The Escalating War on Journalists

OFF THE WIRE

This write-up was originally posted to AmericanDailyHerald.com on Oct. 11th.
Police states always crack down on free expression. In 21st century America, police are increasingly targeting photographers and journalists and their war on the First Amendment is a troubling sign that America is no longer the land of the free.
by Glenn Horowitz
Not long ago I published an article about Antonio Buehler and his ordeal with the Austin, Texas police department on New Year’s Day that led to his founding of the Peaceful Streets Project, an organization dedicated to checking the systemic violence menacing ordinary people in the person of abusive police in Austin. Through peaceful voluntary action by community members, like  recording police in their interactions with people and educating the public about their own rights and responsibilities as citizens exercising their lawful authority, Peaceful Streets aims to hold Austin’s police accountable for their actions. I was excited when I discovered the Peaceful Streets Project, as one firmly convinced that sunlight is indeed the best disinfectant it seemed to me promising as an effective remedy to counter the sort of unpleasant incidents of police abusing their authority we’ve seen so many times in recent years. It is by no means alone in this goal, other organizations and individuals across America are doing much the same thing in their communities and Peaceful Streets is actively seeking to coordinate with them as well as help new chapters of the program arise in other cities. I’m a big fan of the peaceful and positive change possible with this approach.

Unfortunately, much of the law enforcement establishment in America does not share my favorable opinion of this activity. The reaction of many agencies across the country to journalists and activists recording them has been unambiguously hostile, in some cases exhibiting a near-hysterical zeal to attack these people with every legal resource at their disposal.
Consider the case of Adam ‘Ademo’ Mueller: Mueller is a founding member of CopBlock, a grassroots organization similar to the Peaceful Streets Project in its goal to bring accountability to police, who was recently found guilty of violating three felony wiretapping statutes for recording officials while engaged in raising awareness of an incident in 2011 of a school ‘resource officer’ assaulting a student in Manchester, New Hampshire. These charges certainly sound serious and in fact could have landed Mueller in prison for 21 years. In fact, they were brought against Ademo for failing to tell Manchester police that he was recording them when he made some phone calls to the department seeking comment on the case. As fellow photojournalist Carlos Miller explains in his article about Ademo:

In layman’s terms, a person is guilty of wiretapping if he records a conversation with a person who is under the impression that the call is not being recorded.
It was clear from the conversation that Mueller was seeking on-the-record comments and it was clear from the responses of both police and the school official that they were well aware of that.
We’ve seen how cops act when they don’t believe they are being recorded and when they are aware they are being recorded. It’s the difference between night and day.
Furthermore, these are all tax-funded public officials who were called at their tax-funded public institutions while working for their tax-funded salaries.
It may have been a little different if Mueller had called them at home after hours.

Fortunately for Ademo, he ‘only’ received a twelve month sentence with nine of those months suspended and should be released by mid October. Unfortunately, the conditions of his release mean he will be under ‘good behavior’ for the next five years and any violation of this in the eyes of the State could land him in prison for several years. This intrusion in his life by the Manchester police hardly strikes me as just, especially since the officials involved were, as Miller details, public officials at work in public institutions all funded by taxpayer money; the claim of a reasonable expectation of privacy on their part just doesn’t pass the smell test for me.
Carlos Miller is certainly one with plenty of personal experience in dealing with officials who object to being recorded. In the course of documenting cases of police attempting to punish photographers since beginning his journal, Photography is Not a Crime, in 2007, he’s been arrested three times himself for recording them. He’s defeated the charges twice so far, and is fighting the third, which he found himself saddled with in February 2012 while filming police evicting protesters at Occupy Miami. He’s written about the incident, including the altercation initiated by Major Nancy Perez of the Miami-Dade police department that ended with his arrest for “resisting officer without violence,” punishable by up to a year in jail. Interestingly, though the police deleted his video, he was able to recover and post it, not only for maintaining public awareness but as evidence that can be used to refute the charge against him…evidence the police clearly did not want him to have. No others were arrested during the exchange, but a public records request showed that the Miami-Dade Police Homeland Security Bureau sent an email to various police officers, apparently including arresting officer Perez, 11 hours before the eviction indicating that Carlos would be photographing the action, information gleaned by monitoring his Facebook page.
What a remarkable coincidence!
Mr. Miller, a former mainstream newspaper reporter, is one who is well aware of his rights and the law, and is fighting this trend of police seizing cameras and deleting photographs and video through raising public awareness via his blog, reminding us that:
The law states that police need a court order to confiscate a camera unless it was used in a commission of a crime. The only exception is if there are exigent circumstances, such as a strong belief that the witness will destroy the photos, therefore destroying evidence.
Under no circumstances do police have the right to delete footage.
It ‘s gratifying to know that journalists like Carlos Miller are assertively defending the public’s right to record police in their duties without being harassed; it’s a vital tool and bulwark against government excesses, especially when those recordings can be used as evidence of the reality and widespread nature of these excesses. His trial, begun on July 25, 2012, was continued in September without a specified date, but this case bears watching for anyone concerned with this issue..
And what of Antonio Buehler, founder of the Peaceful Streets Project? His new organization is growing, its first Police Accountability Summit that was held this summer attracting 200 attendees, and their YouTube channel is kept current with regular updates, showing both the good and the bad sides of the Austin P.D. in action. The price for this success has been the additional scrutiny drawn to the project’s members and especially its founder; Antonio has been arrested not once, but twice more recently, on August 26 and again on September 21, both times for misdemeanor charges alleging interference with police in the performance of their duties.
After the August arrest, the Austin P.D. implemented a policy change requiring citizens with cameras to maintain a 50 foot distance from police while recording them. Then, in mid-September, just prior to Antonio’s third arrest, they rescinded the policy. This did not prevent them from making that third arrest, even though accounts of the incident indicate that during it he was continually backing away from police and questioning them whether he was far enough away yet. You can see the exchange for yourself here:
And while opinions vary as to its interpretation, I find myself in agreement with Caleb Leverett’s analysis:
I think Caleb’s take on this situation is accurate; it does indeed look like the Austin police are targeting Antonio Buehler in retaliation for the increased public scrutiny of their activities he’s brought to bear on them. In rescinding it they seem to acknowledge that the rule was arbitrary and capricious, yet they continue to pursue people recording them. An organization far more qualified than I in these matters, the National Press Photographers Association, agrees as well, and on September 24 directed a statement to Austin police chief Art Acevedo affirming their position that the Austin police department’s policies create a chilling effect on the exercise of First Amendment-protected free speech. Their conclusion is significant in my opinion:

As our organization, founded in 1946 with almost 7,000 members, has pointed out to numerous groups and law enforcement agencies – reliance by officers to interfere with and detain those engaged in a lawful activity under color of law is reprehensible. At best, behavior that chills free speech is extremely unprofessional, at worst it is criminal.

This really resonates with me, particularly in light of the concerns I’ve discussed many times in this column about the alarming trends accompanying America’s burgeoning police state; with it we’ve seen for ourselves the ongoing…and unambiguous…erosion of individual human rights and insistence on secrecy on the government’s part at every level. This is underscored by the vast number of recordings that demonstrate police abuse, too, many of them documenting truly violent and occasionally lethal police behavior directed against peaceful people. The cases of people like Kellie Thomas, a homeless schizophrenic man beaten to death by a swarm of police officers, and Nick Christie, an older man in poor health pepper sprayed to death while restrained in a jail cell for nonviolent misdemeanor charges, are just a couple of examples of the horrifically savage treatment that can be directed at suspects under color of law and should alarm every ordinary American. True, these cases are still infrequent, but their numbers are growing along with the State’s increasingly invasive tendrils and their similarities argue that they are no longer aberrant and isolated but more systemic all the time.
I strongly support the efforts of individuals and organizations like those I’ve mentioned here in their efforts to bring accountability to police departments across America by heightening public awareness of police abuses. We have been admonished for years by the government that its agents should have a free hand in their dealings with the public, shrouded in secrecy whenever they choose, but if the founding precepts of our country are taken seriously, it is not only our right but our duty to oppose that attitude. In large and vocal enough numbers that the mainstream can no longer pretend the problem doesn’t exist, we can make a difference.
We have not only the legal but the moral high ground here and since these public ‘servants’ claim a monopoly on the use of force, are funded with tax money and most critically, operate in public where they have no reasonable expectation of privacy, it’s about time we directed their favorite statement back at them, the one they’ve repeated endlessly at Americans:
Police, you have nothing to fear from being recorded…if you have nothing to hide.

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Glenn Horowitz was born in 1961 and raised in New York City. He earned his commercial pilot and flight instructor certificates in Gaithersburg, Maryland where he worked as a flight instructor and air taxi pilot from 1986 through 1990. From 1990 until 1993 he worked in the Cincinnati, Ohio area as a civilian contract pilot for various branches of the U.S. military, predominantly the (USTRANSCOM) Defense Courier Service. When that company failed, he was hired as a line pilot flying mainly bank documents and canceled checks from Nashville until 2006 when disability due to multiple sclerosis ended his flying days. Glenn is currently living the disabled life in Nashville.