In Victory for Freedom Technology, Young Man's MP3 Player Changes the Balance of Power in a Criminal Case

The police routinely lie to get confessions, to force defendants to accept plea bargains, and to thereby get convictions. But look what happened when a defendant secretly recorded a police interrogation and then sprung that recording on a police officer in court:

NEW YORK - A teenage suspect who secretly recorded his interrogation on an MP3 player has landed a veteran detective in the middle of perjury charges, authorities said Thursday.

Unaware of the recording, Detective Christopher Perino testified in April that the suspect "wasn't questioned" about a shooting in the Bronx, a criminal complaint said. But then the defense confronted the detective with a transcript it said proved he had spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to persuade Erik Crespo to confess — at times with vulgar tactics.

Once the transcript was revealed in court, prosecutors asked for a recess, defense attorney Mark DeMarco said. The detective was pulled from the witness stand and advised to get a lawyer.

( . . . )

Perino had arrested Crespo on New Year's Eve 2005 while investigating the shooting of a man in an elevator. While in an interrogation room at a station house, Crespo, then 17, stealthily pressed the record button on the MP3 player, a Christmas gift, DeMarco said.

After Crespo was charged with attempted murder, his family surprised DeMarco by playing him the recording.

"I couldn't believe my ears," said the lawyer, who decided to keep the recording under wraps until he cross-examined Perino at the trial.

Prosecutors then offered Crespo, who had faced as many as 25 years if convicted, seven years if he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge. He accepted Yahoo News

This shows the importance of the AfroSpear's Freedom Technology Christmas campaign, because if the defendant hadn't had an MP3 player to record the police interrogation, that officer's word might have been accepted as fact. Instead, the officer could be looking at some jail time.

Digital Cameras Promote Technological Literacy in Black Teenagers

One of the main reasons that I bought a digital camera for my daughters (12 and 14 years old) was to encourage them to experiment with photography, layout, and explore natural science as Leonardo Da Vinci did with his anatomical drawings.



So, I am pleased to discover that my 14 year daughter has an entire folder of photographs of our cats and dog, using various types of lighting, in various poses and natural states. I don't know if she will ultimately be a photographer or receive a color scholarship based on her work, but I know that neither of those things can happen if she doesn't know how to use a digital camera.


My daughter NEEDS a digital camera to explore and develop her creativity, and this exploration, in turn, is part of her intellectual, academic and professional preparation for life in a complex and technological society. Because of her interest in photography, she has learned how to use PhotoShop, which is the professional program used in the layout of print advertisements and commercial business signs. (Notice how my "Free The Jena Six" placard appears to be resting in my and my wife's arms, but was actually pasted in by my daughter, using PhotoShop.)

I bought my daughters a used Sony DSC-S40 camera from Amazon.Com that is so old that they don't sell them anymore. Other similar but updated models that take excellent photographs include the Sony Cybershot S650 and S700, available by next-fews-days mail from Amazon.Com for between $110.00 and $140.00, new and used. (Although the used ones work, you might as well get a new one, since the difference in price is so small.)


Also, get a memory stick, because a digital camera's internal memory tends to be frustratingly small, but a memory stick allows you to take hundreds or thousands of photographs.