South Florida Deputy on Trial for Stealing Phone From Citizen Recording Him

by Carlos Miller

Broward County sheriff?s deputy Paul Pletcher was off-duty when he got into road rage altercation with another woman, so he pulled her over, stormed up to her truck and began berating her.

Her passenger pulled out a cell phone and began video recording, clearly capturing him saying, ?give me the phone,? three times before reaching into the vehicle and snatching the phone.

Pletcher then drove off, smashing the phone in a nearby parking lot, where it was later retrieved by Plantation police officer, whom were responding to the woman?s call.

Pletcher was eventually arrested and charged with several felonies where he is facing 11 years in prison.

His trial began this week.

His defense: He thought the phone was a concealed weapon, which caused him to fear for his life.

That fear is evident from the recovered video, which captured the following exchange:

?Give me the phone!? he repeated, reaching into the car and toward the camera lens.

?No talking to me like that.?

?Give me the phone, Now!?

?Don?t touch me.?

?Give me the phone!?

?Wait! Wait!?

Despite the visual and audio evidence against him that he was committing strong-armed robbery, his attorney is still able to look the jury in the eye and state the following:

??Paul Pletcher saw somebody who was driving erratically ? Paul Pletcher took the position that when that cell phone was out and being used it could have been a concealed weapon.?

Pletcher has gotten away with stealing cameras from citizens before, so he is confident he will get away with this crime, especially considering it took authorities seven months to charge him after the 2011 incident and more than a year to fire him, which might explain his smirking mugshot and his celebratory Facebook page.

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Carlos Miller runs the website Photography is not a Crime.

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Oh yea the tried and true bullshit excuse, but I am always in fear for my whinny life that, that phone looked like an anti tank weapon and I shit my pants in absolute fear. You worthless pos and that includes your sparkle pony bitch of a lawyer.

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Indefinite Detention Without Trial: Completely Unconstitutional, Yet Routine

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Seattle residents Matt Duran and Katherine Olejnik have been imprisoned in the SeaTac Federal Detention Center for weeks.

Neither of them has been indicted, arraigned, or even arrested for a crime. They have been imprisoned for civil contempt by a federal prosecutor for refusing to answer personal questions during a secretive grand jury investigation of other people in the Occupy movement.

During her examination by the prosecutor, Olejnik was asked about incidents of vandalism that took place in Seattle last May Day. She wasn?t even in the city on that date. When the prosecutor began showing her photographs of people and inquiring about her political beliefs, Olejnik exercised her constitutionally protected right to remain silent. That is why she was sent to prison on the orders of U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones. Duran?s case is nearly identical. They may remain in prison until the grand jury?s term expires in January 2014.

Duran and Olejnik are political prisoners in every sense of the expression. However, they are not the only Americans who are current being indefinitely detained without criminal charges.

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If our "brave men and women in uniform" are "fighting for our freedom" then why is it the Congress, the Senate and the Supreme Court are the ones TAKING IT AWAY???

Look like the REAL terrorists are in Washington DC and TelAviv

i don,t agree with occupy ,but i agree less and less with this U.S. government every minute.stick to it kids, and thank you for not submitting. it is true freedom is not free.now you are fighting the good fight.right here at home. as unbelievable as that may sound to many.

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15-Year-Old Schoolboy On Trial After Head Teacher Tells Police About File-Sharing

by Enigmax, TorrentFreak

A 15 year-old schoolboy with a taste for BitTorrent went to trial yesterday after downloading and sharing 24 Hollywood movies. The case, however, has a worrying twist. Rather than being hunted down online by an anti-piracy company, the teenager was turned over to the police by the head teacher at his school. The prosecutor says he had no choice but to take action.

In March 2011 the IT department of a Gothenburg school investigated the issue of a virus which apparently came from a student?s computer.

During a closer examination IT staff found that the student had 24 Hollywood movies stored on his hard drive. The 15-year-old boy in question had obtained them from two Swedish torrent sites ? tankafetast.se and tankaner.se.

Ultimately the school?s head teacher learned of the IT technicians? discovery but rather than deal with the issue in-house, she chose to drastically escalate the matter ? by calling in the police. Now, five months after the alleged offenses, the boy is on trial in Sweden.

?Our policy is to always notify the police if we have suspicion of a crime,? the head teacher told GP.se. ?It is not our job to investigate, it?s a matter for the police.?

The investigation was led by the International Public Prosecution Office in Stockholm and the trial began in the Gothenburg District Court yesterday. Prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad, a veteran of such cases, says this trial is a record-breaker ? no-one this young has ever been prosecuted for file-sharing violations.

?If I find that I can prove a crime, I have to prosecute. I do not consider the person?s age or whether file sharing has occurred on a small or large scale,? Ingblad says. ?By contrast, his young age, of course, is important in terms of what punishment he will be sentenced to.?

Although Ingblad says he will press for the teenager to be sentenced as a juvenile, the punishment for copyright infringements still run from fines to two years in jail.

?Politicians and copyright monopolists alike have been promising solemnly to never send the police after the entire younger generation,? Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak. ?Here, we can see for ourselves how much those promises were worth. The politicians who let this happen need to be kicked out of office.?

During the hearing the boy admitted downloading movies such as The Fighter, The Mechanic, The Social Network and Scary Movie 4, but said that he had no idea he was uploading them to others at the same time.

?It?s paradoxical,? says Inglblad. ?The thousands of small users who are online to download a single movie is a prerequisite for the entire system to work.?

?To prosecute one of them is of course just scratching the surface. But if you want the legal download services to work there must be at least a small chance you will get caught if you download illegally, even if you are young,? he says.

Rick Falkvinge sees the situation somewhat differently, in that sharers should not be subjected to criminal trials but rewarded, and that hopefully attitudes in the future will change.

?If the government should interfere at all with people sharing culture, it should be in the form of medals to those who share the most,? he told us.

?It is of poor comfort for a 15-year-old in a criminal court that the laws will have changed to prove him right and dignified several years later. In the meantime, he has the full moral support of pirates all over the world, from San Francisco to Sydney,? he concludes.

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