RhondaLea

They why isn't he listed in the system? The jail site was last updated today. http://volusia.org/corrections/results.asp Even though the site is updated regularly, you won't find a brand new detainee until several days after his/her arrest. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

Satire "A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit." [...] "Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity." If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

If it was a yellow jacket, there is no stinger in her skin. When there is a stinger in the skin, the current wisdom dictates speed over technique--i.e., it's okay to pinch and pull, as long as you do it immediately. There are a whole lot of remedies on the web. I thought the most interesting was toothpaste. http://www.slate.com/id/2088863/ P.S. to chaoskitty: Yellow jackets suck. Hope you feel better soon. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

He may have posted a time or three over the years, but he was never a regular, AFAIK. I believe he has also posted to dropzone.com, although I can't remember his choice of user name. He probably wasn't the most coherent of posters--his gift was not the written word, but pictures that were worth many thousands of words. He was an incredibly gifted artist: http://petercoker.com/ Edited to add another link: http://www.artopium.com/space20/artistpage.cgi?ID=522&CalledBy=G3020 He was also a very funny guy. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

As I said in my post to r.s, I'm stunned. I forgot to mention there that I'm very sad. He was quite a guy, and his passing is all too soon. It's a mystery for the ages, Colin. Blue Skies, Rickerby. rl If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

Funny thing about divorce. No matter who's advocating for it, (normal) men get sentimental and women become pragmatic. See a lawyer, preferably one with an interest in divorce mediation. You don't have to be a vengeful prick, but you did make a contribution to the marriage, and you do not deserve to walk away with nothing. The welfare of your children is of paramount importance, but your life isn't over, and you're as entitled to a life as your wife is. Good luck. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

Dear Cocheese, A safe word can save your life. Too bad you don't have one. I still need to get a life. rl If you're digging up threads (about me) so old even I don't remember them, you do surely need to get a life. Made me laugh, though, when I looked at the top of the page at Broke's Zappa quote. My husband "explains" our marriage to everyone he knows thusly: "Les' meet de lil' cocksucker now, while he's still young . . . 'cause, 'fo y'all knows it, he be reachin' adulthood and marry some bitch name RHONDA . . ." What you need, Jeffiness, is a woman who will beat you within an inch of your life every night before you go to bed. Trust me. I wouldn't lie to you. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

It also has some very, very, very bad typos. Sheesh. I would sneak in there and fix that one, but there's too little humor in this thread for me to go fucking with something that really is funny. And on that note, I will now go rest my scrambled brain. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

But that really has nothing to do with anything. I don't think there's a person in this thread who has advocated keeping evidence because "IT'S [THEIRS]!" Keeping a copy? Getting legal advice before turning over the original (or a copy)? For example, what if you had an entire day's worth of video, and the incident occurred on the last load of the day? Consider the (relatively innocuous) stuff that goes on at the dz during the day, and then consider that it might not seem so innocuous to the police officer who decides to view the entire original video you've turned over. That's just one very vague example that requires you to fill in some of the blanks. But not to put too fine a point on it, what if the incident occurred at the end of a boogie weekend, and not only do you have a bunch of jumps, you've also got some footage from the bonfire on Saturday night? Apparently I'm on a roll. With a little luck, this thread will die an ignomious death soon enough. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

I started jumping in 1995 and I stopped in 2001. That's six active years in parachuting, including a base jump or five, and for the last seven years, I've maintained my USPA membership in good standing and tried to keep up with what's going on in the event I ever decide to jump again. That's not likely--the fact that the medical profession is unable to keep my thyroid condition consistently stable (even with quarterly testing) makes me a danger to myself and others in the air--but you never know. My legal knowledge is separate from my skydiving knowledge, and the issue at hand is not specific to skydiving, even though the discussion of it occurs in that context. I have worked for lawyers in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Florida who concentrated in the following areas: intellectual property, First Amendment law, criminal law, trusts and estates, family law, real property law, immigration law, contract law.......bankruptcy law, personal injury law, and a little bit more besides. But this isn't about me and my knowledge or I'd never have suggested googling Professor Duane. I'm not giving legal advice, I'm trying to hammer home the idea that the original legal advice given in this thread by a non-lawyer was WRONG. Period. Okay, not period. I'm also trying to make the parallel point that people who willingly give up their rights will lose them. Who would you ask to ease up? Those who have tried to make their points without namecalling, ridicule and personal attacks? That would be most of us. Ah, but if you insist on your rights and your rights are violated, it's a far different scenario than if you simply cede your rights. It does matter. As for the claim that there are those who remove video evidence...I've never known anyone who has done that, and while I'm certainly an advocate of availing oneself of ones rights, I'm not an advocate of attempting to circumvent the law by destroying evidence. The police are charged with gathering evidence. They have procedures to follow in that regard. There are protections in place for civilians when law enforcement does not follow the law. I find it hard to understand that availing oneself of the protections afforded one under the law is worthy of criticism. Well, the other side I see is that if I hadn't told my daughter to go ahead and talk to the police, nearly $15k would've been saved in legal fees and bond costs, another $10k (or possibly more) might've been recovered in restitution, and my daughter would not have a criminal record that I'm going to have to pay to have expunged a few years from now. The point is...there's always time to give the police the video, but once you've handed it over, you can't take it back. The time it would take to get some legal advice would not hinder the investigation in any substantive way and might save some heartache down the road. My experience is that a small sum invested in a lawyer at the start of a problem will avoid a far larger sum invested later on when a lawyer is required to untangle the mess created by individuals who thought they understood the law well enough to take care of things themselves. If no one wants to hear that, so much so that it's worth obfuscating the issue with irrelevancy......oh well. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

The only person in this thread who has done any namecalling is you. The poster to whom you've responded called no one a moron. He didn't even imply it. What you call it and what the law says seem to be different. If you get before a judge, you can be sure that the law will trump. I was once in the very awkward situation of having to write an affidavit about something a deceased client had said to me in a conversation. She felt overwhelmed by the responsibility of her very large estate, and she used the word "incompetent" at one point to describe that feeling. To the layman the word "incompetent" has the flavor of "not able to get the job done," but to a judge, it has a precise meaning: http://dictionary.law.com/default2.Asp?selected=925&bold=|||| The lawyer who read the original affidavit draft went totally berserk when he read the word in the affidavit, and in the end, that entire portion was elided. The lawyer deemed it too much of a risk that "incompetent" in that context would guarantee that a judgment would not be in our favor. It was the word she used, but it was not what she meant in the way that it would be (and was) taken by a legal professional. All I'm saying is that for your sake, I hope you never have to take your understanding of how things are into a courtroom, because I do not think it will go well for you if you do. Your purported customs are not the law. Totally unrelated to the the discussion at hand. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

Have a link to that legal definition? If such were the case, why do the RIAA get so upset over file sharing? The medium on which the files are stored are not changing hands. Most videographers work as independent contractors. The work product is the finished video. "Work product" in this context: http://www.ipfrontline.com/printtemplate.asp?id=1473 (In another context, "work product" has a different meaning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-product_doctrine) What makes this all extremely confusing is that the idea of "work product" being property of the dzo--pursuant to a contract--has nothing at all to do with a videographer turning over a fatality video to law enforcement, except to the extent that if such a contract exists between the dzo and the videographer, it is properly the dzo's decision to turn over (or not) the video to law enforcement, not the decision of the videographer. But that still brings us back to the original argument, which is not the argument about who owns the video but the argument about whether one is obligated to turn over the video because law enforcement has asked for it. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

Unfortunately, I think *some* of them are after the fringe benefits. It'll be a relief to see this thread go to Speaker's Corner. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

Spoliation is defined as "the intentional destruction of evidence that is presumed to be unfavorable to the party responsible for its destruction." See Nationwide Mut. Fire Ins. Co. v. Ford Motor Co., 174 F.3d 801, 804 (6th Cir. 1999) What I'm getting from your story (that I do not entirely understand without a context) is a situation in which spoiliation might apply. Fortunately, in the context of the original question asked in this thread, the idea of spoiliation does not apply. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

Why would you ask me that question when, in my very first post, I wrote: "If the police want my video, I can make them issue a subpoena to get it. I don't just have to hand it over because they say so." http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3336511#3336511 In no post that I've written have I talked about anything resembling the scenario you posit above. As it happens, the one time I was asked to turn over evidence, I did. I should not have, and it was a lawyer who told me after the fact that it was a mistake to have done so. I believe I alluded to this earlier also. I guess this means you're not done with this thread after all, eh? If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

Irrelevant to the question that was asked. Irrelevant to the question that was asked. No, but my former employer was retained by Adrian Nicholas to probate Patrick de Gayardon's estate in the State of Florida. I can assure you that just because that old darling (my boss) couldn't fly a wingsuit if his life depended on it, he was and is still quite capable of giving good legal counsel to the estate of a wingsuit pioneer. I'm sure you'll miss the point, so let's just skip it, and get to the meat of the matter: Your question is irrelevant to the question that was asked. The duties of a court-appointed, certified media forensic examiner or specialist have no relation to the duties of an independent-contractor videographer or any other private individual who happens to capture potential evidence on tape. People do this all the time, you know. Do you suppose, for example, that the original videos of the Rodney King beating should've been turned over to the police with no copies made? Would you like more real-life examples of the consequences of what you're advocating here? Requested me? None. Requested those with whom I worked or whom I knew personally? Enough. But this too is irrelevant to the question that was asked. I'm not sure you've brought NASCAR et al. into it, but let's turn it around, and you can tell us all how many skydiving fatalities you've videoed in the last two years since you started jumping. And then you can answer all your own questions for the rest of us. Thanks. No one has disputed that you may be required to turn over the recording. No one. That is not and has never been the issue. The issues are a) whether a copy can be made and b) the manner in which it is turned over (in response to an oral request or in response to a warrant or subpoena). But keep moving those goal posts, eh? So? This is something that others have said, including me, I believe, but it is still not the issue...the issue you continue to obfuscate. Perhaps you should review my replies for what I actually wrote, before engaging in sarcasm that leaves you with egg on your face. Aren't you the guy who said "no copies." I'm sure you were. Again, you are speaking from an irrelevant perspective. You work with law enforcement and you willingly follow certain rules and procedures in order to continue to procure employment from those who pay your bills. You have a vested interest in cooperating with law enforcement entities because such cooperation facilitates your livelihood. We're not talking about you. We're talking videographers who got the last minutes of friends, mothers and sons on tape. (Those last are not hyperbole--both happened. I didn't know the guy who filmed his mother's fatality, but I did know the father who videoed his son--a friend of mine--all the way into the ground.) These are the the folks to whom the police are going to come for information. No matter what you say, they have legal rights as to their video, and all your foamage, insults, personal attacks and ridicule cannot change the fact of those rights. I don't care about your uneducated interpretation of some or another state code, because there is no state code that will ever trump the Constitution of the United States and the rights given to each citizen by that Constitution. My daughter lost five months of her life, because I so believed in the justice system that I said, "Just go and talk to the police. Tell them the truth. It'll all be okay." They wanted to examine the computer and my email account, and I said, "Sure, have at it." They found nothing, but I've never been able to get the hold on that email account released. And my daughter? Well, she was 18 years old, and she went to jail, even though she hadn't done anything wrong and was not guilty of the accusation made against her. Better skydivers than you wrote to her and sent her reading matter to help her pass the time, btw. So don't listen to me, don't listen to the legal experts (i.e., the law professor, the chief of police and the Supreme Court Justice), don't listen to anyone but yourself. But when you find your rights gone because you gave them up once too often, Mr. Spotted Eagle, please know that I will not cry for you. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

You might want to rephrase that considering that the only short-time jumper in this thread is the person with whom you seem to agree. Nearly everyone else posting has at least five years in the sport, and several are old-timers on any scale you might choose to define. And too, at least one of those with whom you seem to disagree rather vehemently (that would be me) has worked on three dropzones in two states as a manifestor/adminstrative assistant (including a short stint in Sebastian for the '99 US Nationals). Luckily enough, there were no fatalities at the Nationals or at the smaller of the dropzones, but at the larger, there were several fatalities, not to mention serious injuries (which also brought out law enforcement), during the years I worked there. In the end, though, Nightingale is correct. I should've considered that "ask a lawyer licensed in your state" is a far better answer than the erroneous nonsense that has been generated by this thread. rl If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

That's okay. I got moved right along with you, and then I was banned from the Photography forum for 30 days because "it was generally agreed that you have no reason to be in the Photography forum." rl WTF ? Thats just Oh well. Nonetheless, the original question has gotten lost in all this: Is a videographer entitled to make a copy of a tape that might be evidence in a criminal (i.e., fatality) investigation prior to turning over that tape to law enforcement? There has been a lot of argument by obfuscation and attribution of non-existent motive, not to mention a fair number of arguments by logical fallacy, but I'm still taking the "absolutely yes" position as to the original question. I say that as a paralegal with nearly 25 years experience, several of which I spent working in criminal practices, including a year working for an attorney who handled capital cases. It would be nice to discuss this like reasonable adults, if at all possible. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

That's okay. I got moved right along with you, and then I was banned from the Photography forum for 30 days because "it was generally agreed that you have no reason to be in the Photography forum." rl If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

Your wish is my command. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

Nothing that you've said has much to do with real law--and a real lawyer even told you that you're wrong in your interpretation--but what you've written above does seem like a personal attack on someone, although I can't tell whether it's against the person who asked the original question or against those who would argue that just because it's a skydiving incident, the law does not fly out the window. I don't know any skydiving videographer who wouldn't give the tape to the police, but I haven't known any who haven't kept a copy either. None of those copies ever ended up on YouTube, although I did watch the dzo and some of the other staff watch one of them to see if they could figure out what the fuck had gone wrong. If people give up their rights, they will lose those rights. It's that simple. Just because it's about skydiving doesn't make it an exception. Note to Richard: People can agree to just about anything, and if it's not illegal and/or not against the public policy, it will be enforceable in civil court. That's not the argument here. Your agreement is with your dropzone, not with the police, and the police do not have the authority to enforce a civil contract. Going back to DSE's comment that the dz owns the work product--that may well be true by contract, but if you go taking people's property from them forcibly, that may well be a crime. And even if the dz owns "work product," they probably don't own the media or anything on the media that isn't work product (where I worked, the videographers paid for their media), which makes taking that media without permission theft. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

James Duane and George Bruch, all in one video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8167533318153586646&hl=en If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

Did you ever get a legal opinion on that or did you simply cooperate with the wishes of the police because they were helping you accomplish your goal? I think people oftentimes say yes when they have a perfect right to say no (because they want to say yes), and then later, the assumption is made, as here, that it's a requirement. When my parents were robbed, the police needed my written authorization to access some evidence, because that evidence was my property. They couldn't simply take it without my permission. In the absence of authorization, their only recourse would have been to obtain a warrant or a subpoena. Google "James Duane" and "George Bruch" and watch the videos. Do not talk to the police, and do not give them anything they ask for until you talk to a lawyer. It's your right. If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

In most instances, you can't. It's part of a "crime scene investigation" in terms of how the event is handled, at least in Utah. The original goes to the investigators. It may be different in other places, but the original in most legal "anythings" has to be delivered to the investigating body to not only assure that they have the first and best possible source, but to assure that nothing is tampered with. My company is a certified media forensics organization, and we often make copies for LEA's, with affadavits that state they are copies with identical timestamp/timecode information that does not vary from the original. Again...it might be different in other places, but it would surprise me a bit. I think you may be confused about the law as it applies to individuals vs. the law as it applies to your profession. If the police want my video, I can make them issue a subpoena to get it. I don't just have to hand it over because they say so. So if a skydiving videographer makes a copy of a video before handing over the original, there's nothing to be done. "Chain-of-custody" procedures don't apply to anything until the police get their hands on it (whatever "it" happens to be). If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb

There are some nice restaurants in DeLand, including one that serves excellent French-Vietnamese food (Le Jardin). In addition, it's a college town, so there are cultural opportunities, if you have an interest. My experience at the dropzone was that most people who came from a distance for a short time limited themselves to Publix, WalMart, IHOP and whatever local bar happened to be in vogue at the time. DeLand has much more to offer if you'll take the time to see it. Check the local weeklies (I seem to remember that there are two of them) for scheduled events. Don't forget DeLeon Springs and Blue Spring State Park, neither of which are too far out of town. Here's a link to the virtual tour of downtown: http://www.deland.org/tour/virtual.htm There are additional links you can follow to find out more about the town. (If you get to the Black Market (imported clothing and other interesting items), hug Mary Jo for me. rl P.S. Skydive DeLand is open 365 days a year. The gear store stays open, as does the restaurant, even when it's pouring buckets (although they might close a little earlier than usual on such days if everyone goes home). If you don't know where you're going, you should know where you came from. Gullah Proverb