Police war on photography: Minnesota edition

Emily Gurnon of the St. Paul Pioneer Press has all the details of the latest skirmish in intermittent attacks by law enforcement on the right to record the public actions of police in the public domain.

Andrew Henderson watched as Ramsey County sheriff's deputies frisked a bloody-faced man outside his Little Canada apartment building. Paramedics then loaded the man, a stranger to Henderson, into an ambulance.
     Henderson, 28, took out his small handheld video camera and began recording... The deputy, Jacqueline Muellner, approached him and snatched the camera from his hand, Henderson said.
     "We'll just take this for evidence," Muellner said. Their voices were recorded on Henderson's cellphone as they spoke, and Henderson provided a copy of the audio file to the Pioneer Press. "If I end up on YouTube, I'm gonna be upset."
      ...A week later, Henderson was charged with obstruction of legal process and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors. He had been filming from about 30 feet away, he said. Henderson said deputies gave him no warning before Muellner took his camera.

Ramsey County, MN, deputy
Jacqueline Muellner, accused
of destroying photographic
evidence relating to false
charges by her agency against
a man legally videotaping
activity in the public domain.
Photo via PINAC.

The blog, Photography is not a crime, tartly notes: Adding insult to injury, Andrew was eventually charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing legal process, which is ironic, considering those are the exact charges Muellner should be facing along with theft charges.

     The deputy wrote on the citation, "While handling a medical/check the welfare (call), (Henderson) was filming it. Data privacy HIPAA violation. Refused to identify self. Had to stop dealing with sit(uation) to deal w/Henderson."
     ...The allegation that his recording of the incident violated HIPAA, or the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is nonsense, said Jennifer Granick, a specialist on privacy issues at Stanford University Law School...
     "There's nothing in HIPAA that prevents someone who's not subject to HIPAA from taking photographs on the public streets," Granick said. "HIPAA has absolutely nothing to say about that."
     ...Henderson went back to the sheriff's office in mid-November to get a copy of the report and try once again to retrieve his camera. Deputy Dan Eggers refused to give him either..."They felt like you were being a 'buttinski' by getting that camera in there and partially recording what was going on in a situation that you were not directly involved in."
     ...Eggers noted that the incident report said nothing was recorded on the camera.     "I mean, were you just pointing it?" he asked Henderson.
     "No. It was deleted," Henderson surmised.
     "You deleted it?"
     "No. She must have deleted it," Henderson said, referring to Muellner.
     Not possible, Eggers replied. "There would have been some documentation about that."
     Beck, representing Little Canada, said Tuesday that any allegation that Henderson's video was deleted is false.
     [Jane] Kirtley [professor of media ethics and media law at the University of Minnesota] said the seizure and alleged erasure of the recorded material "raises significant Fourth Amendment issues for him ... The seizure here was not to preserve the evidence -- it was to destroy the evidence."
     The Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable search and seizure.
     ...Henderson works as a welder and does not qualify for a public defender. He is representing himself in court.