love android and the multitude of programs available for it.
James recently posted..Brittanty Boudoir

I, for one, appreciate living in a country where the most likely people to steal your camera are the same ones that are paid by our tax dollars to protect our property (the thieves are the guards).

I would suggest to all hobbyists who want to photograph ANY transit systems should invest in a video camera pen, keep in in your shirt or jacket breast pocket which will record while you’re involved photographing transit systems, this is one way to protect yourselves.

At this point I would like to say the secretary of the detective at ECPD has been cooperative and promised to call me tomorrow morning in regards to sorting this out. Only time will tell.

Thanks for the support…

Gabriel, your tomorrow is now yesterday. Did you get that call ?

My father went at picked it up today and it sounds like the last image I took was still on the play back, along with another 980 or so images. Again, I haven’t seen it first hand yet but it seems all is well. I find it hard to believe they even had time to look over it, what do you guys think?

My grandfather was a railfan and recorded years of the Grand Trunk RR, after his death we came across boxes of thousands of slides showing the evolution of the freight transportation system.

Due to the war on photorrorists future generations will not be able to do the same. Only terrorists like trains!