Pixiq | TBD
We know that some police officers don’t appreciate being recorded in action, but apparently you can get arrested simply for looking as if you’re videotaping them. Oskar Mosco (government name: Scott Myerson) was arrested last week after he held a videocamera up to two U.S. Park Police officers who were arresting a fellow pedicab driver in Washington, D.C.
When the cops arrested Tom Folkes, Mosco raised his new videocamera, which he says he didn’t know how to use. Accounts diverge on what happened next. The police say Mosco refused to put his camera away and resisted arrest when they pressed the point; he says they threw him to the ground.
Another pedicab driver was actually recording the aftermath of that disputed incident, at the end of which Mosco lay on the ground bleeding. TBD reporter John Hendel (with whom I used to work) viewed that video, which the driver didn’t want to share publicly. “It was very clear,” the officer tells Mosco in the video Hendel watched. “You disobeyed every order I gave you and then you resisted arrest.” The guy who did record the police: Not charged. || Related: Photojournalist sues cop, Suffolk County, N.Y., over right to videotape police