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First Amendment rights were preserved when a Goffstown District
Court judge dismissed a charge of unlawful wiretapping against a
Weare man who used his cell phone’s voicemail to record a traffic
stop by a police officer.
Judge Edward Tenney cited a federal First Circuit Court of
Appeals order in the case of Glik v. Cunniffe in ruling that
William Alleman was within his rights when he recorded the traffic
stop and posted it to Porcupine411, an answering service for
Libertarian activists.
“The Glik holding makes it perfectly clear that First Amendment
protections apply to both audio and video recording,” Judge Tenney
ruled. “The fact that Officer [Brandon] Montplaisir may have been
unwilling or unhappy being recorded does not make a lawful exercise
of the defendant’s First Amendment rights a crime.”
Simon Glik was a Boston attorney who filmed police officers
arresting a man on the Boston Common. The federal court found that
“a citizen’s right to film government officials, including law
enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public
place is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded
by the First Amendment.”
In Alleman’s case, he was stopped on July 10, 2010, after
leaving a gathering in support Palmer’s Tavern owner George Hodgdon
who had been arrested for interfering with an assault
investigation. Alleman said Montplaisir had followed him from the
gathering and, as the officer approached his vehicle, he made the
cell phone call to the answering service, established to record the
locations of speed traps and sobriety checkpoints, report unusual
or improper police activity, and to make distress calls in the
event of roadside detention or imminent arrest.
Just as police officers have found it useful to record traffic
stops — not because every stop will present difficulties but
because, when there is a problem, the recording can prove helpful
later — citizens can find it useful to have an audio or video of
what transpires. This is true not only in the case of potential
police misconduct; there have been several instances where people
have posed as police officers in order to gain people’s
confidence.
The federal ruling also is broad enough to prevent another
decision like the one in Laconia where a citizen was found guilty
of recording public officials performing their duties in City Hall.
After Glik, officials can no longer say that is criminal.