Carlos Miller
photographyisnotacrime.com/
May 11, 2013
Law enforcement authorities in California beat a man to death with
their batons before seizing at least two cell phones from witnesses who
captured the incident on video.
One of the phones was seized without a warrant. The second phone was
seized with a warrant but only because an attorney for the witnesses had
arrived on the scene.
It doesn’t appear as if the lawyer had any sense to download the video before the phone was seized.
Or more likely, Kern County sheriff deputies would not allow it.
According to the
Bakersfield Californian:
John Tello, a criminal law attorney, is representing two
witnesses who took video footage and five other witnesses to the
incident. He said his clients are still shaken by what they saw.
“When I arrived to the home of one of the witnesses that had video
footage, she was with her family sitting down on the couch, surrounded
by three deputies,” Tello said.
Tello said the witness was not allowed to go anywhere with her phone and was being quarantined inside her home.
When Tello tried to talk to the witness in private and with the
phone, one of the deputies stopped him and told him he couldn’t take the
phone anywhere because it was evidence to the investigation, the
attorney said.
“This was not a crime scene where the evidence was going to be
destroyed,” Tello said. “These were concerned citizens who were
basically doing a civic duty of preserving the evidence, not destroying
it as they (sheriff deputies) tried to make it seem.”
Deputies told the witnesses they could retrieve their phones the following day after the footage had been downloaded.
Now they’re telling the witnesses it could take years.
The law states that authorities can only seize your phone without a
warrant under exigent circumstances, meaning there is probable cause the
witness will destroy the video evidence. And they still would have to
obtain a warrant or subpoena to view the footage.
But the law does not forbid citizens from downloading the footage
before handing it over. A judge might be able to order a citizen from
posting a video online but would have to provide a valid explanation as
to why.
But despite what the law states, nothing will stop a group of cops
from seizing your phone if it contains evidence of them violating the
law.
And in this case, it appears as if they did just that as Kern County
sheriff deputies and California Highway Patrol officers responded to a
report of an intoxicated man standing in front of a local hospital,
meaning there could possibly be video from surveillance cameras.
David Sal Silva, a 33-year-old father of four, died begging for his life, fighting up to nine law enforcement officers.
People who say they witnessed the incident as well as
Silva’s family members described a scene in which deputies essentially
were beating a helpless man to death. They were indignant that cellphone
video had been taken away by deputies.
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