In Bloomfield, New Jersey DJ Marcus Jeter, 30, was charged with eluding police, assault and other crimes based on the sworn reports of two Bloomfield police officers. The officers accused him of fleeing a scene and then assaulting them after they were called to his home with his girlfriend. It was all a lie but multiple officers joined in framing Jeter. The problem was a police dash came video that prosecutors never bothered to review despite his denials. It was once again the media that did the due diligence and presented the evidence to the prosecutors who dropped the charges. Prosecutors however claim that the fault rests with the police.
Jeter said that he thought he was free to go. However, he was soon pulled over immediately but stayed in the car on the New Jersey Turnpike. One tape shows a second police car coming from the opposite direction, crossing the median into ongoing traffic, and then striking Jeter’s car. The collision is not mentioned in any of the police reports. He said that they had their guns out.
He is now free thanks to those dashcam tapes. It’s the video that prosecutors say they never saw when the pursued criminal charges against 30 year-old Marcus Jeter . In the video, his hands were in the air. He was charged with eluding police, resisting arrest and assault. One officer in the video can be seen throwing repeated punches.
You can clearly see Jeter pulling over and stopping on the side of the Garden State parkway. The cops pull out guns. He said that officers began hitting him while telling him not to resist arrest. The beating continues while he was in handcuffs. The videotape confirms his story and shows him not resisting.
Notably, the prosecutors did not review the evidence even though they were trying to put him away for five years. More importantly, the Bloomfield Police Department’s Internal Affairs fully investigated that complaint and cleared all of the officers.
Two Bloomfield police officers are now indicted for falsifying reports and one of them is charged with assault. A third has pleaded guilty to tampering. A third pleaded guilty early on to tampering.
However, as usual, there is no word on discipline for the prosecutors or the investigators who either failed to review the tapes or failed to turn them over. We not only have three officers involved but an Internal Affairs investigation that cleared the officers. I cannot imagine what they reviewed if not the dash cam video. If they reviewed it, there is the added element of collusion in this coverup to frame an innocent man. While the prosecutors are blaming the police, it is also unclear why a prosecutor doing due diligence would not demand and review the videos. The question is whether that demand was made by the prosecutor and whether the police lied or refused to turn over the evidence. That is a lot of questions to be answered before this matter is closed. However, given the poor record of police and prosecutors, a full record may not developed without a lawsuit and discovery.
Source: ABC/a>
I’m looking at the picture & I see a man with his hands up. Oh My! Is that a brown face! Oh My! No wonder the poor policemen got all panicky and beat him up! Its a black man! What a surprise!
I llove the idea of more, dashcams controlled by 3 parties. I have been on juries where Ii put your philosophy in action. http://ll2.de/RMR/
Using the twisted-logic of US District
judgeClown William J Martini’s opinion in dismissing a lawsuit concerning blatantly unconstitutional New York City Police Department surveillance of Muslim’s in New Jersey the police and prosecutor are not to blame, rather Sarah Wallace the reporter and the ABC affiliate that aired the story were at fault for uncovering the mal/mis/nonfeasance committed by the “authorities” of Bloomfield NJ.http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/23/Judge-NYPD-Spying-Of-Muslims-In-New-Jersey-Did-Not-Violate-Civil-Rights
Brian Harris wrote
I began posting about the benefits of streaming video technology 5 years ago here on this blog and would continue to encourage citizens and activists to use these applications like Qik, UStream, Justin.tv and others.
The battle against police abuses is lost. These are not rogue agents or exceptions, these behaviors and culture are norms and they will not be moderated by the courts or politicians. Expect ever increasing crimes and brutality upon citizens even in the face of documentary evidence, and fewer if any consequences unless the offenses are against an elite.
As another commenter inferred, contempt of cop is punishable by summary execution at the hands of those whom you have offended.
It may be more productive to spend time thinking about how to protect yourself and your family and to deliberately avoid interaction with the police and other agents of the government wherever possible, including some situations where you may simply be the victim of a crime.
Source: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=9440401
Darren, thanks for that information. It certainly suggests that internal affairs dropped the ball in this case.
I don’t have all the information about the prosecutor and the dash cam but I say there is the possibility the prosecutor legitimately did not know about the availability of dash cam evidence. Dashcams are not not always in every car and some agencies don’t have them. Some agencies only have them in DUI emphasis or traffic cars. So it might have been the case where the prosecutor only asks for it if it comes up in the report the police had one available. Again, I don’t know the case here.
As far as the Internal Affairs investigation goes I am certainly of the opinion it was extremely lacking if not slanted greatly. The department knows every camera in every car and maintains these. For evidenciary purposes the maintenance of the recordings is done by someone other than the officer who drives the car (or at least it should be) The department certainly would have reviewed the dash cam video as being one of the first things they review. Sounds more like a coverup than an objective investigation.
The internal affairs investigation shows me that this agency is in some serious need of some outside oversight. I’m glad these officers were charged, there is certainly in my view probable cause.
Can we all say, “POLICE COVER-UP????”
OS-
” The one my daughter wants clips over the rear view mirror, making it even more unobtrusive.”
Thanks for the tips, especially the one mentioned above.
It is ironic that we who are heavily opposed to surveillance now desire to put up our own surveillance. Sigh. The erosion of trust…
Thank goodness there was a video of the abuse. Kudos to the journalist.
JBH Your comments are excellent …. I love the idea of more dashcams controlled by 3rd parties. I have been on juries where I put your philosophy in action. Unfortunately , I was the only juror did so. 99guspuppet
Lrobby, My mom would always say, “Tomorrow is promised to no one, so live for today.” I think they would love to take him out, but that would be MUCH more stupid than what they already have done.
The man is lucky the cops did not kill him. Yet.
I have been giving serious consideration to a dashcam. Some have many excellent features, and even the most expensive ones are usually under $300. The one my daughter wants clips over the rear view mirror, making it even more unobtrusive. Being unobtrusive makes it less attractive to thieves as well. Some have two built-in cameras–one pointing rearward and one forward.
I have been reading about dashcams with Wi-Fi capability that can upload to your personal Cloud service continuously. If you want that feature in a dash cam, it will probably run closer to $400.
Nate, Paul, Waldo, and Kerryn,
Careful, they put a spell on you.
it seems to me I just commented on this in the last blog. It seems to me that the police and the prosecutors never do anything wrong unless there’s an actual tape to prove it. When I was homeless for 10 months in 2008, I was just walking down the street and got picked up by 3 cops. They took me to county mental health and I was handcuffed behind my back. All I did was stand up to stretch my legs , and and when you’re homeless a lot of cops will shoo you away from getting some rest somewhere. Their names for mentally ill homeless people is no humans involved or NHIs. So when I stood up and they were eight feet away, the female hit me hard on the right side of my face and one of her partners did the sake. When I was finally rehomed. I went to internal affairs to report the incident. I was totally stupid to think that something would be done about it. The officers claimed that I fell on the floor, which would have been impossible as I had bruises on each side of my face. I ran into the police lots of times when I was homeless. A few of them were compassionate but that certainly was not the rule. I did not ask to have a mental illness. However, it is my responsibility to handle it. I take my medicine as prescribed every day. But that is not a panacea. Last September I ran into a deep depression. This is very dangerous for me as I have a clear tendency to go manic during these times and stop taking my medications. If left unchecked, I become delusional as well as psychotic. Recently my doctors and I learned I am now allergic to antipsychotic medication. I think there’s also some reaction due to my being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease last spring and the medication I take for that. I have several more stories with regard to how the police abused me. But I won’t go into them here. I finally found a sane place for me to live with my own bedroom. My hope is that this place will help me maintain my sanity. And they even have 3 dogs. A pitbull, a laso apso & a schnauzer.
maggieringland : I am so sorry for your experiences – if we- the public- were around when these abuses happened I do hope someone would at least say something to the ‘officers’ involved – I hope I would !!
I know how really unruly they can be as I have been there myself, not in a really bad way like you, but enough to know how dangerous the situation could be if they get spiteful. We really need to make sure we catch them doing this stuff – MORE DASHCAMS PLEASE !! – I have just bought one for my car – mirror type.
I am hoping your life will progress in a good way from now on and I send you
blessings and good wishes. You deserve that.
There is a reason 2.3 million people are in prison in the US. I wonder how many were sent there only on a cop’s sworn statement?
In amateur (“ham”) radio, as also on CB, sometimes “doubling” occurs.
FtP, I began writing my comment before you posted yours, and you posted yours before I posted mine. Alas, as an autistic person, I find that society rarely, if ever, grants me any tangible rights.
Would any intelligibly, rationally, reasonable person ever deem a newborn (say, five minutes post-birth) baby capable of being guilty of committing a crime?
I never went through the infant-chlld transition. I never learned to accept social consensus as useful reality. I live my life according to, and only according to, direct observation.
Direct observation is a term I use for observation done by removing every form of interpretation from the process of observation that does not erase the observed event itself.
I have never observed the happening of any actually avoidable event, this being the trivial consequence of all actually avoidable events invariably having been actually avoided, and the only events which actually happen are those events which actually were unavoidable as they actually happened.
I simply do not live in the fairy tale world in which impossible events happen.
Consider, from a philosophical perspective, the following.
“If it cannot happen, its happening is impossible.”
“The impossible never happens.”
“No one can do the impossible.”
“No thing can do the impossible.”
“Nothing can DO the impossible.”
“Nothing CAN do the impossible.”
“Today, a week from today is impossible.”
“A week from today, a week from today will be possible.”
“What is impossible in one situation may be possible in another situation.”
From which I ponder whether the process of existence is other than the existential mechanism of the possibility of the impossible becoming actualized.
The above collection of propositions in quotes is of set theory, including the theory of sets which contain themselves as members.
Is the enigma of law the law being its own proper subset?
I have lived the whole of my life, as I observe it, outside the rule of law, doing so because the foundational premise of the rule of law violates my existence, and because I find the rule of law to be an aggregation of make believes which no extant power has ever made me believe.
Put me on a trial jury, and I will diligently attend to the evidence presented, as I will also attend to all the evidence not presented. If no tangible evidence of avoidable events not having been avoided and no tangible evidence of unavoidable events having not happened is presented at the trial, the evidence presented and not presented will lead me to find the defendant totally innocent, regardless of any and all other evidence presented at the trial. For me, evidence of the omission, by the prosecution, of obvious evidence that demonstrates the innocence of the defendant is itself usefully sufficient evidence of innocence.