One of the good things of Internet and social networking.
Since May, Los Angeles high schooler Jeremy Marks has been in jail—essentially for filming a school police officer hit a 15-year-old. He’ll be home for Christmas, though, thanks to a Google engineer whoheard about Marks on Reddit.
A few weeks ago, the LA Weekly wrote a story about Marks and the unbelievable chain of events that led to his incarceration. Marks had been filming a Los Angeles Unified School District police officer engage in a scuffle with a 15-year-old at a bus stop (ostensibly because the kid was smoking a joint) when the police approached him and arrested him at gunpoint.
The 15-year-old—who was hit with Officer Erin Robles’ baton and sprayed with mace—was released quickly. Marks was charged with “attempted lynching of a police officer,” allegedly for yelling “kick her ass” during the fight, and put in jail. Here’s one video of the fight (there’s another here; both courtesy the Weekly):
http://gawker.com/5717652/how-a-google-engineer-and-reddit-bailed-an-18+year+old-out-of-jail