A Galveston Police Department sergeant in Texas has been indicted on misdemeanor accusations of unlawfully searching the vehicle of a video activist, according to a report in the Galveston County Daily News. The videographer was originally arrested in connection to filming police officers and their car license plates while standing outside the station.

Sgt. Archie Chapman, whose lawyer says he is innocent, faces up to 180 days in jail and a maximum $2,000 fine on allegations of criminal trespass. Phillip Turner, the 25-year-old activist in question, was arrested last November. He was handcuffed and later jailed for 16 hours on allegations of failing to identify himself to police officers. Eventually the charges were dropped.

Turner is a correspondent for photographyisnotacrime, a website largely dedicated to issues surrounding abuse and the right to film cops. A friend with him during the incident captured everything on film and uploaded it to YouTube.

Turner said he was conducting a so-called "First Amendment audit" outside the police station by testing the cops' knowledge of the right to film the police. He said he was "shocked" by last week's indictment and "glad" the officer was being held "accountable." The officer's attorney, Greg Cagle, said Chapman searched Turner's car to find his driver's license and was worried about the safety of others.

"Sgt. Chapman was trying to do his job as a police officer," Cagle said of his client, who is on administrative leave. "He had no motive other than to protect the public and the officers."

According to footage of the incident, Turner is commanded by one of two officers to show identification.

"Are you going to identify yourself?"

"What crime have I committed?"

"I already told you, the fact that you are being suspicious and that you are taping, videotaping people's license plates."

Turner is then arrested after refusing to comply.

Generally, the public has a First Amendment right to record the police from public places. But a Philadelphia federal judge ruled Friday that this might not always be true.

According to Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy:

Friday’s federal trial court decision in Fields v. City of Philadelphia takes a different, narrower approach: There is no constitutional right to videorecord police, the court says, when the act of recording is unaccompanied by “challenge or criticism” of the police conduct. (The court doesn’t decide whether there would be such a right if the challenge or criticism were present.) Therefore, the court held, simply “photograph[ing] approximately 20 police officers standing outside a home hosting a party” and “carr[ying] a camera” to a public protest to videotape “interaction between police and civilians during civil disobedience or protests” wasn’t protected by the First Amendment. I don’t think that’s right, though. Whether one is physically speaking (to challenge or criticize the police or to praise them or to say something else) is relevant to whether one is engaged in expression. But it’s not relevant to whether one is gathering information, and the First Amendment protects silent gathering of information (at least by recording in public) for possible future publication as much as it protects loud gathering of information.

That decision in Fields v. Philadelphia is being appealed.

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