Seems like the guy calls himself a "copchaser" and is used to actuallly chase police officers, annoyingly record their action and make sure to insult them while teaching them a lesson about how to do their job. And he calls all that "standing his ground".<p>I am sure police officers can be jerks or even completely criminals, but this guy really seems to be crossing the line of common sense.<p>Source: the YT channel himself posted <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgnVXppkmzBKfTOwe-KqAJQ/videos" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgnVXppkmzBKfTOwe-KqAJQ/vid...</a>
Here are the most recent videos in the playlist linked in that post. Parts one and two of a 'confrontation' with Officer Hans Chapman.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDtsXYG9b9Y" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDtsXYG9b9Y</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWkefVqO9vw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWkefVqO9vw</a><p>Basically, a couple of guys looking to provoke a reaction, and a cop who interacts with them respectfully and is primarily concerned for everyone's safety.<p>I wonder how similar the scenario described in the post was to the videos in that playlist...
Filming police isn't against the law in the US, so that wasn't the charge as the clickbait title states. If the guy wanted to be forthright he could have listed the complaint(s) that are on his summons instead of making up a different scenario.
This guy's obviously looking for trouble; filiming police for no good reason; getting himself arrested for no good reason; then going online and being deceptive about it to get support for himself by stirring up more trouble. It's no wonder he's such a frustrated person.
This sounds very much like one side of the story.<p>"I was essentially arrested for filming a police checkpoint in Manchester, New Hampshire"<p>I don't want to defend the police, but that sounds like there is a lot of information missing here. Why was he filming the police? What did other people do at/to/near the checkpoint? Was he alone or part of a group or even a mob?
Seems incredibly ill-advised to be publicly discussing what is sure to result in legal action. Even as one-sided as this is, the best he can do is incriminate himself. The other side will wait until due process requires them to disclose their case. At best he's trying to rally opinion (why?), at worst he's just seeking attention, and either way he's just making things worse on himself.<p>As a CEO he just associated his company with poor decision making.<p>If this guy has a lawyer, he should consider listening to them.<p>But IANAL, so who knows.
Interesting how the prevailing mood on HN is very much pro-cop. Kind of surprising for a hacker forum.<p>You don't really see what a system is made of until you stress it: filming police is one way to stress the LEO system. It's an unfortunate reality that it often does not produce good results.
He's part of "New England Cop Chasers." Their YouTube channel is here: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgnVXppkmzBKfTOwe-KqAJQ/videos" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgnVXppkmzBKfTOwe-KqAJQ/vid...</a>
I've seen this stuff before. Police doing their job on the street trying to keep order in potentially volatile situations and some fool with a camera insinuating himself into the mess who wants to start an ad-hoc high-school forensics debate about police power. Bad idea.
You can almost tell by the attempt to write "legalese" that this guy was looking for trouble. Every other sentence is "clearly this", "clearly that"... no, it's really not so clear.
> I was <i>essentially</i> arrested for filming a police checkpoint ... (my video was seized, <i>but experienced correspondents bring back up, as I did</i>, we had several people apart from the nearly 20 activists protesting the checkpoint with video cameras)<p>Emphasis mine. What happened <i>exactly</i>? There's more context gone unmentioned and he knows it. All one-sided stories sound open-and-shut.
> You can legally get as close as a foot to an officer provided there is no interference. So for instance one can get a few feet from a scene as a member of the press where an officer is ticketing somebody for an offence.<p>Does the person being ticketed have no rights in this situation? I think I'd be pretty upset at the reporter if they got all up in my business like this.
Ah, the old "contempt of cop" charge. If taxpayers knew or cared how much money is wasted by police acting macho and lording it over citizens even to the extent of violating the law to do so, there might be some actual change in this area.
There are very few details in this forum post, just some nonspecific mentions of an individual recording a police checkpoint of some kind. What type of checkpoint? Why did this person feel it necessary to record the police? Why did a confrontation start? What were the circumstances of the escalation?<p>In general, if you interfere with the police (even if you disagree with whatever it is they're doing) you can expect some trouble. I will be the first to acknowledge that sometimes the police (especially small town cops) can get a little too full of their own authority and take it too far.<p>On the other hand, their job is to keep the community safe, and save for the very worst cops (which are in the minority), they take the job seriously. There is (and should be) a pretty high bar to harassing or interfering with the police.
There are innocent people losing their lives in confrontations with cops (including the good cops who get killed just doing their job) and this guy is creating drama and looking for more attention from it. Just look at how long his posts are and at how he is begging for attention from everyone (the media, the tech community, etc). His altercation with the law (a misdemeanor at the most) doesn't warrant all of this extra drama he's creating. And what the hell does he want strangers to do about it (stop their busy lives, filled with real problems, to fight his battles and stroke his balls so he can feel validated about this self-inflicted wound?). The term "get a life" was creates specifically for these moments and types of people.