a guy pulled over for a traffic stop is facing 16 years behind bars not for speeding but for videotaping the confrontation. anthony graber had a camera mounted on his motorcycle helmet and that camera captured a plain clothes cop running, gun drawn, toward graber so the biker posted the video on youtube. a week later police raided graber s home, seized his computers, and charged him with violating state wire tap laws. our guest is an attorney for the american civil liberties union of maryland. maryland law requires here, david, consent from all parties where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. why would there be an expectation of privacy on a public road? there plain and simply isn t any expectation of privacy. and i think it s important to remember here that it s a public official who was performing his official duty in public who is claiming that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy. and every court that has ever considered that question has
where somebody does have an expectation of privacy. in this case the officer was on the side of a road, he had no privacy. it s far fetch that they re using this to arrest him. the camera was actually in the motorcyclist s helmet. why did he have a camera there in the first place? he had it sticking out of his helmet. he was doing it for, i guess, thrills. he was speeding and going in excess of 100 miles an hour. which, he got a ticket for that and he admits to what he did and he got punished for that. but he does not deserve to be facing 16 years in prison. and the camera was very obvious. the picture is on my blog. you don t see a motorcycle helmet with a camera sticking out of the helmet, usually. so, you know it was a camera. the officer knew he was recor d recorded. which is why he put his gun away. the officer never pointed his gun at graber and he put it away
as soon as graber complied with his commands. it is possible that videos and others like it does not tell the entire story. well, you know, it really doesn t matter if it tells the entire story or not. the fact is, he should not be going to jail, going to prison for 16 years. why does it matter? well, because it s part of the evidence. when you re doing an investigation you use this video and we see a lot of that video. we see that he was speeding and we see the cop pulled out a gun and never identified himself as a police officer until several seconds later and, no, he did not point it at graber, but very intimidating. how many people get a gun pulled on them for a traffic stop. maybe in maryland, but not here. is your concern a bigger picture here. you have a lot of people with cell phone cameras and the police feel they are under pressure and there is a backlash
said that such officials do not have an expectation of privacy. what we have here is a really extraordinary abuse of power both by the police and by the state s attorney s office that s charging mr. graber. and what gets me is that in many cases you have dash camera video now rolling during every traffic stop so that a person is recorded on the side of the road. how is it fair for the cops to do it but not fair for a private citizen to do it? that s exactly right. in fact, the maryland state police have those dash cams by virtue of a settlement in a lawsuit that we filed against them for racial profiling by the maryland state police and as a result of that settlement they install dash cams in all of their marked patrol units and a marked patrol unit participated in the traffic stop of mr. graber. so not only is it ridiculous for a public official like a police
officer to claim that he or she has an expectation of privacy in his public on the job conversations it s doubly ridiculous here to claim because the officer in fact knew that his, all of his interactions with mr. graber were being recorded by the state police cameras. by the way, the police response here is just that the police officer acted appropriately, that the officer never pointed his gun at graber, and he put it away as soon as he saw graber comply with commands. you know, we were talking earlier this hour about this individual yoi fr video from california a cop under investigation for slamming a woman into the pavement recorded by a bystander in an apartment above the sidewalk on a cell phone video. these cameras are catching cops on the job all the time. we have a whole episode on caught on camera devoted to it. will the legislatures have to go in and make it very clear when you re in public and videotaped it s legal?