Family Assaulted by Cops for “Suspicion of Breast Feeding,” Dad Arrested for No Reason
Juley Harris pulled into a Maryland gas station with his family and pumped some gas before stepping into the station’s convenience store and heating up a pizza.
When he stepped out, a Charles County sheriff’s deputy was demanding his identification, accusing him of driving with an unrestrained baby in the front seat.
Harris, 29, a hip hop artist who goes by DC Prophitt, denied the allegation, pointing to his one-month daughter who was restrained in the back seat.
Charles County sheriff’s deputy Gass insisted that Harris’ girlfriend placed the baby in the seat after they pulled into the station. He also accused Shanita Simms of breastfeeding the baby in the front seat, but that is not illegal in Maryland.
Gass claimed he spotted all this when they pulled into the station where he was parked. Harris told him his girlfriend only had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
Nevertheless, Gass began writing a ticket as a female deputy pulled up. Sensing that his rights were being violated, Harris asked the deputies to call a supervisor.
But that just made things worse.
“At first, (the supervisor) acted nice, but when I tried to explain things to him, he jumped in my face”
Harris became upset and began cussing. Simms pulled out her phone to record, capturing deputies arresting Harris after threatening to taser him. Harris’ 3-year-old daughter, who was in the backseat along with the baby, started crying.
Then they confiscated her phone, claiming they needed it as “evidence” – even though it has long been established the police do not have the right to seize cameras.
In fact, the United States Department of Justice made that clear in 2012 when it sent the Baltimore Police Department a detailed statement explaining that police can only seize cameras under “exigent circumstances” – meaning they suspect the evidence may be destroyed – which is exactly what Harris accuses them of doing.
Despite the obvious Constitutional violations against Harris, he was convicted Tuesday of disorderly conduct, failure to obey a lawful order and driving with an unrestrained child in the front seat.
He said the evidence used against him was his girlfriend’s video, which was edited to remove the portion where a deputy climbed into his car and confiscated her phone – which they still have not returned.
Harris also said that all three deputies testified that their dashcams were not working at the time.
Three patrol cars. Three dashcams. Not a single one working.
They also claimed the surveillance from the gas station was not working either, a video Harris tried to obtain the day after his arrest, only to be told he had to go through corporate, who, in turn, told him he needed to get a court order.
The employees at the Dash In also told him Charles County deputies had already obtained the footage, apparently not having to go through such hurdles.
And even though it took ten months for his trial, deputies did not provide his public defender with the footage they planned to use against him until Monday, the day before the trial.
Harris was sentenced to 120 days in jail, but that sentence was suspended, so he ended up with two years probation and community service.
And although his public defender led him to believe deputies would be returning his phone during the trial, they told her they didn’t have it, refusing to provide any further information on how to obtain it.
So apparently they expect him to just forget about it, seeing how they are above the law in that county.
But it must be stressed. They had no right to seize it in the first place. And they should be sued for it.
The only legal way deputies could have seized Simms’ camera without a warrant is if she was using it in during the commission of a crime such as child pornography where the camera becomes a tool of the crime, not just a tool to document whatever alleged crime may have occurred.
After all, the USDOJ points out, a camera could very well include evidence of police misconduct, which thanks to YouTube, we now know is a daily occurrence in this country.
The fact that Harris was arrested for disputing a citation indicates that deputies did have something to hide, which is why the supervisor, Sergeant Smith, felt the need to confiscate her phone after arresting her boyfriend.
“I was still videotaping him and he told me to give him my phone because it was his evidence,” Simms said.
“I sat in the car and started crying and he put all his weight on me. I was leaning over on the drivers seat, trying to keep my phone away from him but he took it.”
And once he seized her phone, a Samsung, he demanded her passcode, but she refused to give it to him.
“He said, ‘we have ways to get into it,’” she said.
Meanwhile, Harris is sitting handcuffed in the back of the patrol car watching the sergeant
seize her phone.
Harris said they later tried to retrieve the video through auto backup, which is a cloud service used by Samsung, but by then, everything had been wiped out.
In their complaint, deputies claimed that Harris had become so disorderly, that a crowd gathered around to watch, which is how they were able to convict him of disorderly conduct.
And in their testimony, deputies estimated the crowd to be about 20 people.
But the video shows there was not more than three people in the gas station, all of them tending to their business, pumping gas into their cars.
However, none of that mattered to Judge Cooper who said Harris was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt on all charges.
But the only thing that was proven during his trial was that the system is broken. Beyond a reasonable doubt.
Love how the shithead cop tells him that he needs to argue it in court, and not there. Sweet, so they write all the bullshit tickets they want, and it’s up to us to waste our own personal time to fight a fucking made-up ticket costing hundreds of dollars.
Look at the power trip that tin star goon sergeant is on. Look at all of the false charges he’s willing to pin on this man simply for nothing more than contempt of cop. I’m pretty sure that’s oppression under the color of law, coercion & duress, illegal detainment, kidnapping, false arrest, assault. What was it the driver did?
Madeira Darling is a snarky mystic, devout Satanist, serious Marxist, laughing dominatrix, and writer from San Fransisco where they live with their boyfriend in a house full of altars to their various demons.
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