A 29-year-old man was “extremely intrusive” when he videotaped a medical call outside his apartment, an attorney for the city of Little Canada argued in court Wednesday.

Andrew Joseph Henderson recorded the actions of a sheriff’s deputy and an ambulance crew as they prepared to take a highly intoxicated man to the hospital the night of Oct. 30.

“This was a medical assessment for a mental health evaluation,” leading to a possible civil commitment, attorney Kevin Beck said in Ramsey County District Court. The man assessed, who was referred to in court as “M.V.,” became alarmed when he noticed Henderson was recording the scene and asked a paramedic to put a stop to it, Beck said.

Henderson was charged with interfering with an ambulance crew and disorderly conduct. A sheriff’s deputy confiscated his camera after he refused to shut it off.

Henderson argued that he was exercising his First Amendment rights to record the activities of public officials in a public place. He was sitting “peaceably” on a bench outside his apartment building in the 200 block of East County Road B2, his attorney said.

He had just as much right to record the activity as TV crews do during a news event, said defense attorney Kevin Riach, a Minneapolis lawyer volunteering his services to the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Henderson.

“It’s clear that people have a right to do that under the First Amendment,” Riach said.

During Wednesday’s court hearing, Judge Edward Wilson heard from the attorneys on Henderson’s motion to dismiss the charges against him.

Wilson said he would take the matter under advisement.

Beck said that if Henderson had been merely present while the deputies and ambulance crew were working, there would have been no problem. If he had been filming but put away the camera when asked to, there would not have been a problem, he said.

But he interfered with emergency personnel, and that’s against the law, Beck said.

Henderson did “physically” obstruct the personnel, contrary to defense claims, because case law has defined physical obstruction as “substantially frustrating or hindering the officer in the performance of his duties,” Beck wrote in a court memorandum.

The deputies were called to the apartment building on a “welfare check,” a request by a relative of the man to make sure he was OK, the criminal complaint said. When they arrived at his apartment, the man had a blood-alcohol level of 0.32, Riach said, and told them he was into his second liter of vodka. He had a bruised face, which he said was from a traffic accident.

Henderson was sitting three to five feet from the ambulance when the man was being loaded into it, the state alleged.

The paramedics “had to stop the medical assessment to ask Henderson to stop videotaping,” the complaint alleged. “When Henderson refused to stop, (paramedics) had to leave the area of the ambulance to notify the deputies,” the complaint said.

Emily Gurnon can be reached at 651-228-5522. Follow her at twitter.com/emilygurnon.