Kansas Cops Continue to Harass Kid With Camera

by Carlos Miller
PINAC
Jan. 06, 2014

Less than a week after he was arrested while video recording cops, 17-year-old Addison Mikkelson had his phone swiped by an overbearing Kansas Highway Patrol officer who threatened to keep it as “evidence” simply because the teen was video recording a traffic stop the officer was conducting.

Mikkelson, who plans to major in criminal justice when he starts college this year, was standing at a respectable distance in a parking lot when the cop stepped out of his car and made a beeline towards the teen rather than towards the car he had just pulled over.

“Can I help you?” the trooper asks.

“I’m just recording,” Mikkelson responds.

“Ok, I’m going to have to take that for evidence then ..."

“This is a public place, isn’t it?”

The cop grabs his camera.

“Why are you touching my camera, sir?”

The camera turns off.

Mikkelson said the cop returned his phone on the condition that he leave immediately. He said he would have stood his ground if he had his other camera with him, the one that he was using the night of his arrest.

But with his iPhone in the hands of the cop, he had no choice but to oblige. And he really didn’t want to end up in handcuffs again for obstruction, the same charge he was slapped with five days earlier.

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