Police Officer Arrest Woman in Her Front Yard for Filming the Cops

A 28-year-old woman has been charged with obstructing governmental administration after refusing a police officer’s order to leave her front yard while she was videotaping a traffic stop.

WHEC-TV reported that Emily Good of Rochester, New York filmed the police officers while they were conducting a traffic stop in front of her home. Good's videotape shows the officers telling her that they feel threatened by her standing behind them because she seemed "very anti-police."

An officer then asked her to go into her house, an order which she refused. After briefly arguing about Good's right to be in her lawn, the officers warned her that if she continued to refuse they would arrest her. She continued to argue, and was then handcuffed and arrested.

Good, who was previously arrested with others in March for trying to block a local home foreclosure, said she was filming the traffic stop because she was concerned about what's happening in her neighborhood.

The Rochester police chief has ordered an internal investigation of the incident.

Good's attorney, Stephanie Stare, has filed a motion to have the misdemeanor charge of obstructing governmental administration thrown out.

“Basically the grounds for the motion to dismiss are that her actions did not rise to the level of a crime," she said. "It doesn't fit the statutory elements of obstructing governmental administration."

The arrest adds to the already heated debate over videotaping police officers. In his article "The War on Cameras," Reason's Radley Balko noted several recent incidents of citizens being arrested for recording police.