A nightclub manager in New York threatened to kill a man for video recording an altercation involving police and apparently a patron that had been thrown out of the club, but police stood by and did nothing.
In fact, Cortland police sided with the man identified as Joe Hage, general manager of the [__Stone Lounge__](http://photographyisnotacrime.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/119608251388270) in central New York state, shining their flashlights into the man’s camera, then ordering him to leave the area.
If New York is anything like Florida, then there’s a good chance those cops were working off-duty for the club, meaning they will be hard-pressed to bite the hand that feeds them.
As of now, not many details are available on the video that was published on Youtube earlier today and is quickly going viral, but several viewers confirmed it was Hage, stating he doesn’t have the best reputation in that area.
The man recording is a local student named Blake Dudek who remained calm despite Hage charged at him in a very aggressive manner, telling him “to get the fuck out of here” and “I’ll fucking kill you.”
The video doesn’t show the actual altercation, but we can hear a man yelling that “I’m not resisting,” so we can imagine he was getting a beat down.
Especially if the cops and Hage did their best to thwart Dudek from recording.
The video is also being discussed on [__Reddit.__](http://photographyisnotacrime.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/cop_tells_my_buddy_i_will_fucking_kill_youi)
*Joe Hage In A Rage*
**UPDATE:** A reader with some familiarity to the story sent the following email. When I speculated that the cops were working off-duty, it doesn’t mean they would be out of uniform, which is the long-standing tradition in Florida. But even if they were on duty, they obviously sided with Hage the Rage.
*Couple corrections on your story. Here in the little city of Cortland, home of what ESPN dubs “The biggest LITTLE rivalry in the nation” in the annual Cortaca Jug football game between Cortland State and Ithaca College, there are no off duty police officers hired or working at any of the bars or clubs. Also, the cops in the video, they were all in full uniform, and on duty!!!*
*The truely messed up part of the who thing, which I hope you include in your story is this…*
*This past summer, just a few short months ago, the Cortland Police Department pushed for AND GOT THE OK to install surveillance recording cameras about a block up Main Street from the exact location in the video, at a cost of over $43,000 in tax payer money! And they seek to add an additional 20 cameras down Main/South Main ( at and near the same location) at a cost of just over $21,000 each*
*to tax payers. Yet, Mr. Joe Hage didn’t tell THEM, the CPD to turn their cameras off and stop recording, nor did he protest those cameras going up at all.*
*Part of their reasoning at the city meeting for getting the cameras put up was that if you are doing nothing wrong, it shouldn’t be a problem to have cameras up recording citizens…so, that same logic can go against the cops and Mr. Hage’s position…if the cops were doing nothing wrong, it shouldn’t matter if they were being recorded.*
*In the video, the female officer asks “why are you recording video?” the question should be made to her, “why not?”…and her attempt to answer that question can be used as reasoning against the CPD putting up cameras up*
**UPDATE II:** I’ve been receiving a multitude of emails from Cortland residents who have nothing nice to say about Joe Hage, accusing him of everything of paying off police to coercing himself sexually on the nightclub’s barmaids.
But the latest email included what is apparently a message from the victim who was getting arrested in the video, which I’ve posted below.
