MDPD’s Homeland Security Bureau Was Monitoring My FB Page Hours Before My Arrest
And many more insightful details obtained through a public records request of emails
Major Glenn Stolzenberg, who heads the Homeland Security Bureau for the Miami-Dade Police Department wondered if it was illegal for me to post photographs of police officers
Eleven hours before I was arrested during the Occupy Miami eviction in January, the Miami-Dade Police Homeland Security Bureau sent an email to various police officers, which was then forwarded to the department’s public information officers – including arresting officer Major Nancy Perez - informing them that I would be documenting the action.
The subject of the email was “Multimedia information/Situational Awareness.” It included my Facebook profile photo where I'm trying my hardest to look like a terrorist thug.
It also included the following statement about me.
Carlos Miller is a Miami multimedia journalist who has been arrested twice for taking pictures of law enforcement. He has publicly posted on social networks that he will be taking pictures today in order to document the eviction.The email makes it clear that the Homeland Security Bureau was monitoring my Facebook page since before my arrest – not that I have an issue with that considering I have my profile set to public.
But it also makes it clear that Perez should have known exactly who I was when she singled me out from a horde of other journalists documenting the eviction and had me arrested.
Perhaps that is the exact reason why she had me arrested.
Major Nancy Perez ordering my arrest
Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, who has fired off two letters to Miami-Dade Police Director James Loftus over my arrest and the treatment of an América TeVe reporter, is also flabbergasted.
“I find it very troubling that a unit formed to deal with terrorist activities found it necessary to send out an email advising other departments and law enforcement officers that a journalist would be covering a newsworthy matter of public concern,” he wrote in an email after I sent him a copy of the email in question.read full article MDPD’s Homeland Security Bureau Was Monitoring My FB Page Hours Before My Arrest | Pixiq
“It would be best if they followed their own directives that photography is a First Amendment protected activity and ‘should not be reported absent articulable facts and circumstances that support the suspicion that the behavior observed is not innocent . . . but rather reasonably indicative of criminal activity associated with terrorism or other crimes.’
“Unfortunately it appears that by their very actions they continue sustain the misguided belief that by its very nature photography is a crime. At best – behavior that chills free speech is extremely unprofessional – at worst it is criminal.”
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