A California man was jailed for four days for attempting to record police officers on a public street.
Daniel J. Saulmon was charged with resisting, delaying and obstructing an officer
but the video shows he was standing well out the way of a traffic stop
and was only arrested when he failed to produce identification to an
approaching officer.
And there is no law in California that requires citizens to produce
identification. And even if there was, it would require the officer to
have a reasonable suspicion that he was committing a crime.
But prosecutors have already dropped the charge against Saulmon as
well as a few other minor citations relating to his bicycle such as not
have proper reflectors on the pedals.
And they most likely knew who he was considering he won a $25,000
settlement from the same police department after they unlawfully
arrested him on eavesdropping/wiretapping charges in 2005.
This time, it appears the Hawthorne Police Department will be
dishing out much more, thanks to officer Gabriel Lira’s abuse of
authority.
“They knew exactly who I was,” Saulmon said in a telephone interview with Photography is Not a Crime
Saturday, adding that he has recorded them on a regular basis since the
2005 arrest when he was jailed after attempting to file a complaint
inside the police station.
“They always address me as ‘Mr. Saulmon’,” he said.
Hawthorne Police Chief Robert Fager (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Judging by his Youtube channel,
which is filled with videos of police officers from Southern California
jurisdictions, his latest arrest was an obvious case of retaliation.
The arrest took place on November 8, a Thursday, close to midnight.
Because it was a holiday weekend, he would have had to wait until
Tuesday to see a judge. He bailed himself out on Monday with a $1,000 he
did not want to spend.
It took police a week to return his camera and his bicycle, and
only after his attorney sent them a letter informing them that they had
no legal basis to maintain possession of his personal property.
Even though he is still facing a citation for not having a
headlight on his bicycle, he says he has video evidence from when he
picked it up that shows it had two working headlights.
Saulmon is not one to be deterred by their abusive behavior. On the
day after his 2005 arrest, he walked back into the Hawthorne Police
Department to file a complaint with a hidden recorder that reveals he
was nearly stripped searched in the lobby as you can hear in the video
found in the link below.
http://www.
The irony of that arrest is that they based their evidence on a secret recording one of the officers had made.