The big issue is not talking to the cop and then walking away. Yet another perfect example of making life worse for yourself.

*promote yet another example of how fucked up the American police system is.

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, July 27th, 2015 10:58am PDT - promote requested by SDGundamX.

You do not HAVE to talk to a police officer. You MAY have to show ID depending on the state, but in most cases you do NOT have to show ID unless you are driving or were recently driving a vehicle. At the time he began walking he was not currently being detained for a crime.

If you follow the video link, you will see there is an abundance of information, including legal statements from the state AG that indicate that the officers had NO LEGAL CAUSE to arrest or detain the person filming and were incorrect in charging him with OoJ.

What happened here is that the cop got pissed that someone was filming him, decided he wanted to toss his weight around a bit, and then got further pissed off when his posturing was ignored. He is a cop, damnit, and people should quake in their boots when he is talking to them.

That is the problem with our police officers today. They have this idea that they are special and should be treated as such, when in reality they are simply public servants, OUR servants. We pay their salary to, thoeretically, protect and serve us. We do not pay them so we can serve them and kneel at their beck and call.

There are still officers out there that believe that way, but they are scared or unwilling to out the majority who do not. Until they do, they are no better in the end. For instance, the SGT who showed up on scene could have said that this was incorrect procedure, apologized, and punished the fucker who started it. But no, gotta stick to the thin blue line and back up the fuckup who got pissed about being filmed. Now they all get in trouble, more respect is lost for police, and the county will likely get sued. All because one guy got pissy about being filmed.

The guy filming got exactly what he was hoping for I suppose. What a tool.

See, I can't understand this mentality. He knew the cops in his area were both poorly trained and stupid and set out to prove it. He did a fucking public service and didn't inconvenience anyone else in the process.

But people like you are going to criticize him rather than the cops who don't know how to do their own fucking jobs. Seriously, wtf?

All he proved was that acting like a tool can get you arrested. Yep, that showed it for all of us, what public service did this guy provide exactly?

What does it matter how he was acting or even what his motivations were?

He didn't break the law and was unlawfully arrested.

If you feel the need to justify police behaviour because the victim "just shouldn't have done that", you've already long lost the argument, give it up.

There is no argument, the guy filming is a tool. There is no hero or public service announcement anywhere to be seen.

Argument: Exercising the rights that my (and other's) forefathers fought and died to procure for every citizen at the risk of his own freedom and/or safety makes the guy filming a hero, and the cops harassing him for no reason the tools.
It's quite sad you can't seem to understand that because a citizens legal rights might be inconvenient to law enforcement does not dissolve those rights, nor does exercising them make the citizen a tool.
I must guess you are not from the USA, so don't understand our system.

So I guess people like Rosa Parks were also tools? Perhaps Alice Paul was a tool for standing up for the rights of women to vote? I suppose Mahatma Gandhi was a tool for resisting British oppression and rule?

This is what you cannot seem to grasp, although I will try in the most basic method to explain it to you. Rights = GOOD, Oppression = BAD. Now, what does this mean? It means you have rights that are expected to be yours in a civilized society.

For instance, lets say you were Hispanic and in Arizona. Due to the fact that the Supreme Court allowed portions of SB1070, the 'paper's, please' law to remain in effect, you can be forced as a Hispanic to provide clear proof that you are a citizen in any situation as long as the officer has a reason to suspect that you might be an illegal immigrant.

The reasonable suspicion is entirely at the discretion of the officer, an individual who is not in any way psychic or specifically trained to spot 'illegal immigrants'. So let's say you are wearing a shirt that says Viva La Raza, just a saying that means you are proud of your race. If I was an officer, I could claim that you wearing a shirt with Spanish on it and being Hispanic could mean that you are illegally here. Ludicrous, I know, but I could claim it and get away with it the way the law is worded. I could stop you in the middle of the sidewalk, force you to submit to an ID request, and question you at the bare minimum. I could say a bulge in your pocket looked like drug paraphernalia and that you smelled of drugs, leading to a body search.

Now let me ask you, even if you were perfectly innocent, had no drugs, were not illegal, and were minding your own business, would this not piss you off? Assuming it didn't that one time, would you get pissed off when it happened over and over?

Look, I'm Caucasian and a male, and even I know that stuff like this is horseshit. At a certain point, if you don't stand up or support the ones who do, then when they come for you there won't be anyone left to help.

If you can't get the point and still feel the way you say, I feel sorry for you. Thankfully others do and even though you think they are tools, they will take the fall so you can continue to live your delusions.

I guess the toolishness would have been more evident if this guy would have been one of those guys who go into family restaurants while brandishing AR-15's, in open carry states? Those guys are exercising rights that people in some sense fought and died to be able to establish, and they're acting within their legal rights... but they're just such fucking assholes. Maybe you take a stand on principle and call those guys heroes too; if so I'd admire your consistency but still disagree.

It depends on the circumstances....in family restaurants, the fear likely generated overweighs the positive effect of exercising one's rights, so still heroic? Maybe...I'm torn. Douche-baggy for no reason? Certainly.

However, those that, alone, are willing to calmly and responsibly open carry in public places where it's allowed (IE not at a playground, bank, school, airport, etc.) in order to strengthen their right to do so, especially in locals where they know they'll be harassed at the least, yes, I would say they're heroic. Perhaps misguided, but heroic.
An argument could be made that it's maybe time to revisit that right in today's society, but so long as it's a right I support people exercising it (responsibly) and would say they're heroic if they do it responsibly and at some risk to themselves.

If you're willing to make (reasonable) allowances for circumstance, well, then we're just haggling over the price, as Lord Beaverbrook is said to have said. There are all kinds of technical rights available to me that I never choose to exercise, and pretending to be a mime in front of a police officer is one of them. That's not because I'm a principled guy - quite the opposite, I just think it would always be more practical to talk to the cop, even if I'm allowed not to, so for me there aren't any good circumstances for that. I recognize that I have the blithe security of the privileged - I would show my ID to anyone who asks for it, and I realize that it wouldn't be the same for a harassed minority, or an undocumented immigrant.

Also, I think it's a very counterproductive view to see legally allowed behavior as == societally accepted or constructive behavior. That kind of thinking - that every behavior right up unto the very breaking point of the law (but not beyond that point) is 'good' (or heroic) - presupposes unrealistically good and detailed and up-to-date laws. In general I find that laws are much more broad and roughly hewn than that - just because we don't think it's principally or practically appropriate to arrest somebody for doing X, it might still never be appropriate to actually do X in reality.

I make reasonable allowances for what I will call a hero, I never made allowances for what's a legal right. I think one need not exercise one's rights in the most disruptive way possible to exorcize them. That said, if the restaurant owner in your scenario doesn't want to kick out open carry people for scaring 'families', that should be their right too, and then they're (the owner and the carrier) both slightly heroic.

In this case, if he's doing nothing illegal, the cops should go do something productive, not get violent because someone is guilty of contempt of cop, which is not a crime. They always say they're understaffed and there's too much crime to deal with, then why are 2 cops wasting so much time on someone legally not answering their questions or producing ID AND NOTHING ELSE WRONG? That seems impractical in the extreme.

There is a HUGE difference between behavior that, while allowed, is bound to scare some people and/or cause panic and behavior that simply annoys a public servant who's abusing their authority in the first place, not actually doing their job. No one can reasonably be afraid for their life of someone that won't answer their questions, nor is it a crime. No crowd has ever run in panic because a mime (or group of mimes) walked into it's midst....maybe in disgust, but not panic.

It is always appropriate, practical, socially accepted, and constructive to your life to tell any officer that you won't answer any question at all (including 'what's your name' if that's legal in your state) without written blanket immunity from the DA, notarized and codified by a judge, for any and all crimes you may have committed or may be committing...and not a word more without a good lawyer present. That's the advice both my father's and brother's high priced lawyers gave me, I'll take it.

I guess this is where we'll just have to end up differing - I don't respect the system enough to go out of my way to fight every single battle I possibly can, and I don't necessarily admire those who do. I wholeheartedly believe that every citizen has a responsibility to pick their battles carefully or we'll never get anywhere, and I don't believe this was a well-chosen battle.

That said, I entirely agree that the cops here are more at fault, no question. They are in the wrong morally and professionally and they're being unreasonable tools - the guy with the camera is just being an unreasonable tool.

I'm still at a complete loss as to why some people seem to think that calmly not submitting to random intrusive 'investigative' questioning makes a person a tool. The cop's not looking to have a nice conversation or make a friend, he's looking for anything he can use against the person he's interrogating...and often, as in this case, when they can't find anything, they'll make something up.
EDIT: often, they'll say you said something you didn't say, or twist what you may have said to come up with a reason to go farther and charge you with something made up. That's why you should say NOTHING, then they have nothing to twist or lie about 'mishearing' or 'misunderstanding'.

As I see it, not answering questions is not disruptive, not dangerous, doesn't cause fear (in normal people), is patriotic, and is also a methodology suggested by nearly EVERY lawyer worth their salt. I can't see the drawback, or how being respectfully reasonable and safe makes someone a tool. I think answering a cop's questions makes a person a tool...one that gives up their hard won right against self incrimination in order to not upset or inconvenience their overzealous interrogator, at the risk of their own freedom, safety, and sometimes life.
Since no one has put forth a reasonable explanation WHY one would act in such a self defeating, disrespectful (to those who died to secure the right to not incriminate yourself or be searched at random), unsafe, victimized way, it seems we should just agree to disagree. I think I put forth a number of logical reasons why I see this behavior (not answering questions) as perfectly reasonable AT ALL TIMES, and fortunately for me the DAs and judges agree with me.

I highly doubt the police officer would have even tried to have a conversation at first (it was hardly an interrogation) if the camera guy wasn't deliberately pointing a camera at the officer in the middle of nowhere. The officer first asked (twice) politely how the camera guy was doing.

I'm certainly not saying that the camera guy doesn't have the right to film, but I am almost certain he was trying to provoke a reaction and was very likely pleased with the eventual outcome. Yay for him I suppose by escalating it so.

Still more 'quietly filming in public makes him a tool that got what he deserved'. I don't understand how you possibly get there without starting from a place of 'the cop is always right, the citizen always wrong, how can I make that argument?'.

How in the hell is quietly filming "provoking a reaction"? If filming is provocative, why are we trying to get all police to have cameras? So they can provoke citizens? No, so we can have a record of interactions, something they clearly don't want because they know they don't handle interactions properly and can't stand scrutiny.

How is saying clearly and calmly 'I don't waive my 5th amendment right, or any others' escalation?!? Do you believe not capitulating 100% to abusive officers makes it your fault you got beaten, arrested, and put in prison based on their lies?!? I don't understand this mindset in the least. To me, it seems the exact opposite, he was not provocative, the cop was, he did not escalate, the cop did.

I don't see how you see it the exact opposite unless you are simply trying anything to deflect from the clear, already adjudicated, terrible, unwarranted, unprovoked, illegal actions of the officers...both of them.

I could provoke a reaction by filming a playground with strangers kids playing it, would you feel 100% comfortable with me exercising that right? Would you protect me when the parents rightly abuse me? How about when the police officer asks me to move on?

1. Was he filming people's children at a playground? No, he was filming adult public servants in public. Please stop coming up with red herrings that have nothing to do with this situation, it just shows you know you have no leg to stand on with your argument.

2.God damn right I'll protect you if you're attacked for just filming people in a public place. Are you the kind of person who would see someone attacked by a crazed mob and just walk away?! I'm not.
And yes, I'll stand up and support your right to be acting legally and reasonably in a public place, and I'll even put in for your defense fund for a portion of the enormous settlement you'll get from the city.
Now, if you wear a trench coat and nothing else and act like a child molester while you do it, handing out lollypops and asking the kids to accompany you to the men's room, I'll think you're getting attacked for looking/acting like a child molester, not the filming, then you're on your own.

He acted like a tool, fishing for a reaction in order to make a non toolish point. I think the real take away from this is that we are making unrealistic demands of police officers.

Since 9/11 cops have been at the forefront of institutional paranoia. They're asked to look into people filming public places. And that is what he did. Initially in the most reasonable and civil way anyone could expect. The guy chose to be rude and escalate the situation. Sure it's within his rights, but it's obviously just trolling. Furthermore he's got his hand in his pocket playing with something while wearing an empty holster. I'm not sure when they realized he was wearing the holster, but it begs the question: what has he trying to get them to do?

Either way the right call was made in the end. I'm hoping the officers aren't seriously reprimanded for this, but rather the absurd combination of instituation paranoia, trolling, and gun culture are kept far apart.

Analogies of filming children and the cops attacking him are unnecessarily inflammatory and not really relevant.

Maybe it's easier to see why some people think he's a tool if you imagine that he hadn't been arrested. Let's say that this was a day before his action, and he tells you that he's going out to the FBI to film the building, all entrances, and the people coming and going. He tells you that he is doping this to test their reaction, and he expects the cops to interact with him, but that he won't say a single word to them until / unless they overstep their boundaries.

You would agree with him at that point, I assume, that what he's planning is legal, but wouldn't you also have a sense that maybe he was being a bit unreasonably provocative? That that's the 'tool' aspect of his perfectly legal action?

Nope. I still don't see it, sorry.
There's still no reason for them to do anything about your scenario. News organizations do that kind of filming daily with no problem, so the filming's obviously not a problem. It wasn't a 'filming restricted' area, so there's no reason to investigate why he's filming at all, other than they don't want to be filmed, which is still not a reason to contact him.
Do I see a reason the cops might be nervous about him in your scenario, yes. Do I see a reason in that scenario for them to break the law and arrest him, or even detain him? Absolutely not.

Here, he broke no law, and they had no indication he had, so they really had no reason to contact him at all, and certainly no reason to continue once he informed them he's availing himself of his legal rights and not talking to them (which he had no obligation to do, but he did so out of courtesy to let them know WHY he wasn't answering them so they know there's nothing wrong, something they should know already, and not something that's provocative at all).

Or do you think police SHOULD act this way towards any paparazzi? Those tools often do get provocative, but they never get arrested over it.

Please don't keep switching back to saying that what the cops did was wrong and making it seem like that's what we're in disagreement about. I'm fully in agreement with you that what they did was wrong and illegal in Virginia, and would be in a little more than half the country. In all the 24 states with stop and identify requirements, their actions would have been legal, but not in VA. I'm not arguing that what they did was correct, professional, or legal - I've never said that. This is why I asked you to consider what this guy would be like if he hadn't been arrested, to take their behavior out of the equation for just a sec.

(to be fair, if we take the extreme opposite scenario into consideration - if somebody had driven a truck full of explosives into the FBI building the day after, and the media finds out that a lone white man with a gun holster and a camera, who's on the terrorist watch list*, had been standing in full sight and filming the federal reserve and the FBI all day before, the cops would most likely get pilloried for not detaining him)

The only place thing that we disagree is on his personality, which I aver leans towards the 'tool' end of the spectrum. He can be right and a tool. He went out of his way to provoke a reaction, in what he and his peers call a "first amendment audit," and tried to make cops nervous to see if he could catch them overreacting. That kind of behavior is what drives the implementation of harsher anti-citizen legislation.

*I doubt he's actually a terrorist; he's just on the watch list.

I didn't think I 'switched back' to anything. It's been my position all along that the only one in the wrong was the cop, and that his behavior of not talking, while rude in normal society, is prudent, proper behavior when dealing with law enforcement, and the advice given by numerous high priced lawyers.

Part of living in a 'free' society is we must accept the restraints it puts on law enforcement, and the loss of some ability to keep us 'safe'. The founding fathers understood that clearly, and made sure it was clear they intended it to be that way. To paraphrase Franklin, 'those that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary 'safety' deserve neither'. In a free country, in the contest between a citizen's rights and law enforcement's ability to do their job, the citizen should always come out on top, even though that's more dangerous.

Is he really on the 'watch list'? Would that be just because he's an activist? If so, that kind of inclusion is exactly what's made the 'watch list' a bad joke rather than a real tool against terrorism.

Without people putting their freedom in jeopardy to do this kind of 'audit', an audit the cops unsurprisingly failed miserably, the right to not self incriminate (and many others) would be gone...these officers believed it already WAS gone because apparently no one had ever stood up to them before. The camera was necessary because without the proof of the entire interaction, he would NEVER have been released without charges. It sucks ass that we need people to do this, but obviously we do. If we didn't need this kind of public 'testing' (because the cops act properly), this video would be pretty boring and uninteresting.
That's why I don't see him or his behavior as being a 'tool'. Others make cops 'nervous' all the time, people without the resources and knowledge to come out of the situation on top who end up in jail for not breaking any law, but just making cops nervous just because of how they look, or because of their personality, or other factors beyond their control. Hopefully this public 'shaming' will stop others from being accosted over nothing.

Well then we're back to the original discussion - if you think that every behavior on the wrong side of the law is 'bad' and every behavior on the right side of the law is 'good,' then you have an astounding amount of faith in the quality of the laws. I'm arrogant (and I'm legally trained) so I believe that I have an obligation to break certain laws, and an obligation to not exercise certain rights that I technically have, because I'd just make society worse.

I don't believe that these kinds of audits, or the open carry demonstrations, are good ways to reduce police abuse. Quite the opposite - by 2013 almost half the states had stop and identify statutes, and people like this, who are intentionally pretending to be threats in order to provoke poor reactions, are pushing the remaining states to adopt similar restrictions on citizen freedom. This makes society more fearful, not freer.

(I don't know why he's on the watch list. They might think he's a Sovereign Citizen, another group of hero assholes, who happen to be classified as a domestic terror group (of heroes). I doubt he is, but I have no illusions about the effectiveness of the watch lists)

How is anyone making excuses for the police here?

So fucking what if he was trying to provoke a reaction? His reasons for filming the police like he did don't come into it at all. So what if the officers didn't like it and so what if he did it for this reason.

I don't see how any of this is relevant. This is a video of a person acting completely legally and within his rights and being arrested just because the police didn't like it.

So what if it's provoking, the police should be trained to be able to deal with a provocative situation. You know what would have ended this? The police doing their jobs and ignoring him. That's what should have happened.

Being rude isn't against the law. It's not OK for police to arrest someone for being rude. The only thing this guy was doing was filming the police and people think that's wrong? Or he didn't answer their questions? He's allowed to do that. It's OK. How can you say he was acting like a tool? He did nothing wrong.

The police are supposedly trained individuals. They shouldn't be reacting to provocation, especially when it's so passive as this example. This guy is hardly pushing his luck here. He made no threats to the officers, he didn't do anything even remotely violent or threatening he just exercised his rights. So the police didn't like it, so what?

Fucking apologists. The law is what it is and the police should be held to a high standard regarding it. They should do their job. Let's get this straight, what they did here was arrest someone just because they didn't like what he was doing, even though what he was doing was perfectly legal. That should disgust you, it really should. It shouldn't be OK because you think the guy was being a bit of a dick. That's not relevant because being a bit of a dick shouldn't get you arrested. It's only an excuse if you think that it's not unreasonable for the police to arrest people they just don't like.

What on earth are you talking about? How on earth is this guy being any kind of threat?

If you're in a place where you are required to have legal identification and to produce it upon request by a peace officer and you refuse to do so and refuse to speak, I think it's justifiable for them to arrest you. I think it'd obviously be better to opt to cite the criminal (yes, if this is the law and he isn't abiding by it, he's a criminal), but they aren't able to cite you if you don't identify yourself.

Again, that's just if you're legally obligated to present your identification. If that's not the case and there's no suspicion of criminal activity, the cop went way overboard.

All the comments: TLDR. Does anyone know if providing your ID is required where this happened?

No one said anything resembling that.
I said that protecting your right to not self incriminate requires people doing things like this, legally and reasonably. Quite a different thing from the straw man red herring you bring up, that support for this single action is equitable to saying 'anything legal is good' and 'anything illegal is bad' EDIT: or that if you think this specific kind of thing is 'good', you support fighting "every single battle I possibly can". I feel that if you must hyper-exaggerate what the other side in a debate said in order to rebut it, it indicates you have no answer for what was actually said.

If people like him didn't do things like this, the remaining states wouldn't need to adopt any restrictions, because they'll simply implement those restrictions without adopting them, as the cops in this instance (illegally) did. Without people like him, you've LOST those rights already. He's not the reason they're disappearing, he's the reason they still exist anywhere.

If this gets the cops fired, it helps stop police abuse. If it gets them seriously reprimanded, it helps stop abuse. If it just shames them for being idiots, it helps stop abuse.

Again, quietly filming is NOT being a threat. If you are threatened by being filmed, boy howdy are you living in the wrong century.

Again, IF he is on the watch list, it's just another example of why the watch list is useless, because anyone the police or fed or technician doesn't LIKE ends up on it, not suspected terrorists. (EDIT:it's been found that many of those that work directly with the 'terrorist watch list' have abused it by adding ex-wives and other personal enemies to it, making it an 'enemies list' of random people's personal enemies...and a few people being watched as terrorists...which is why so many of those committing terrorist acts are found to be on the list, but are not being watched)

@lucky760 , The DA seemed to indicate he had no obligation to produce ID in that state by dropping the charges, as did the judge that got involved. Not proof, but a good indicator.

Agreed, but I'd be curious to know with certainty.

I imagine a sane judge could still be as quick to throw this out as an obvious waste of time either way.

i find it amusing in an ironically,twisted way that the very same people who will shout about "freedoms" and "liberty" are the very same people who will tacitly accept an ever-increasing authoritarian police force.

i mean,what could possibly be an end result of the continuous pleas "just sit down,and do what you are told and nothing bad will happen".
sit down.
shut up.
obey..and for god's sakes do not provoke anything resembling authority because then you get what you deserve.

does that sound like anything resembling "freedom"?
or liberty?
sounds like fear to me.

While I would LIKE to think that's the case, I do believe that, if it was the law that one has to produce ID in that state/city/county and he refused, he would have at the least been handed a small fine by the judge, because his guilt would be obvious and on camera. EDIT: That's actually how I want judges to behave, leeway on sentencing, but if the law was obviously unequivocally broken, conviction.

I think it's rare that a judge completely throws out a good case just because it's silly, unfortunately. That would put him/her at odds with the police big time. How would the police know if any stop they make will be considered 'frivolous' or 'silly' by whichever judge they happen to get?

According to all I can find on Google, there's no stop and ID law in Virginia, where this happened. They tried to create one in Richmond, Va, but it was thrown out because they had not made a law requiring all people to HAVE ID, so the law was useless and completely unenforceable.
Also, what I can find said that in states where there IS a 'stop and ID' law, the officer must still have a reasonable suspicion you are committing a crime to enact it. (In this case, the empty holster gives reasonable suspicion he has a concealed weapon, which would be another legitimate reason to ask for ID in many states, or at least the concealed weapon permit which would serve the same purpose...but not in Virginia)

In this situation ALL police officer should bring out their phone and record the guy filming them.

Not for me. I see a guy carrying a gun, I have -no- way to know if he's trying to "stick up for his rights", or preparing to open fire. And by the time I -can- tell, it's too damned late if he's the wrong one.

So I'm clearing the area, and calling the cops. That sort of thing is -precisely- what they're supposed to be handling. And frankly, I don't much care how it's handled, as long as no innocent bystanders get shot. I've had it up to here with these nutcase ammosexuals.

Yeah, I'm a little disappointed by the unnecessary misquotes and 'making up arguments' myself, sort of kills the debate. I never made excuses for the cops, and I always agreed they were in the wrong. I never said Hammond was a threat to anyone, or that I felt threatened by filming.

What I have been saying, again and again, is that he can be a tool for intentionally trying to provoke this reaction, even if the cops are completely wrong. It's not a discussion about whether or not his action was legal, but you keep on bringing up the cops reaction as though that is relevant. Which makes it sound as though your argument is: "as long as what he did was legal, he can't be a tool for doing it." Which I disagree with; see also 'open carry' protests etc.

As for what effect the first amendment audits will have on legislation, I imagine it'll be a similar scenario as when corporations exploit tax loopholes. Once somebody comes up with a clever way to remain within their legal rights but still act like an asshole, the system tries to evolve to close those loopholes. I'm all for trying to steer the system in the right direction, but I'm not going to applaud those exploiting loopholes to act like assholes.

As for the strange argument about the watch list, I don't know what you're trying to say - I already told you he's on the list and that I don't think that necessarily means anything. What more did you want to say about that?

Are you going to get back to, again, the fact that the cops were in the wrong? I think we haven't explored that angle yet, let's try going over it three or four times more.

I don't know, person who is putting words in my mouth, how is he being a threat?

When you say things like 'he's being a tool, and got what he was looking for' you're seeming to be making excuses for the cops. Maybe you don't MEAN to be, but you are. If you say he's a provocative tool (which I disagree with 100%) you are telling us why you think the officers had reason to go overboard. The reaction is the ONLY reason his being a tool MIGHT be relevant.
My argument is, not answering a cop's questions NEVER MAKES A PERSON A TOOL. (capatailzed because you keep missing that point).
I explained clearly and reasonably why this behavior is the only thing safeguarding your rights, and without people doing this, you've lost the rights already, because cops don't respect the law or your rights, as happened here.
The cops are the only assholes here, and not even within their legal rights. Get it straight. The videographer is so respectful he even calmly explains why he won't answer questions, for the cops' benefit since they seem confused about the law.
You brought up the 'watch list' for nothing, I explained how your example shows the uselessness of the 'watch list' because people who make a cop upset get put on it.
OK, once again, the cops were 100% in the wrong, the videographer is a hero 100% in the right who is NOT an asshole for standing on his legal rights, not an asshole for filming adults in public, and not an asshole for not engaging in conversation with a tool (pun intended) of the state. I think people who would say someone safely, reasonably, and respectfully standing up for their, and your, rights is an asshole are the EDIT: one's who are mistaken, the ones with a serious case of cranial rectosis...and one's that don't think things through very well.

EDIT: Do you realize that your position is 'it's these assholes that force the police to recognize their rights by exercising them that cause laws removing your rights to be written'....yet you ignore that those rights are already gone if no one can exercise them?

The officer should have been like: "This guy's a douche-bag, I've got a job to do, I'm out of here!", but instead....

Two douche-bags touch dicks!

What? I even quoted you saying it.

Here, I'll quote it again:

"people like this, who are intentionally pretending to be threats"

How on earth is this anything other than you saying he's pretending to be a threat. This is a direct quote from you. I'm not inventing anything here.

Here's an idea. If you don't want people saying you said something, don't fucking say it. Especially in written form so everyone can see exactly what you said.

EDIT: Before the inevitable "I said he was pretending, not that he actually was a threat" bollox, how is he even pretending to be a threat? Nothing about this is threatening. Nothing. You brought up the threatening bit, so I'd like to know what is threatening about the guy filming. What is he pretending to do that's threatening?