Encounter With Presumed LEO

www.facebook.com/GoodMenDoSomething
www.FreeStateProject.com

Donations can be made at http://gmds.chipin.com/

The location where this occurred.
http://goo.gl/BcZVm

This audio is from the pocket of a man who acted under color of law and seized (literally ripped from our hands) our cell phones running Qik, luckily Qik kept going and we got the audio. We apologize for its poor quality and hope it is not to distracting.


The following is by one of the individuals involved.
---------------------------------------------------
*My retelling of the encounter*

I was doing some activism in Rocklin CA at the intersection of Rocklin road and hw80 Feb 8 2011. Me and my brother were standing under a Redflex scamera with signs and Guy Fawkes masks when a man from behind us, behind a fence, and up a small hill called out to us to "come here" and he beckoned us over and repeated "come over here" several times. I was very reluctant as he was not in a police uniform but had a dark tan colored jacket that seemed to have some star shaped badge.

I only complied finally as my brother started to move in the unidentified mans direction. My brother and I began getting out our phones to record the encounter. I must have hit the wrong button as my phone did not record (as I realized after the fact), but I held my phone in a manner as if it was recording. We meet with the unidentified man at a halfway point where there was a break in the fence and the unidentified man started telling us to turn off our phones and give them to him. We were very reluctant to do so, insisting that recording in a public place is not against the law, but he grabbed onto my brothers phone and ripped it out of his hand, put it into his pants pocket and then did the same to mine.

At this point my memory becomes a little foggy because of adrenaline starting to pump through my system. He pointed out to us that we were near a bank (we had no idea) and since we had masks it was great cause for concern. He had us put our hand up against the fence and proceeded to frisk us without our consent. He then began asking us questions about what we were doing. We explained we were doing activism against Redflex scameras, and he seemed to accept that and gave us a lecture about walking around with masks on and how we should do what a Cop says immediately no matter what. Eventually he advised we not wear our masks when walking past the bank and then gave us back our phones.

Looking back on this encounter he never directly said he was a cop, or identified himself, and I did not have the presence of mind to ask for a badge number as I was on an adrenaline high. If he was indeed a cop he did many things wrong. If he was not a cop and simply local security for the bank then he grossly overstepped his boundaries. We will report th encounter to the Rocklin PD.

During the rest of our outreach event nearly a dozen cop cars drove passed us, but none stopped to investigate us. We got good responses from motorists and had good talks with a few pedestrians on the Red-light camera scams.
---------------------------------------------------

We would like to add that before he took our cell phones he asked us to put them away, refuting his later comment that he took them because he thought they were "cell phone guns".

We wanted to leave a paper trail and have filed a police report with the Rocklin PD when we returned home. We are so far pleased with the way they are handling it as they seem to be taking what happened more seriously then we expected they would.

We feel that we made two huge mistakes and hope to never make them again:

#1 We didn't ask for the gentlemen to specifically ID himself including his name and badge number (if he had one).

#2 We should have called 911 immediately to report this gentlemen rather than waiting three hours to make a report.

We hope that others learn from our mistakes and would like to remind everyone that all it takes for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing, so do something.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• PINAC
• photography
• is
• not
• crime
• police
• cop
• leo
• abuse
• harassment
• GMDS
• goodmendo
• goodmendosomething
• good
• men
• do
• something
• Rocklin
• CA
• Qik
• FSP
• freestateproject
• free
• state
• project
• 95677
• redflex
• snitch
• ticket

[1pic]

You are barve good men. FTP (film the police)

[goodmendosomething]

@1pic We tried : / and will try again :)

[ArizonaSean]

The cops will want to make sure he isn't some crazy ass vigilante and they will want to know which one of their cops went off his rocker.

Keep us updated as to what the cops doing about this.

[goodmendosomething]

@ArizonaSean Thank you and we shall.

[iwanttocrashmybike]

subtitles?

[GetMeThere1]

So....when they bring up the "bank baloney" you should just say: "Sorry for the misunderstanding. Our protest has nothing to do with the bank."

[SSJIndy]

All people wearing masks are robbers. All people with nailclippers are hijackers. All people with cameras are terrorist. All Americans are suspicious by their very existance.

have I got that right?

[yandosan]

Way to go coppers.

Bank Robbers are *notorious* for posing as sign-carrying anti-Corruption

activists.That's what Dillinger did usually.