Another day, another video of the NYPD being awful. In this video, uploaded to YouTube on April 30 by the man being arrested, two officers in the Bronx are seen illegally arresting a man during a traffic stop.
The man set his phone camera to record and put it in the cupholder, which the cops note at one point. He repeatedly asks why he’s being arrested, and they half-heartedly say “stop resisting,” cop-speak for “we are going to beat you up if you don’t stop talking.” Eventually they come up with an excuse about how they saw a suspicious plastic bag. Then, after searching the car (one officer finds a cookie), one of the cops is heard jocularly saying to the other, “I don’t know why we pulled him over.” They then devise some other nonsense (it’s difficult to make that part out), and only then do they pick up the phone and turn the camera off. Unbelievable.
The man writes on YouTube that he was ticketed for having an obstructed windshield (he had an air freshener hanging from his mirror). The Fourth Amendment protects against illegal search and seizure. Therefore, cops need to have probable cause before initiating an arrest, or the very least need to know why they’re arresting somebody.
