Cops Say Video of Them Mocking a Disabled Woman Violates Their Privacy
This past June, three Santa Ana police officers were suspended after a video surfaced of them joking about kicking a woman in a wheelchair “in the fucking nub” and eating (what appears to be) weed-infused edibles during a raid of a medical marijuana dispensary. And now, those same cops want to ban that video from ever becoming evidence—because they didn’t realize they were on camera.
In the video (which has been edited by the store’s attorneys), cops in masks are seen busting into what was an unlicensed dispensary. After escorting a patient with an amputated leg in a wheelchair out the door, one man asks a female officer “Did you punch that one legged old Benita?” To which the cop responds, “I was about to kick her in her fucking nub.”
At another point, the cops can be seen attempting to dismantle the various video cameras set up around the store. Clearly they didn’t do a very thorough job.
And it’s this shoddy attempt at shielding themselves from any prying eyes that they’re using as their argument for privacy violation. According to the cops’ attorney’s, because they’d thought they’d destroyed all the store’s video cameras, “all police personnel present had a reasonable expectation that their conversations were no longer being recorded and the undercover officers, feeling that they were safe to do so, removed their masks.”
But as Matthew Papas, Sky High’s lawyer, pointed out to the OC Register, police regularly use video evidence in their own investigations:
It’s pretty pathetic for police to say if we don’t like something that it can’t be used as evidence... They knew they were on video. Just because they missed one camera doesn’t make it illegal.
But in the cops’ defense, it’s probably easy to miss a video camera or two when you’re that incredibly high.
