Store video catches Cops in the act


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Earl Sampson has been stopped and questioned by Miami Gardens police 258 times in four years.

 
He?s been searched more than 100 times. And arrested and jailed 56 times.
 
Despite his long rap sheet, Sampson, 28, has never been convicted of anything more serious than possession of marijuana.
 
Miami Gardens police have arrested Sampson 62 times for one offense: trespassing.
 
Almost every citation was issued at the same place: the 207 Quickstop, a convenience store on 207th Street in Miami Gardens.
 
But Sampson isn?t loitering. He works as a clerk at the Quickstop.
 
So how can he be trespassing when he works there?
 
It?s a question the store?s owner, Alex Saleh, 36, has been asking for more than a year as he watched Sampson, his other employees and his customers, day after day, being stopped and frisked by Miami Gardens police. Most of them, like Sampson, are poor and black.
 
And, like Sampson, many of them have been cited for minor infractions, sometimes as often as three times in the same day.
 
Saleh was so troubled by what he saw that he decided to install video cameras in his store. Not to protect himself from criminals, because he says he has never been robbed. He installed the cameras ? 15 of them ? he said, to protect him and his customers from police.
 
Since he installed the cameras in June 2012 he has collected more than two dozen videos, some of which have been obtained by the Miami Herald. Those tapes, and Sampson?s 38-page criminal history ? including charges never even pursued by prosecutors ? raise some troubling questions about the conduct of the city?s police officers.
 
The videos show, among other things, cops stopping citizens, questioning them, aggressively searching them and arresting them for trespassing when they have permission to be on the premises; officers conducting searches of Saleh?s business without search warrants or permission; using what appears to be excessive force on subjects who are clearly not resisting arrest and filing inaccurate police reports in connection with the arrests.
 
Last year, Saleh, armed with a cache of videos, filed an internal affairs complaint about the arrests at his store. From that point, he said, police officers became even more aggressive.
 
One video, recorded on June 26, 2012, shows Sampson, clearly stocking coolers, being interrupted by MGPD Sgt. William Dunaske, who orders him to put his hands behind his back, and then handcuffs him, leads him out of the store and takes him to jail for trespassing.
 
Another employee, Ron Picart, was arrested for illegal possession of a firearm. The case was never filed by the state attorney because the officer, Dunaske, found the firearm under the store?s counter during an illegal search, which was video recorded.

 

 

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What i don't get from this story is don't these people who get arrested have lawyers, even state ones, seeing something fishy is going on (like trespassing their own work place while working :rofl: )?

 

something doesn't add up.

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