The Detroit cop who snatched a reporter’s smartphone so it could “not be used as a weapon” as she video recorded an arrest last month, returning it to her without a SIM card after a six-hour detainment, will not be criminally charged.
But the Detroit Police Department assures us it is conducting it’s own investigation.
However, it’s been more than a month and all it takes is 35 seconds in the above video to see Lamar Penn clearly violated her Constitutional rights.
So we can pretty much expect him to be promoted soon.
The article below suggests we’re should be happy that *the reporter* wasn’t charged, but that was the case [__from the beginning__](http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2013/07/16/detroit-police-arrest-newspaper-photographer-for-video-recording-from-public-sidewalk/) when police released her with no charges and no SIM card.
But maybe the prosecutor decided to threaten her anyway.
According to the [__Detroit Free Press:__](http://photographyisnotacrime.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/detroit-free-press-photographer-mandi-wright-officer-Lamar-Penn)
> *No criminal charges will be filed against a Detroit Free Press photographer or the Detroit police officer who seized her cell phone and then arrested her last month, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said today.*
> *Prosecutor’s spokeswoman Maria Miller said there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge either party. But an*[*__internal investigation__*](http://photographyisnotacrime.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/photographer-free-press-mandi-wright-video-arrested) *continues into whether proper police procedure was followed.*
> *Mandi Wright, 47, was arrested July 11 east of downtown Detroit after she and a reporter came upon an arrest scene near Woodbridge and Riopelle. Wright approached a police car to film a man being led up to the car in handcuffs. Officer Lamar Penn, who was in plainclothes, told her to stop filming and wrestled her phone away from her. Much of the encounter was captured on Wright’s cell phone video.*
> *Penn later wrote in a report that he seized Wright’s cell-phone camera so that it “not be used as a weapon” and said Wright then jumped on his back.*
