Academic

COPS REALLY GOING WILD AGAINST SCRUTINY: Woman Charged For Watching Arrest From Own Front Porch: ?

By Glenn Reynolds

COPS REALLY GOING WILD AGAINST SCRUTINY: Woman Charged For Watching Arrest From Own Front Porch:

The resisting-arrest conviction last week of Felicia Gibson has left a lot of people wondering. Can a person be charged with resisting arrest while observing a traffic stop from his or her own front porch?

Salisbury Police Officer Mark Hunter thought so, and last week District Court Judge Beth Dixon agreed. Because Gibson did not at first comply when the officer told her and others to go inside, the judge found Gibson guilty of resisting, delaying or obstructing an officer.

Gibson was not the only bystander watching the action on the street. She was the only one holding up a cell-phone video camera. But court testimony never indicated that Hunter told her to stop the camera; he just told her to go inside.

Pathetic and thuggish. What was Mark Hunter afraid of?

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on August 27, 2010 (boomark / email).