10:53 PM PST on Friday, March 9, 2007
TACOMA, Wash. - The university student whose video of a Port of Tacoma protest has touched off an internal affairs investigation of a veteran Tacoma Police officer says that officer said he didn't care about Constitutional rights.
Joseph La Sac, a University of Puget Sound student, was arrested Tuesday while taping the controversial onloading of Stryker military equipment to a ship bound for the Iraq war.
That video shows the officer demanding that La Sac turn off his camera.
YouTube.com
The student posted the video of his confrontation with the Tacoma Police officer, along with comments and graphics, on the popular web site YouTube.com.
In the video, the officer asks La Sac why he wants to videotape an area near the Port of Tacoma. When the student answers he plans to use the footage for an "independent" news organization, the officer replies: "No, you're not. If you're going to do that, you're going to tell us that, you know where you're going to sit? On the other side of that light down there. How about that?"
From the tape, it appears the same officer demanded La Sac show the officer how to turn off the camera saying, "you better show me before it gets broken."
A version of the video seen on YouTube includes inserted commentary with claims the right to photograph a public event were improperly denied.
During an exclusive interview with KING5 News' Paul Aker, La Sac says that he was arrested and then placed in the police car. It was at that point that La Sac claims the officer made remarks about those rights.
"The officer told me at that time that he didn't care about my Constitutional rights," said La Sac. "He didn't want to hear me complaining about them, he told me, and that he doesn't care about judges sitting in courts with their black robes."
Tacoma Police Department spokesman Mark Fulghum said the investigation was opened Thursday following a complaint made on the department's web site.
Fulghum told the Tacoma News Tribune that besides what is seen in the clip investigators are interested in what was edited from the video and what took place before the camera was turned on.
No comments:
Post a Comment