This Is the Police: Put Down Your Camera

NPR has a story up about a couple of incidents where citizens were detained or arrested for photography police officers at work. This is pretty chilling:

Consider what happened to Khaliah Fitchette. Last year, Fitchette, who was 16 at the time, was riding a city bus in Newark, N.J., when two police officers got on to deal with a man who seemed to be drunk. Fitchette decided this would be a good moment to take out her phone and start recording.

“One of the officers told me to turn off my phone, because I was recording them,” she said. “I said no. And then she grabbed me and pulled me off the bus to the cop car, which was behind the bus.”

The police erased the video from Fitchette’s phone. She was handcuffed and spent the next two hours in the back of a squad car before she was released. No charges were filed.

(Thanks to the NPPA’s Twitter feed for the link.)