Round Rock Cop-Watcher Tests Police, Gets Arrested

An Austin man is suing the Round Rock Police Department for an unlawful arrest he says occurred while he was filming the police station.

Phillip Turner, 25, has been taking videos of police since 2007.

It started after his first negative encounter with an officer. One night Turner, a black man, was out with some friends — another black man and two white women. For no apparent reason, he said, he was pulled over by the police.

“After being pulled over and searched illegally, the officer told the white girls ‘watch out who you hang out with,’” Turner told Patch.

Turner said that he felt profiled that night and that if cops were going to keep pulling him over for “stupid stuff,” then he would start filming his encounters with the police. After putting his filmed encounters with police on YouTube, Turner’s friend encourage him to become a cop watcher.

The mission of a cop watcher? Testing police officers on their knowledge of the law.

One of Turner’s cop-watching activities is a “first amendment audit,” where he goes to a government building to take pictures to see if officials there are fully aware of the law.

Last year, during an audit in Round Rock, police failed Turner’s test.

Turner said he was taking pictures of the Round Rock police station when a squad car pulled up to him. That’s when he started recording video.

Officer Paul Hernandez initiated conversation with Turner, as seen on Turner’s video of the encounter.

“What’s going on buddy?”

When Turner refuses to give Hernandez his ID, the situation takes a turn for the worse. In the video, Hernandez acknowledges that Turner’s photography is not illegal. But when Turner asks if he is free to go, the officer says Turner needs to identify himself first.

“You either show me an ID or I place you in cuffs for failure to identify,” Hernandez said.

That’s when Hernandez and Turner appear to become increasingly irritated with each other and Hernandez puts Turner in cuffs. Turner said that he was told that he would not be released until he presented an ID.

On October 21 of this year,Turner filed his lawsuit, listing Hernandez and four other officers as defendants.

“This was not a crime. Nonetheless, Defendant Officers treated Mr. Turner as if it were. Defendant Officers harassed, detained, seized and arrested (by handcuffing) Mr. Turner without reasonable suspicion or probable cause merely because Mr. Turner was lawfully using his video camera,” the lawsuit states.

A legal expert with the ACLU office in Texas, Rebecca L. Robertson, said that Turner has a valid complaint against the officers.

“The exercise of one’s constitutional rights cannot and must not be interpreted by law enforcement officers—as it was in this case—as ‘suspicious activity.,’ Robertson, the Legal and Policy Director of ACLU Texas told Patch. “The Round Rock police department must ensure its officers are adequately trained in the constitutional protections all of us enjoy.”

Turner said that he has been arrested four times since he started cop watching and has plans to file a lawsuit against the Fort Worth police. He said that he decided to sue now because when he was in college he didn’t have money to pay legal fees. Recently, he set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the legal fees. In two months it has raised over 4,000 dollars.

Other than cop watching, Turner is getting his second degree in computer science at Austin Community College, and volunteers as a basketball coach. Turner said cop watching isn’t meant to disturb the police or prevent them from doing their jobs.

“I get police officers who come up to me and are very professional and respectful. And that’s the type of encounter we want from officers,” Turner told Patch. “Whenever you pull out a camera it will either bring out the professionalism in the officer or childish tactics and unprofessionalism. Officers should be professional at all times.”

Angelique Myers, a spokeswoman for the Round Rock Police Department, told Patch that the police are “not able to speak on matters currently in litigation.”

[Photo courtesy of Phillip Turner]