Maryland man fights ban on filming cops

09-07-2011 • rt.com

The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland is going after the Baltimore Police Department after Christopher Sharp had his cell phone confiscated and all of its contents destroyed after he filmed police use excessive force on a friend of his during the 2010 Preakness Stakes horserace. As an unnamed female friend was cuffed as she laid belly-down on the floor of the Pimlico Race Course, Sharp hit record on his cell-phone camera to capture the woman bloodied and beaten by a slew of cops. The BPD demanded that he turn the “evidence” over on the spot, only for them to erase the information, however. In the case of Sharp, officers did not make a copy of the supposed-evidence but rather erased it along with the rest of the phone’s contents — including personal recordings of the man and his young son that was accumulated over the course of a year-and-a-half.