Asheville Citizen-Times: Despite claiming videos of public rallies - from Mountain Moral Monday to Tea Party events - were made for training purposes, the Asheville police denied a records request to inspect them citing the criminal intelligence exemption.
At an August Mountain Moral Monday rally in Asheville a resident noticed a plain-clothes police officer filming the event. He filed a complaint against the officer and requested a copy of the video under the N.C. Public Records Law. His records request was denied, but sparked an investigation into the practice by the Asheville Citzen-Times.
The newspaper learned that the Asheville police has been recording public rallies for more than a decade, has no retention policy for the recordings, and has no catalog of what has been recorded. The city also gave conflicting explanations for why the videos were made. Police Chief William Anderson told the city manager that the videos were for training purposes and were only to be used for planning for future events. But when the newspaper asked for copies of the videos, the request was reviewed by the city attorney’s office, which claimed the videos are exempt under the criminal investigation and criminal intelligence portions of NCGS 132-1.4. Anderson then told the newspaper that the Mountain Moral Monday rally video is not part of any criminal investigation and was only for training purposes.
Read the Citizen-Times story here.