By Carlos Miller
Another town. Another cop. Another photographer gets his photos deleted.
This time it went down in Anne Arundel County, Maryland when Antonio Amador grabbed his camera to photograph a fatal accident that took place outside his home on October 24. This was part of an ongoing project to get drivers to slow down in the area.
He started filming the accident scene when an angry cop approached him, demanding he delete his memory card, according to the Maryland Gazette.
“Suddenly I hear this screaming, like somebody really mad,” he said. “I see this guy charging at me saying, ‘delete those pictures now!’ “
The officers threatened to arrest him if he didnt’ delete his photos. Amador tried to explain to them that he had a Constitutional right to take the photos.
“They couldn’t care less,” he said. “They threatened to handcuff me just because I questioned why I should delete my photos in the first place.”
The man who died in the accident was the son of a Baltimore police officer, so maybe that is why the officers felt they needed to violate Amador’s Constitutional rights.
Now the ACLU is looking into it. And Amador has filed a complaint against the department.
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Fernandez, as I mentioned in a 
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I think thats BS they should not have done that
hopefully they sue the PD for some form of compensation
Undelete your footage and/or photos! Don’t use the camera, or memory card really, for anything else!
Exactly – Do what the nice constitutional violating police officer says, pull the card and don’t use it until you get to run some kind of file recovery software on it. Aren’t there some cards that use wi-fi and upload your pictures right after you take them?
Here is a perfect example of how the EYE-FI cards would be useful.
Regarding another issue on this site, Tom brought these devices to my attention in his comments on October 31.
After further research, I learned that these devices fit into the SD card slots on most cameras. They contain a built-in WiFi antenna and are able to directly upload photos to a variety of web-sites including Flickr, You-Tube etc.,….provided that the device is within 90 ft of a configured access point. A configured access point could include a home computer, a lap-top with a cell-phone modem, or even a local Coffee House with WiFi access.
In the case of Mr. Amador, he was outside his home so access, theoretically, could have been available.
When the Police approach, a simple push of a button and all the pictures in the camera are immediately uploaded, thereby removing them from the clutches of any Officer intent on acting illegally.
The EYE-FI cards also upload video, but I do not know weather the stream is uploaded in real-time or weather the video has to be stopped and transmitted as a discrete “packet” of information.
The best scenario is for photographers to operate in teams, whereby one member operates a lap-top with cell phone modem and the other member takes the photographs and most likely takes a beating as well. All in the name of free speech and hopes of a big lawsuit payday.
Constitutional rights? Where do you people think you live? The USA? This is the USSA. You can sleep on that all you want. In the USSA like in the USSR the police have absolute power. The law is whatever they say it is at the moment. And every sleazy judge, prosecutor, and politician will agree. The thing to do is get the name and possibly a picture of this dirty cop and spread it so everyone knows who he is. Criminals do not like publicity. The more people know about these copthugs the less powerful they are. Sooner or later we are going to have to stand up to these government sponsored criminals.
if I were him… I’d use some recovery software to retrieve the deleted pictures & send them to the PD that cop works at.
Actually something like an iPhone or whatnot might able to be configured to communicate with an EYE-FI and upload pictures to the net.