Cop Threatens to Arrest Rabbi if He Posts Video of Him Arresting Grandma for No Reason

Free Thought Project – by Jack Burns

Passaic, NJ — In an ongoing dispute between EMS companies, the local police, and Orthodox Jews, a senior police officer, Juan Nieves of the Passaic Police Department, threatened to arrest a man for filming him as he arrested the man’s mother for obstruction of justice.

As TFTP has reported, police will target and arrest people with “obstruction” when they cannot arrest them for actually breaking the law. We’ve reported police can and do arrest people for asking questions, filming them, or even being in the wrong place when the officers lose their cool.

On Thursday, Passaic PD Nieves threatened EMS owner/businessman and Rabbi David B. Kaplan saying:

If I see this on Facebook and all that…I’m gonna charge you,” the officer is heard on the video ( above ). “You’re not allowed to record my image.

The incident occurred when tow trucks arrived at the home of David B. Kaplan, the director of Hatzolah EMS of North Jersey, a volunteer EMS service. Kaplan, a rabbi, apparently has beef with another rabbi who has his own EMS service, the two companies competing for business.

Kaplan’s two EMS trucks were parked, he claims, on a dead end street which has no parking restrictions other than for 2 hours on Wednesdays. But the incident reportedly took place on Thursday and the trucks should not have been towed.

Kaplan’s mom, according to the Rabbi, was simply asking Nieves questions as to why the ambulances were being towed and he promptly arrested the elderly lady. She was charged with obstruction of justice. However, worth noting is the fact she didn’t break any actual laws, just subjectively got in a lying cop’s way. Yes, it’s that easy to get arrested, be taken in handcuffs to jail and have to fork out thousands to get one’s record clean.

“You’re gonna arrest a grandmother in her sixties for asking why you are towing ambulances…shame on you,” the Rabbi said.

Kaplan stated in a Facebook post:

Passaic Police Officer Nieves, who arrested my mother, illegally threatens to arrest me if I share the video of his disgusting behavior on Facebook

Frankly, we at TFTP couldn’t care less about the feuding Rabbi-run EMS companies. But when a police officer threatens to arrest a man if he posts a cellphone recording to social media, we have a problem. In a Facebook Post Rabbi Kaplan claims the roots of corruption go all the way to the NJ Assembly.

Following Nieves’ threat to arrest Kaplan, the Rabbi promptly asked for the law which allows for spectators to be arrested, to which Nieves threatened he would indeed follow through with the arrest.

Well, officer Nieves, here you go! Here you are on film threatening to arrest a man for simply filming in public. And while we are at it, we thought we would dig around a bit and guess what we found. Not only did you lie to Mr. Kaplan about it being illegal to film you in public but we found another YouTube video of you harassing, you guessed it, another EMS crew attempting to respond to an emergency call.

It appears you completely made up a bunch of bogus crimes just so you could do some ticket writing, punishing unwitting EMS workers. The first-responders received 8 tickets in all, were told by their lawyers it would cost $10,000 to try in court, and so they were forced to accept the citations. Was Nieves running interference so another EMS crew could arrive on the scene?

As NJ.com reminds readers, it is entirely legal to film cops in public. So we’re left scratching our heads wondering what Nieves has to hide. Why doesn’t he want to be seen on social media lying on the job? Oh, that’s right. He does it all the time supposedly.

Predictably, Passaic Mayor Hector Carlos Lora and Police Chief Luis Guzman weighed in on the side of the officer with a history of telling lies. Lora warned the public against jumping to conclusions and then seemingly issued what could easily be misconstrued as a veiled threat. He seemed to suggest some result of violence or harm would result if people got in the way of Passaic officers. Lora said:

Everyone has the right to witness interactions…but in no way should you obstruct the police in carrying out their duties. Anything can happen in a split second if an officer’s vision is obstructed…I can’t say this situation was a dangerous one, but there have been incidents where a distraction has resulted in injury or the death of a police officer.

We tried to find an incident in which a person filming caused the death of a police officer and we could not find a single one. We are left wondering what this mayor is talking about.

Chief Guzman also backed his lying boy in blue saying according to the report, that the two illegally parked ambulances were towed early after receiving warnings for three days and again Thursday morning.

Lora then awarded his full support to the police department saying:

Social media often does not always tell the whole story…My expectation is that our officers conducted themselves accordingly with the oath that they have taken to serve the city to the best of their ability.

Here is Nieves again, most recently, threatening to arrest a man for expressing and exercising his First-Amendment rights to film police in the conduct of their duties. The big question remains. Will anyone with enough power be able to stop such thuggish policing practices?

Free Thought Project