• A California sheriff’s sergeant played a pop song on his phone to stop activists from posting the clip to YouTube.

• “You can record all you want, I just know it can’t be posted on YouTube,” Shelby smugly informs the activists in the video.

• “The officer was trying to be a little smart, and it kind of backfired,” a sheriff’s office spokesperson said. “This is not a good look for law enforcement.”

Sophia Ankel from Insider writes:

“An Alameda County, California, sheriff’s deputy played a Taylor Swift song on his phone when protesters tried to film an encounter with him in an attempt to stop the video from being posted to YouTube.

The officer, identified by the Los Angeles Times as Sgt. David Shelby, was confronting activists over their banners outside the Alameda County courthouse in California on Tuesday when he started blasting Swift’s “Blank Space” from his phone.

Watch the encounter here: (see story for video)

The activists, some of whom were from the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP), were attending the pretrial hearing of a San Leandro police officer charged with the manslaughter of Steven Taylor, a Black man.

“You can record all you want, I just know it can’t be posted on YouTube,” Shelby is heard telling the activists in the video, which was posted to the APTP’s various social media platforms.

Shelby was referring to YouTube’s automated copyright system, which detects and prevents unauthorized protected material from being uploaded. This includes pop songs.

Despite his efforts, the video has been posted to YouTube, where it has gained more than 365,000 videos at time of writing, as well as Twitter and Instagram…”

See full story here.

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