Photog Arrested In Texas

at a public street fair unless one is seen sticking a camera up
a dress ,they should never have been stoped or questioned.
ever!

chuxter said:

Agreed. The Southlake Police officer interviewed on Channel 5 said
that they DID look at the pix, implying that they were obviously
suspect.

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Well... the news report implied it, the police did not. I can almost guarantee you that the nature of the photos was mentioned only briefly if at all on the police report. The report probably just said they were responding to complaints, which is enough to arrest the guy for further investigation. Believe me, cops know how to cover their butts better than that. ;-)

ryanm

Roland Karlsson said:

If you believe the media - the cops did look at the pictures before
arresting the man. Now - as we have leraned now (if we can believe
the media) is that the pictures were harmless.

So either (1) the media is lying, (2) the cops ar crooks or (3) the
let go the man although the pictures were suspect.

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But the cops never said that there was incriminating evidence on the camera, the media implied it, and people just jump to conclusions. It doesn't make the cops crooks, they responded to complaints, so they did their job. If the pics were suspect, the DA wouldn't have dismissed it. If it was even questionable the DA probably would've let it go to a judge and jury to decide, so the fact that he was released says the pics were harmless. I don't know if the media is lying or not, but it wouldn't suprise me.

ryanm

charli said:

at a public street fair unless one is seen sticking a camera up
a dress ,they should never have been stoped or questioned.
ever!

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You can be questioned just for being at a public street fair. In public, the police can question you all they want. You don't have to answer, but they can ask. You don't need a camera to be stopped for being suspicous, particularly if someone calls them to complain about you.

ryanm

Patrick Martin said:

The system worked here.

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Exactly.

Patrick Martin said:

It is an unfortunate fact of life that sometimes police make
mistakes. They are human beings, we'll never prevent all that. In
this case, if their mistakes were too bad, then the man will be
able to sue them for damages for wrongful arrest.

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Actually, there is no wrongful arrest statute in Texas. Wrongful death, wrongful imprisonment, and wrongful conviction, but not wrongful arrest. They could take the PD to civil court, but since he was given his due process and the case was thrown out, he's unlikely to get anything from them. The news station, on the other hand, he might be able to get a settlement from.

Patrick Martin said:

Would you rather the police have the power to arrest
people in secret and not tell anybody else?

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Wait... you mean there's a cost that goes with this freedom? ;-)

ryanm

morelia said:

morelia said:

The system worked here.

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Exactly.

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We will have to remember this when one of you is whisked away by an overly zealous police officer with no proof or cause.

critter1 said:

We will have to remember this when one of you is whisked away by an
overly zealous police officer with no proof or cause.

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Complaints are cause for arrest. So are speeding, jaywalking, or littering. The cops can arrest you for just about anything. What they can't do is deny you due process, which this guy got, and was set free.

ryanm

Actually, the speed with which the case was tossed makes it more likely that a civil suit will be successful. The question will be whether the officers had probable cause to arrest him based on the facts that they had at the time. If not, then he'll have a cause of action against them.

--
Patrick Martin
http://www.patrickmartin.com

No country has perfect police officers. Mistakes happen. Here, perhaps the training given the police officers failed (I don't know, as I still haven't seen the pictures at issue and won't jump to conclusions). But the man was not even subjected to a trial.

Saying that the system worked does not excuse the police for making a mistake. We build in all these components of the system precisely because we KNOW that everybody is human and makes mistakes. So we do our best to make sure that those mistakes doesn't land innocent people in jail. (and yes, sometimes the system itself does fail... but I'll still rate our system up against any other in the world).

--
Patrick Martin
http://www.patrickmartin.com

(NT)