Woman Charged For Filming Cops Wins Settlement

Carla Gericke was in her car following a friend to his house one night in Weare, New Hampshire when police pulled the guy she was following over for a traffic violation. She stopped too about 30 feet away and pulled out her cell phone so she could record everything. She couldn't get the camera to work so she put it back in her car. The police thought she had broken the law by trying to film the stop and demanded the phone. She refused to tell them where it was, and also declined to provide her license and registration. So they arrested her on "wiretapping" charges, involving disobeying a police officer, obstructing a government official, and "unlawful interception of oral communications." 

Although she was never brought to trial, she filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging that her arrest constituted "retaliatory prosecution in breach of her constitutional rights." The case went to the First US Circuit Court of Appeals and they said she was right. The court ruled that Gericke "was exercising a clearly established First Amendment right when she attempted to film the traffic stop in the absence of a police order to stop filming or leave the area." 

That decision allowed her lawsuit against the department to proceed and the department, without admitting wrongdoing, decided to settle the matter out of court this past Thursday. How much you ask? The department agreed to pay her a total of $57,000 to settle the case. 

Her attorney speculated that the award would deter future police "retaliation." Attorney Seth Hipple said, “This settlement helps to make it clear that government agencies that choose to retaliate against videographers will pay for their retaliation in dollars and cents. We are confident that this settlement will help to make arrests of videographers a thing of the past."