Two BPD officers face discipline for arresting man who videoed them making an arrest

There were lots and lots of arrests made with this bogus charge all over the Commonwealth. Citizens doing nothing more than recording the police in the course of their duties in a public place were arrested as if they had committed a crime because the police didn't want to be accountable to public scrutiny.

Frankly, construing the wiretapping law to include videotaping in public places was always a HUGE REACH.

It'd be interesting to look at past cases and see what BPD and other police departments said when the 'illegal wiretapping' charges were questioned.

I'd also like to know how the BPD can possibly put these two officers up on charges when the practice was officially sanctioned and the arrests made under this reading of the law were prosecuted. If the charges against the cops are nothing more than arresting Glik for illegal wiretapping then there's more to this story that we need to know.

Just as important, pay attention to new ways BPD and other police departments are insulating themselves from public scrutiny by making it very difficult for professional and citizen journalists to record them in public places.

If you were following the eviction of occupy Boston protestors, you might know that BPD told all journalists to stand in one corner of Dewey Sq. Then BPD chose one cameraman as a pool reporter to go into the park. Next, and this is where it gets objectionable, a line of police officers stood between the kettled journalists in the corner of the park and where the arrests were being made. They could see nothing. Beyond that, two livestreamers from Occupy Boston were singled out. One was taken from the group of journalists in the corner of the park and told he must go across the street, even further away. I was watching his livestream. He was the only one they kicked out. The second livestreamer was threatened with arrest if he didn't leave the park and go across the street too. He was never told he could stand in the corner with the other journalists. BPD appears to be determined to avoid scrutiny of how they, public servants, conduct themselves on the job.

Film The Police is a big movement, and it has revealed that police in Boston and New York are targeting citizen journalists first, a clear violation of their constitutional rights, in order to conduct their police operation without public scrutiny to which I say fuck Mike Bloomberg, Tom Menino and Ed Davis.

Conservatism as once defined simply doesn’t exist anymore, and it has been replaced by a reactionary ideology that is no longer for things but explicitly against things. Chiefly, liberal things, or even things that Republicans used to support but now that they are advanced by Democrats and liberals, they must be renounced.