California Deputies Seize Phones from Witnesses After Beating Man to Death

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.  READ MORE

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