Video Shows Jersey City Cop Detaining Man For Recording Traffic Stop

By Terrence T. McDonald | The Jersey Journal
NJ.com
Apr. 28, 2015

Jersey City police officials say they have opened an internal affairs investigation into a video that surfaced Saturday of a traffic stop outside the Journal Square PATH hub that shows a police officer detaining a man for recording the stop on video.

The 14-minute video shows Officer Ramon Aponte, a 10-year veteran of the police force and a former U.S. Marine, verbally sparring with the man, Joseph Ferrante, and detaining him on the sidewalk until a sergeant arrives. Meanwhile, Ferrante excoriates the officer and calls law enforcement in general "out of control."

"The police have a total lack and disregard for people's rights in this country," Ferrante says at the end of the video.

Mickey Osterreicher, an attorney with the National Press Photographers Association, said police officers in most instances do not have the right to tell citizens to stop recording them or to confiscate cell phones that have video of the officers on them.

"Some believe filming in and of itself is interference, when clearly it's not," Osterreicher told The Jersey Journal.

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