Carlos Miller, the Miami photojournalist who was arrested by the Homeland Security division of the Miami-Dade Police Department for filming them as they evicted a group of Occupy protesters from a park in the area, reveals newly released documents that show the department was targeting him for arrest before the event ever took place.
Before the police moved in to evict the protesters, this email was sent to the officers about Miller:
Carlos Miller is a Miami multimedia journalist who has been arrested twice for taking pictures of law enforcement. He has publicly posted on social networks that he will be taking pictures today in order to document the eviction.
Which means they were monitoring his Facebook page, which is public. But why did they single him out? There were lots of news outlets recording what was going on. He was the only one arrested, though he wasn’t doing anything any different from the others. They also tried to delete the video, but he managed to recover it. You can watch the full video here, which shows that Miller was doing nothing illegal at all. He is fighting it in court.
Mickey Osterreicher, an attorney for the National Press Photographers Association, sent a letter to the police chief saying:
I find it very troubling that a unit formed to deal with terrorist activities found it necessary to send out an email advising other departments and law enforcement officers that a journalist would be covering a newsworthy matter of public concern,” he wrote in an email after I sent him a copy of the email in question.
“It would be best if they followed their own directives that photography is a First Amendment protected activity and ‘should not be reported absent articulable facts and circumstances that support the suspicion that the behavior observed is not innocent . . . but rather reasonably indicative of criminal activity associated with terrorism or other crimes.’
“Unfortunately it appears that by their very actions they continue sustain the misguided belief that by its very nature photography is a crime. At best – behavior that chills free speech is extremely unprofessional – at worst it is criminal.”
Criminal is exactly what it is. And unconstitutional. Carlos Miller is going to be the guest on my radio show next week, so tune in to hear the full story.
6 comments
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busterggi
April 25, 2012 at 1:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The Fourth Reich is getting closer.
Marcus Ranum
April 25, 2012 at 1:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The Fourth Reich is getting closer.
It’s already here. It’s been here for a while. It’s just stealthy. They’ve learned that if they’re not obvious about it, the sheep will keep grazing.
Pinky
April 25, 2012 at 2:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I may be getting discouraged, but it seems to me there is no disincentive for law enforcement when they are caught taking unethical and illegal actions.
All I hear about are police officers continuing to work after egregious actions with nothing changing the entrenched hierarchy which promotes the illegal behavior.
The worst possible outcome to a violation of civil rights may be a civil suit against the municipality employing the wrongdoer and zir enablers.
So as a group, we lose our rights and then have to pay out of our own pockets (taxes) when the police break the law. The public loses on both ends while our “civil servants” laugh up their sleeve at us.
d cwilson
April 25, 2012 at 3:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The police are fighting a losing battle here. As cameras continue to get smaller and smaller, instead of targeting people who record them, they should conduct themselves with the assumption that anything they do could be up on youtube within minutes.
Because it can be.
D. C. Sessions
April 25, 2012 at 3:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ruminants can get used to almost anything.
A few years ago, I attended a demonstration at EMRTC [1] where they lit off a few hundred pounds of ANFO. We watched via periscopes from a bunker a few hundred yards away (far enough that we could perceive the delay between the ground shock and sound.)
There were cattle grazing in the area. As the tech ran the final tests before hopping into a truck to clear the area, the cattle started casually wandering away, grazing as they went. They didn’t go very far; they ended up closer than the bunker.
When the quite-impressive charge went off, they didn’t even look up from grazing.
I find the political metaphor more apt than many others do.
[1] Yup, the place in NM where Mythbusters do their most destructive stuff: http://emrtc.nmt.edu — check out the videos
D. C. Sessions
April 25, 2012 at 3:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
More and more do.
No, I don’t mean that they are careful to act legally and professionally at all times, I mean that they just go right ahead and beat the shit out of random people because they can, and they know that nothing will come of it if someone gets a recording.
Except, maybe, that they can get together over beers with the buds and replay the “greatest hits” on YouTube.