In what appears to be yet another example of how police officers can get aggressive if they don’t realize there’s a camera on them, an upstate New York sheriff’s deputy was suspended without pay after a video went viral that appears to show him slapping a young man. A Saratoga County sheriff’s sergeant is seen quickly losing patience with Colin Fitch, who did not want his car searched. It was all caught on camera by a friend, Adam Roberts, according to Photography is Not a Crime. The 48-year-old Sgt. Shawn R. Glans, who has been a police officer for 27 years, was apparently suspicious of the two men when he saw a .22-caliber rifle on the back seat of a car.
“We’ll get a fucking search warrant,” Glans can be heard saying, apparently as a response to Fitch’s insistence that he wasn’t allowed to search the car. “I wasn’t in my car when all this was happening,” the young man says. “Like, why don’t you want to search, like, my house or something.” Glans then obviously gets frustrated: “Let me see your fucking keys.” When Fitch asks why, Glans is direct: “I’m going to search your fucking car, that’s why.” And then Galns asks: “You wanna fucking resist?” And that’s when a slap can be heard, although not seen, in the video.
Roberts, who was filming the video, then tells Glens that what had just happened is “intense.” To which Glens replies: “You like that, huh? I can get a lot more intense, believe me.” Roberts wonders what that means: “Slap me around?” Glens does not hesitate: “Yeah, I’ll rip your fucking head off and shit down your neck.”
Glans acknowledged to the Albany Times Union that the video “doesn’t look good” but insisted he “was concerned,” because “it was a public safety issue.” Although he insists that if he “had to it all over again … I’d probably do the same thing,” things would be different if he knew he was being filmed. “If I knew the camera was there, no, because it does look bad.”
