(as originally published in Baystateexaminer.com)
On Tuesday, April 14, a man was grabbed and detained by police in Lawrence who were trying to stop him from exercising his First Amendment right to record them in public.
Jay Carattz was walking down a street when he spotted three people seemingly being detained by two plainclothes police officers. He began recording with his camera and walked past them, giving no indication that he planned to stick around and continue recording. After passing the officers, one of them called out to him and ordered him to come back.
The officer asked if Carattz was recording them and demanded that he turn over his camera as “evidence” (according to the Department of Justice, police generally need a warrant to seize a camera as evidence). The police officer then immediately escalated the situation by grabbing the camera.
The camera was mostly covered up from this point on, making it difficult to tell what was happening, but the police can be heard saying that they had detained Carattz and taken his camera because he walked down the unsecured sidewalk. The officer told Carattz that he was “interfering” with an investigation (there is no such charge as “interfering with police” in Massachusetts). Carattz tried to explain that he was just walking to the store. The video ends abruptly, seemingly cut off by the police.
Carattz said that after the camera stopped recording, he was handcuffed, roughed up, and threatened with arrest for disorderly conduct. He also said the police officers tried to delete the video, which they had initially said they wanted as evidence.
He said he was eventually released with no charges and went to the hospital to be treated for injuries to his wrist and lower back that were caused by the police. He said the handcuffs put on him were so tight that his “wrist got very swollen.”
“I did not file a police report cause I really don’t have any confidence in the police department conducting an internal investigation,” Carattz said.
We are working on obtaining more information about this incident.
Regardless of what happened after the camera was shut off, the behavior by the police depicted in the video is completely unacceptable, especially considering the context of the vital role played by a bystander video in bringing murder charges against the South Carolina police officer who fatally shot Walter Scott. We hope that the Lawrence Police Department, who we have contacted about the incident, will feel the same way.
