Tresa Baldas

Detroit Free Press

In a bizarre peeping-Tom lawsuit involving an iPhone and a baby monitor, a Hazel Park police officer is accused of spying on a nude woman who was breast-feeding her infant son in the child's nursery.

But the officer was nowhere near the house when this happened, court records show.

According to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, Hazel Park officer Michael Emmi was watching the woman from his house using her fiance's iPhone, which had been seized in a drug case. That iPhone had access to the so-called Nest Cam baby monitor in the child's nursery, allowing the officer to see and hear the mother as she breast-fed her baby, the lawsuit states.

"It's really creepy," the plaintiff's lawyer, Kevin Ernst, told the Free Press today. "Just the idea that he would take evidence home with him — it's outrageous. ... It's an interesting intersection between technology and the government's ability to spy on people. You have to be really careful about putting that technology in the hands of the government precisely because of things like this."

Hazel Park Police Chief Martin Barner, who said Emmi is an "exemplary" police officer with 15 years' experience, questions the validity of the allegations, which he called "odd and suspicious."

"I seriously have my doubts if these allegations are true," Barner said, noting he has not yet seen the lawsuit, only heard about it from reporters. "How does she know where my officer lived? There are a lot of gray areas here. What is she doing co-habitating with a felon? Maybe she’s got a bigger issue than my officer. There’s a lot more to this than ‘oh this police officer was spying on me while I was naked.’ Seriously?"

Barner said there is no plan right now to conduct an internal investigation.

"If an officer in his capacity … does something that is wrong, that will be addressed when that is proven," Barner said. "Everybody has rights, including police officers."

The Free Press left messages for Emmi at his work, but he was not available for comment.

The plaintiff in the case is Megan Pearce, a dispatcher for the Warren Police Department who was adjusting to her new life as a mother when her fiance — also the baby's father — was arrested on marijuana charges on March 2. Following his arrest, Officer Emmi seized the fiance's iPhone, attached an evidence tag to it and purportedly logged it into evidence at the Oakland County Jail computer crime lab, the lawsuit states.

Turned out, the lawsuit claims, the officer took the iPhone home with him and used it to spy on the suspect's fiance.

The day after the arrest, Pearce was home feeding her son in the nursery, according to the lawsuit. Both mom and baby had just come out of the bathtub and were nude. While Pearce was breast-feeding the baby, she noticed a small green light flashing on her Nest Cam monitor. That meant the camera is being monitored by a designated device, such as a cellphone or an iPad. The Nest Cam has a motion sensor and sends an alert to the device when there is motion in the baby's room.

According to the lawsuit, there were only three devices designated to interface with the Nest Cam: the mother's iPhone, her iPad, and her fiance's iPhone. It didn't take long for her to realize someone was spying on her.

"Shortly after she saw the light flashing ... it occurred to Ms. Pearce that ... she was being watched by someone else; someone was violating the sanctity and privacy of her home," the lawsuit states.

Pearce quickly conducted a "Find my iPhone" search, which traced the location of the cellphone: It was at the residence of Emmi – the officer who had arrested her fiance, the lawsuit alleges. Pearce tried to disable the phone's monitoring capability but saw the Nest Cam light flashing again. She was on the phone with her brother.

"She sat there momentarily in shock and then cried out to her brother, 'Oh my God, someone is watching me again,'" the lawsuit states. "Seconds later, the light stopped blinking. The peeping-tom detective had been discovered."

Pearce followed with an invasion of privacy lawsuit, alleging the officer violated her civil rights by "perversely and illegally" spying on her and her infant son "to satisfy his prurient voyeurism."

"Ms. Pearce's world has been shattered," the lawsuit states. "She no longer feels safe and secure in her own home."

Moreover, the lawsuit adds, "She lives in constant fear that the footage from the Nest Cam will wind up on the Internet."

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

This is not Emmi’s first brush with the justice system.

In 2011. Emmi was sued in federal court for allegedly using a taser on a mentally ill man who was being restrained during a "mental health commitment” at a hospital. The man’s family sued Emmi alleging excessive force. The lawsuit is pending.

Emmi also was sued in 2010 over a warrantless search he executed at home, where marijuana plants were discovered. At the time, Emmi was performing a “welfare check” and did not have a search warrant, but an appeals court later upheld the search as legal.

Tresa Baldas can be reached at tbaldas@freepress.com