Submitted by 6c_6f_76_65 in ACAB

Taken from the top comment

Backstory for context :Michael Picard was protesting near a police DUI checkpoint in West Hartford when John Barone, a state police trooper, approached him under the pretext of public complaints and confiscated his legally-carried pistol and pistol permit. The trooper then claimed that filming the police is illegal and took Picard's camera. Unbeknownst to Trooper Barone, the camera was still on and recording when Barone brought it back to the police cruiser where his fellow state police troopers, Patrick Torneo and John Jacobi, were waiting. With the camera rolling, the officers proceeded to: call a Hartford police officer to see if he or she had any "grudges" against Picard; open an investigation of him in the police database; and discuss a separate protest that he had organized at the state capitol. Trooper Barone can be heard saying "we gotta cover our ass," and another trooper stated "let's give him something," and the three settled on fabricating two criminal infraction tickets that they issued to Picard. Trooper Torneo drove away with Picard's camera on top of his cruiser, upon which the camera fell onto the hood of the car, Torneo stopped, and Jaboi returned the camera to Picard. In July 2015, the criminal charges against Picard were dismissed in Connecticut Superior Court. The ACLU-CT's lawsuit on Picard's behalf contends that the troopers violated Picard's First Amendment right to free speech and Fourth Amendment right against warrantless seizure of his property.

THE REASON WHY HE WAS PROTESTING NEAR A DUI CHECKPOINT: Statistics have proven that DUI checkpoints are ineffective and cost alot of money to yield very few results. The numbers speak for themselves. Over 1 million vehicles pass through California's 1,500 sobriety checkpoints every year. Police arrest just one-third of 1 percent of those motorists for drunken driving. It costs the average department $5,000 every time they set up a checkpoint. Instead of inefficiently stopping every car on the road in the elusive hunt for drunken drivers, roving patrols stand a better chance at getting dangerous drivers — be they distracted or drunk — off the streets.

Roving, or saturation, patrols consist of police officers driving around to actively seek out drunken and dangerous drivers instead of passively waiting at a roadblock for drunken drivers to come to them. Patrols are up to 10 times more effective than checkpoints.

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