Wilddidn'treadthePAconstitutionAlaska:
http://sites.state.pa.us/PA_Constitution.html
Right to Bear Arms
Section 21.
"The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned."
But obviously, it can't mean exactly what it says on it's face, so we have no civil rights and cops can assault us at will. Right?
Sigh.
OK. Let's back up a sec. There's another separate but intersecting trend going on nationally. Cops are regularly assaulting people who point cameras at them. One of the worst took place in Las Vegas recently - the video of the cop's assault survived (unexpectedly) and the guy jailed (wrongfully) for assault on the cop was cleared.
Carlos Miller's "Photography Is Not A Crime" blog documents scads of these cases. And in fact he paid attention to the PA case we're talking about, because the current criminal charges do appear to be retaliation against the guy for recording and publishing the audio track of these cops acting like rampaging barbarians.
If a cop walks up to somebody and tries to snatch the camera away from somebody in one of the majority of the states where public video is legal, that is also assault. It's not assault with a deadly weapon thank God, but these cases are common enough (with Carlos alone publishing roughly a dozen a month!) that an escalation to an armed conflict seems inevitable, eventually. What happens when a cop tries to grab a camera, gets pushed away (because resisting police
assault is still legal in every single state), the cop gets mad and goes for a gun? Simple assault just went to assault with a deadly weapon...and both parties are starting with holstered guns. Oh, and in the majority of these cases, the cop is solo.
Somebody is eventually going to get shot.
I AM NOT ADVOCATING THAT! I am not saying I'm going to shoot anyone. I am simply making a prediction based on the frequency of these cases.
What needs to change before things get to that point, is that law enforcement needs to fully understand that they have never been given the right to commit assault. And it sure as hell doesn't help when we have a police chief of a major city
advocating assault by his officers.