Canadian Teenager Arrested For Photographing Mall Takedown 770
blackfrancis75 writes "An aspiring teenage journalist in B.C., Canada who witnessed a mall takedown and decided to photograph it (using a real-film camera), was told to 'delete' the photo by security guards. He (quite legally) refused to do so, and when local police arrived they assisted mall security in pushing him to the ground, handcuffing him, cutting off his backpack with a utility knife and searching it. 'He said the security guards held him, attempting to grab his camera, and he was pushed to the ground. He said he then tried to use his body to protect two cameras he carried in his bag.
"They're just yelling and screaming, and just telling me to stop resisting," Markiewicz said.'"
Re:Google Glass (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike the other respondents, I think crap like this will necessarily stop. You can assault one teenager with a camera. You can't assault 50 bystanders who are wearing a device that is basically taking and uploading pictures all the time. We'll start seeing mall "cops" fired for abusing patrons. We'll start seeing police fired (but not prosecuted, I fear) for abusing the public.
To be clear, I don't think all security are bad, not by a long shot. I think some are, and provably so. The problem now is that they're generally the ones with the cameras, and sometimes those dash cams or security cameras are mysteriously not working when they do something wrong.
A lot feel like surveillance is bad, but like speech and guns, surveillance is a tool that can be used for good or evil.
Re:I'm sorry but.. (Score:2, Interesting)
So the libertarian utopia might well turn out to be a nightmarish dystopia.
Re:Nothing to hide (Score:4, Interesting)
Mall cops... pfft...
This is like a perfect recipe for a news story:
(1) Low wage / Low IQ employees in a position of perceived authority
(2) Young person with no perceived authority
(3) Loose understanding of the laws and common sense
(4*) Sexually embarrassing a teen (*only recommended for hardcore McDonalds recipes)
We all remember the "Pièce de résistance" during the McDonalds illegal strip search of a teenager... clearly the aftermath of that wasn't shocking enough to make a difference.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_prank_call_scam [wikipedia.org]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFXeXK3szOk&feature=related [youtube.com]
Re:lawsuit time? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pretty libertarian and think there are far too many laws in this country but this is one of the cases which makes me favour some law over anarchy. This is one rare case where I'd feel justified in actually calling the police. ... oh wait!
I used to be libertarian, so I'll give you the spiel. Libertarians accept basic criminal law (battery, theft, etc) and contract law (especially rules clarifying how to buy and sell) statutes. That's probably 70% of the laws that affect you on a daily basis, the other 30% being traffic laws. (It's worth noting that assault with a motor vehicle is a criminal offense.)
The laws libertarians disagree with are the special handouts in tax law, the heavy regulation of business, government dictating what people can do with their property, and certain criminal laws that try to regulate society, e.g. sodomy laws. In a libertarian country, you would see people behaving in the same law-abiding manner as you do here. You'd probably find that cities and such would be far more chaotic and eccentric since there would be much less central planning, but there'd be no anarchy to speak of.
Who ya gona call, call ANONYMOUS (Score:5, Interesting)
Time to do a internet fight club on these nazi fuckers.
Lets organize a international VIDEO A COP DAY, and have 1000s of geeks with, RECORD A COP tshirts and just go recording them like its new craze.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:lawsuit time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, there's all that. Blah blah. I held opinions similar to yours until last year. And then I got first-hand experience with police thugs.
I was just standing there, watching people having their IDs checked, and failed to immediately comply told to move along. I got beaten up, arrested, and held overnight for fallacious reasons (being drunk). I sued the two cops for assault. They got off clean. I got a fine for good measure.
Fuck the police. And the justice system.
Re:lawsuit time? (Score:4, Interesting)
As opposed to government violence.
In Chicago (pardon my spelling) street violence seems to be mostly by the gangs, etc. The police don't even seem able to answer it in kind, so much.
Re:FREEZE! (Score:5, Interesting)
I have two problems with this argument.
First, it seems to me to be a rather narrow reading of of the federalist papers to validate current concerns, rather than a reading of them in the context of the general concerns of the populace a the time they were written. In doing so it glosses over the true purpose of No. 46, which was to calm fears regarding Madison's proposal that the federal government keep a standing army. Madison was the Big Government Guy in historical context, arguing against the anti-federalists who desired to keep the Articles of Confederation, a weaker federal government, and no standing army, which was obviously seen as a tool of governmental oppression. Madison was simply reminding the people that A. they had already handled that situation before, and B. that the basic federal structure of the states precluded the type of tyranny they most feared. I see No. 46 speaking more about the power of local political organization than about the right to bear arms.
Second, it strikes me as ridiculous to treat the federalist papers as some kind of authority over the constitution. They were pieces of propaganda. This is not to discount their value in framing the political debate in its context or in getting inside the minds of Hamilton and Madison. It is simply a fact. They were written to persuade the populace to support the Constitution. They were propaganda. While they may give insight, they are still advertising. And they certainly do not trump the fact that Article I Section 8 vests the power to organize the militia in Congress, not in the States. Whether or not an armed populace was, in the minds of our founders, provided for the purpose of overthrowing the federal government they were founding, in the Constitution it is tied to the militia, and the militia is explicitly created as a function of the federal government.
Re:lawsuit time? (Score:4, Interesting)
That only worked because the government thugs had arrived.
Had it only been the mall cops they would have been sued out of existence, its illegal in BC for security workers to even carry handcuffs.
Don't worry, it's for national security and the children.
Re:lawsuit time? (Score:2, Interesting)
What's to get? All great civilizations and empires have fallen. One reason (thinking of Rome) is they simply become too big to manage and ran into communication, economics and logistics barriers. Another is they were attacked and ruined with the very same technology they had passed on to conquered peoples in ill-advised remote wars (rather like the US training of fanatics such as Osama Bin Laden gave birth to AQ). Another is the famous moral and ethical decline of rulers (Rome).
Why should the US be exempt from what seems to be historically inevitable?
This isn't nearly as bad as it looks (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Security guards are pinning somebody down in a mall
2) Kid takes pictures
3) Mall 'cops' demand he delete photos from his *film* camera
4) Kid declines, tries to leave (while taking more pictures)
5) Guards assault the kid (unlawful, because all they're allowed to do is remove him for trespassing unless he's committed a crime, in which case they can hold him for police)
6) Kid is swearing and mouthing off (no shit!)
7) RCMP shows up, sees unruly teen being held by mall cops, and cuffs the kid.
8) Genius cop decides that to search the kid's backpack, he's going to cut the straps to get around the handcuffs
The real cops made some minor decisions that make things look worse, but given the circumstances I'm not sure we can really blame them. If the kid had kept his cool and done something smart - like politely request the guards be arrested for assaulting him when all he'd done is take a picture instead of cursing and being mouthy, this could have been a much funnier story.
Neither the kid nor the real cops handled the situation perfectly, but the real villains here are the minimum wage mall cops who should all be fired. If I were that kid, I'd be putting up their photos (and he still has those!) on a nice web site with the caption, "I work at Metrotown shopping mall in Burnaby, B.C., and I assault mall patrons for taking photographs, with the full support of the mall owners."... I bet things would change pretty damn quickly once that shitstorm caught on with the local news.
Re:lawsuit time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, recent events have demonstrated that the difference still exists in frequency, but the practices of reviled police states have now become acceptable practice in western democracy, which means the difference no longer exists in principle.
In the USA, the president can ask for anyone to be assassinated, and he will get this wish. There is no oversight on this process, and the legal doctrine which creates this power out of thin air is sealed from public review.
Also, in the USA, paramilitary police can now break down the door to your home, assassinate everyone inside, later admit they had the wrong house, and not face any repercussions whatsoever.
In the USA, children are being encouraged to report suspicious activities of their parents to government school employees. Ex-military and persons who profess an interest in the founding legal documents of the country are officially to be considered possible terrorists.
In Canada, if you profess a religious opinion in public which someone finds upsetting, you are hauled into a secret court.
So yeah. The US and Canada haven't quite caught up with former USSR, but we're working hard to get there.
Re:lawsuit time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since you're not an American, perhaps you're not up to speed on some of what goes on here.
The military police assassinating people primarily happens via drug raids. Local police forces now have SWAT teams. I live in a small town (100,000 persons), with some trivial amount of violent crime annually (perhaps 5 murders). Yet in my town there is a SWAT team, and they sortie several times per month. It is to break into peoples homes for drug enforcement.
In many towns in the USA, these raids are done as "no knock", that is, the police just break down the door, early in the morning (5am is a typical time). The pets are almost always killed while the terrified children watch. The father is often killed during these operations, since he, like any reasonable person, acts defensive, sometimes with a weapon ,when people break into his home in the middle of the night.
The police who incorrectly perform these raids against innocent people are NEVER reprimanded. The commanders and other people in the chain of information that cause the raids to go against the wrong address are NEVER reprimanded.
Regarding the president assassinating people: Perhaps you need to be an American to understand _principle_. In the US, there is this cherished principle that people who are not actively in the middle of commiting a crimeare to be arrested, to have a trial, to face their accuser, and so on.
Yet the current doctrine is that the president can say that _anyone_, _anywhere_ in the world is a terrorist -- and by his accusation alone, that person can be assassinated. This is de-facto the _same_ as saying that you don't like the kid down the street. Your ignorance on this matter makes me wonder if _YOU_ have ever lived in a police state. Do you think police state dictators actually say things like "I had him killed because his music sucked?" Of course not. People are killed for very good reasons -- like "undermining the will of the people" or "being a grave danger to the security of our homeland" and all kinds of other such bullshit.
The point isn't that I think Obama is killing people he doesn't like. The point is that he now has created (and used!) the power for himself to do so. And this power will be handed on to the next president, and so on. This is a critical inflection point in American history, and we will look back to this era and woefully mourn what we let these assholes get away with.
And no, you are wrong. No judge is required. The president's cabinet give him a list of targets, and he says yes or no to each one. That's what we know about the process.
Regarding the story in Canada: yes, I am referring to the hate speech tribunals. It is encouraging to hear that they are making token gestures to fix them. It is outrageous that they ever existed at all. Canada does not have free speech in any meaningful sense until these circuses are eliminated.