Cop accused of peeping on breastfeeding mom via iPhone app
The officer had taken the phone home with him after confiscating it in an unrelated case.
Remote video capture is cool technology, but in the wrong hands it's ripe for abuse -- especially if the wrong people end up with your device-linked smartphone. A lawsuit filed on Tuesday accused a police officer from Hazel Park, MI allegedly of using a confiscated iPhone to watch a nude mother breastfeed her infant child.
The phone belonged to the fiance of the mother, Megan Pearce (who works as a police dispatcher in another city), and had been seized as evidence during his arrest on drug charges. The lawsuit alleges that Hazel Park officer Michael Emmi took the phone home with him and used it to look through a paired Nest Cam the couple had been using as a baby monitor. Through it, the officer could see and hear whatever the camera pointed at.
The Nest Cam blinks green when a paired device is looking through it, the lawsuit says. Pearce saw a light blinking when every device paired with the camera but the confiscated phone was accounted for, which tipped her off. The mother used the phone's "Find My iPhone" feature and found its location, which the lawsuit alleges was the home of the officer in question.
Hazel Park Police Chief Martin Barner told the Detroit Free Press that there is no plan for an internal investigation of Emmi. The officer had been involved in two previous lawsuits. He was first sued in 2010 for unlawful search and acquitted, and sued again in 2011 for excessive force when he allegedly used a taser on a mentally ill man who was under restraint, a case which is still pending.
