July 27, 2011  |  

Over Memorial Day weekend this past May, residents of Miami Beach witnessed a horrific display of police brutality as 12 cops sprayed Raymond Herisse's car with 100 bullets, killing him. The shooting provoked outrage in the surrounding community, not only because of the murder, but because of what the police did afterward. 

Officers on the scene confiscated and smashed witnesses' cell phones; later, when they were confronted by the media, the police denied trying to destroy videos of the incident. 

But 35-year-old Narces Benoit removed his HTC EVO’s SIM card and hid it in his mouth. He later sold the video to CNN, placing the police in the awkward position of explaining why they lied about allegations of cell phone destruction. More importantly, the video showed at least two officers pointing guns at Benoit, demanding that he stop filming.

Police brutality takes many forms around the country on a regular basis, particularly in poor and minority neighborhoods. Sometimes, the only method of accountability is a victim’s word (if they are still alive) against that of an officer. Unsurprisingly, the police officer’s version of the story is often adequate for a judge to dismiss allegations of wrongdoing, unless there is hard evidence of misconduct, such as a video or audio recording, which can be useful to unravel conflicting versions of police-citizen encounters.

Due to advancements in technology, the average citizen carries a digital camera in his or her pocket or purse, creating a potential army of amateur videographers on every street corner. A quick YouTube search of "police brutality" lists endless videos, often cell phone footage, of what appear to be police acting with unnecessary and violent force. Some of those videos have served a crucial role in bringing charges against brutality that may have gone unaddressed had it not been for bystanders recording.

One would think the fear of videographers on every block would be a powerful deterrent to police misconduct. However, legislatures are not taking this newfound power against police abuse lightly. In at least three states, it is illegal to record any on-duty police officer, even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists. The legal justification is usually based on the warped interpretation of existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited.

Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland are among the 12 states where all parties must consent for a recording to be legal. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested and charged with a felony. Most all-party consent states (except Illinois and Massachusetts) include a "privacy provision" that says a violation occurs only when the offended party has a reasonable expectation that the conversation is private. This is meant to protect TV news crews and people who record public meetings — where it is obvious to all that recording is underway — from accidentally committing a felony.

Massachusetts and Illinois are the only states that do not recognize an expectation-to-privacy provision to their all-party consent laws. While courts in Massachusetts have generally held that secretly recording police is illegal, recording them openly is not. Illinois, on the other hand, is the only state where the legislature specifically amended the state's wiretapping law to make it illegal to record on-duty police officers without their consent, even in public.

Cases Keep Piling Up

Recording on-duty police officers has gained momentum in states around the country for some time now. But it's only in the last few years, after several high-profile incidents, that the topic has begun to generate nationwide headlines and debate.

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A South African anthropologist has asked permission to open the graves of William Shakespeare and his family to determine, among other things, what killed the Bard and whether his poems and plays may have been composed under the influence of marijuana.

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But while Shakespeare's skeleton could reveal clues about his health and death, the question of the man's drug use depends on the presence of hair, fingernails or toenails in the grave, said Francis Thackeray, the director of the Institute for Human Evolution at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, who floated the proposal to the Church of England.

Thackeray conducted a study in 2001, which found evidence of marijuana residue on pipe fragments found in Shakespeare's garden. Cannabis was grown in England at the time and was used to make textiles and rope. Some Shakespearian allusions, including a mention of a "noted weed" in Sonnet 76, spurred Thackeray's inquiry into whether Shakespeare may have used the mind-altering drug for inspiration.

"If there is any hair, if there is any keratin from the fingernails or toenails, then we will be in a position to undertake chemical analysis on extremely small samples for marijuana," Thackeray told LiveScience.

A poet's curse

Whether or not Shakespeare smoked pot, he certainly didn't want his remains disrupted. The stone covering the poet's grave carries an engraved curse for any would-be intruders.

"Blessed be the man that spares these stones," the engraving reads, "And cursed be he who moves my bones." [8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]

Thackeray said he has a way around the Bard's curse.

"We don't want to move any of the bones," he said.

Instead, Thackeray said, the team plans to use a technique called laser surface scanning. With a portable device, he said, the anthropologists can open the graves and digitally scan the skeletons of buried in the graves that are supposed to belong to Shakespeare, his wife Anne Hathaway and his daughter Susanna without moving the bones. The scans could then be turned into three-dimensional computer models of the bones and skulls. From this information, the researchers can build facial reconstructions to confirm the skeletons' identities and look for markers of health and signs of disease in the bones.

Thackeray also pointed out a loophole in Shakespeare's curse.

"He does not refer to teeth," he said.

A very small sample of the inner portion of Shakespeare's tooth could provide DNA to definitively link him to the skeletons of his wife and daughter, Thackeray said. Chemical analysis of teeth can also reveal details about a person's diet as well as their smoking habits, though not whether he preferred tobacco or Mary Jane. Skeletons from Virginia of people who lived during Shakespeare's time show grooves between the canine and incisor teeth from habitual chewing on a pipe, Thackeray said. If Shakespeare was a habitual smoker, his own teeth might bear such grooves.

Digging up Shakespeare

A Church of England spokesperson told FoxNews.com last week that they had not received a petition from Thackeray to open the grave, which is located in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon. But Thackeray said the paperwork is in.

"The application has been submitted," he told LiveScience. "We are now just simply waiting for a formal response. … We respect the fact that it will take time to have our proposal examined and assessed."

Uncovering Shakespeare's bones could provide more information about the man behind "Hamlet" and "King Lear"than ever before, Thackeray said, adding that "there is very little known about his life."

But other anthropologists are skeptical. Analyzing the skeleton could reveal whether Shakespeare had certain conditions such as osteoporosis, Kristina Killgrove, a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told LiveScience. But determining cause of death is more difficult, unless the disease or disorder is one that affects the bones, she said.

And while the public may clamor for more information on historical icons, the scientific knowledge gleaned from such projects doesn't always add much to what is already known about an era, Killgrove said.

"I'm not a big fan of opening up the tombs of Mona Lisa or Shakespeare to see how they died," she said. "I'm not really sure what it will tell us other than the lifestyle of somebody in Elizabethan England."

This article was reprinted with permission from LiveScience.

Related on LiveScience:

• History's Most Overlooked Mysteries
• Top 10 Weird Ways We Deal With the Dead
• Was Hamlet Criminally Insane?

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For her series “Shake“, pet photographer Carli Davidson photographed curious portraits of dogs shaking off water. Use a fast shutter speed and you can capture all kinds of strange expressions on your dog’s face.

You can find the rest of the photographs in the series here.

Shake (via Photojojo)

Image credits: Photographs by Carli Davidson and used with permission

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President Obama is not a foreigner. He is not secretly a Muslim. Those are the facts, but they do not seem to matter in many quadrants of the Republican Party.

During a recent focus group conducted by the Republican pollster Frank Luntz, about half of a group of Iowa Republicans said they believed that Mr. Obama is a Muslim. Republican Party leaders seem more than happy to let such misconceptions live and flourish.

Yes, Sarah Palin, who was an enthusiastic “birther,” has decided that the supposed issue of Mr. Obama’s citizenship is, as she put it the other day, “a distraction.” But the speaker of the House, John Boehner, made it clear on the NBC program “Meet the Press” last Sunday that he had no interest in quashing these fantasies or stopping his fellow Republicans from accusing Mr. Obama of lying about his citizenship and his faith.

Pressed by the show’s host, David Gregory, Mr. Boehner said — grudgingly — that an assurance from the government of Hawaii that Mr. Obama was born an American citizen was “good enough for me.” And that when Mr. Obama says he is a Christian, “I’ll take him at his word.” But he said it was “not my job” to try to do anything about it. “The American people have the right to think what they think,” he said.

That apparently includes Representative Raul Labrador of Idaho, a Tea Party freshman, who drew loud cheers and guffaws at a recent conservative gathering when he said, “I’m fortunate enough to be an American citizen by birth, and I have the birth certificate to prove it.” Asked about that remark, Mr. Boehner said “the gentleman was trying to be funny.”

Leave aside the fact that Mr. Boehner and other Republicans don’t hesitate to tell Americans what to think on any number of subjects, from evolution to prayer in schools. It is in fact his job to combat the ignorance, xenophobia and bigotry behind the birther faction.

If Mr. Boehner really wanted to lead, he could make this obvious but important point: Being a Muslim is not a disqualification for being president of the United States. This sort of racism stained American politics in earlier centuries. It has no place in this one.

This man has Tourette's Syndrome

“A lot of people are offering advice and are willing to do anything to help. We’ll get the experts together and look at suggestions and take action quickly.” Gary Keever, Auburn University professor or horticulture

Gary Keever isn’t ready to pull the plug on the poisoned, historic live oak trees at Toomer’s Corner. But the Auburn University professor of horticulture has a backup plan, just in case.

“We’ve had offers from people in Florida and Birmingham that plant huge trees,” Keever told the Opelika-Auburn News following a Thursday morning press conference on the lawn of Samford Hall regarding the possibility of transplanting adult oaks. “Once everything cranks up – it could happen within a matter of weeks. It’s done all of the time.

“But they’re not dead yet.”

Keever said that for anything to be replanted on the oaks’ current site, “we must renew the soil.” But that decision rests with the university, not with him.

Keever and a team of Auburn agricultural officials are feverishly working to save the trees, which were lethally poisoned with the herbicide Spike 80DF. Auburn police arrested 62-year-old Harvey Almorn Updyke Jr. of Dadeville early Thursday in connection with the poisoning.

On Jan. 27, a man using the name “Al in Dadeville” called “The Paul Finebaum Show,” a popular afternoon sports talk radio program, and bragged about poisoning the trees, the focal point for many Auburn University athletic celebrations.

“It (Spike 80DF) is very effective in what it does … and that is to kill plants,” said Stephen Enloe, Auburn University assistant professor of agronomy and soils. “The tree may re-green, but the herbicide is transported to the new leaves, and you’ll see the death cycle all over again.”

What is Spike 80DF used for?

“Spike is a very effective, highly specialized, soil-applied herbicide used in maintaining rangelands and railway lines and for other important applications,” said Garry Hamlin, a representative of Dow Chemical Company, a manufacturer of the herbicide. “It is sold as an off-white powder, to be diluted in water and applied to soil for root uptake by unwanted brush.

“Our company invests millions of dollars in research to develop an herbicide like this one and to generate label directions on how to use it properly,” Hamlin said. “We do not take misuse of our products lightly under any circumstances – and this is a case of particularly gross and egregious misuse.

“We are actively working with university officials to provide the best technical information to help mitigate damage to the trees. Removing affected soil around the trees and working in activated charcoal will help, but there is a distinct potential that even the best efforts at remediation will not be entirely successful.”

Officials agreed the trees’ future was “grim.”

Keever said soil samples continue to be taken from the location of the trees and that lab results should be available within 10 days. Enloe and Keever discussed the application of a liquid charcoal absorbant in the ground near the trees in an effort to help inactivate the herbicide, which Keever said can be active in the soil for “three to five years.”

“We’re doing what we can to lessen the impact of the herbicide,” Keever said. “We’ll know something soon. We have a huge area to work with. It’s such a diverse matrix of roots. It’s very difficult to do.

“A lot of people are offering advice and are willing to do anything to help. We’ll get the experts together and look at suggestions and take action quickly.”

Keever fears plants other than the live oaks, such as nearby holly and magnolia trees, could also be affected.

“If the roots get in contact, they’ll absorb it just like the live oaks did,” he said.

Keever noted that live oaks are not native to central Alabama, “but they have survived here since 1890.”