Justin Bieber video will have privates blurred out before release
Dying to see Justin Bieber’s junk?
Well, a judge on Tuesday squashed those weird hopes, ruling that while additional surveillance video footage would indeed be made public, shots of the singer urinating must have his private parts blurred or blacked out.
Call that a score for human decency, we say. Though the world will still be able to witness the 20-year-old peeing in a cup and a jailhouse toilet, so maybe we spoke too soon.
Miami-Dade County Judge Bill Altfield told lawyers in court Tuesday that despite Florida’s liberal privacy laws regarding evidence going public, Bieber “has not lost his expectation of dignity, and that’s what’s most important here.†That according to the Miami Herald. Altfield will reportedly review the redacted tapes before they go out.
And that may be the closest the singer has come to “dignity†in recent months, what with his litany of recent screw-ups: the DUI arrest itself, his brothel visit, his egg-throwing incident, his marijuana-smoke-filled airplane ride, his assault charge, his wobbly jailhouse video walk that’s part of the same footage being discussed now. And it’s hard to deem his public crushing on lost love Selena Gomez as anything dignified.
In a similarly undignified manner, redacting of Bieber’s naughty bits has apparently proved challenging to the video technician charged with the responsibility. TMZ sources told the website that the singer moves around while urinating -- we envision him acting as his own private-parts pinata while the technician is forced to swing the blurring bat. Kid just can’t stop dancing? There have also been technical struggles with the blurring itself, the law-enforcement sources said.
A total of five shots will be released in coming days, according to the Associated Press, which talked to Bieber attorney Roy Black. Of the five, three clips that were shot at an angle too far away to reveal exactly what’s going on will be distributed without redaction, the attorney said.
One shot — the pee-in-a-cup part — is already out and posted on TMZ. If you watch, that’s Bieber back in the room on the left, doing his business with an officer present, before the gloved officer walks across the room holding the evidence that would eventually test positive for Xanax and the active ingredient in weed. The singer told Miami cops on the scene of the Jan. 23 arrest that he’d smoked marijuana that day and taken prescription medication, according to police reports.
Bieber has pleaded not guilty to DUI, resisting arrest without force and driving without a valid license. A breath test administered on the scene registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.014, below Florida’s 0.02 limit on drivers under 21.
Tuesday also saw the release of jailhouse photos taken of Bieber’s identifying marks — his many tattoos. Check ‘em out in the photo gallery above.
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