Journalism or crime? The judge governs the pursuit of freelancer against the San Diego police can move forward

The independent photojournalist of San Diego, Edward Baier, a defender of the first self -proclaimed amendment, is not afraid to confront police officers and other members of public security personnel when he believes that these officials have violated the law or violates his constitutional rights.

“I launched myself and I took place and I am cooking,” said Baier in an interview. The photographer admitted that he “should perhaps mitigate a little”, but he said that he could not help but get angry when he perceives that law enforcement agents have exceeded their legal authority to prevent journalists from scenes of public interest, such as crimes, traffic collisions and rescues.

Baier, who sells news images to television stations, has been arrested several times over the years for his confrontations with the police. Last year, he continued the city of San Diego before the Federal Court, alleging that the police falsely arrested him and illegally took his personal effects in violation of the fourth amendment and the Californian law, and repaled against him for the activity protected by the first amendment.

On Monday, the US District Judge Anthony Battaglia on Monday ranked on the side of Baier during the first adult of the case, rejecting the city’s request to reject the trial. The decision means that the city must file a response to Baier’s complaint and that the case can go to the trial.

“The court’s decision was simply that Mr. Baier allegedly allegedly allowed the trial to continue,” said Ibrahim Ahmed, spokesperson for the City of San Diego prosecutor in a statement. “The court did not rule on the fact that Mr. Baier’s allegations are true or that the police violated the law or were wrong.”

Ahmed refused other comments.

The case comes down to the question of whether Baier had the right to film an active police scene in November 2023. The police said that they had likely reasons to arrest him suspicion that he had violated his probation resulting from a previous arrest on a police scene.

Baier, who says that he did not violate his terms of probation, considers the trial as a broader fight against what he believes to be decades of public security officials who undermine the rights of the first amendment of the media and the public.

City officials consider Baier as a usual criminal offender, not just a nuisance of news. In addition to several guilty pleas and provision violations admitted to his confrontations with the police, Baier pleaded guilty in 2016 for obscene driving in public to masturbate in his van next to a lunch woman in her car.

As for his entries with the police, the deputy chief prosecutor of the city, Taylor Hearnsberger, wrote in a criminal file that Baier “will simply not behave with the police without very specific court of justice parameters … His years of scandalous behavior demonstrate that he is not the type of offender who can be” trusting “to behave himself.”

A police incident newspaper included in a criminal case has shown that the police and the distributors called it “media impostor” at least one opportunity.

“Although the police should not clearly be hampered in their performance of functions required, it is press work to be on the scene, to be vigilant … and sometimes to be the Gadfly,” Eugene Iredale told the Union Tribune. “Police should not be authorized to transform their irritation with a minor disadvantage in accusation of a crime.”

The incident at the center of the Baier trial took place on November 27, 2023 at Mission Bay, near the Pont de Clairemont Drive on the Interstate 5. Baier said that he had gone after seeing a San Diego police helicopter surrounding, parked his van, which he described as a sidewalk on the bridge and started filming the Freeway police scene, Trottoir and a man in hand and started filming the police scene.

With the knowledge of Baier at the time, the man had jumped from the bridge, according to his trial. Baier allegedly alleged that a San Diego police sergeant on the highway below noticed it and finally sent other officers to arrest him.

The trial alleys that an officer seized Baier’s phone, causing the camera’s closure before the recording was recorded, while other officers have seized his personal effects and excavated his van “without probable cause or any legitimate legal basis to justify the search”.

Baier alleges that the sergeant who ordered his arrest also denied his requests to speak with a lieutenant, a captain and a public information manager of the San Diego police “in accordance with the SDPD policy when a media member is arrested”. The trial alleys that Baier spent an hour handcuffed at the back of a police vehicle on the scene and was finally taken to the county prison, spending a total of 16 hours in detention. No accusation has never been made against him, according to the trial.

The city argued in its request by rejecting that the police had probable reasons to believe that Baier violated his probation, which, according to him, would completely protect them from one of his allegations.

But Battaglia ruled that Baier’s trial had raised valid questions for a jury to decide whether the officers had a probable cause to stop him.

Baier’s probation terms at the time of the incident included several unique prohibitions linked to being in San Diego police scenes, including that it must remain “at least 15 meters from the police, which conduct an investigation or obtaining a scene”. The terms of probation also ordered him not to hinder the movement of officers or their vehicles and not to engage in a conduct which obliges the officers to divert their attention.

Battaglia wrote that nothing in Baier’s complaint or the city’s request to reject in a conclusive manner proved if Baier raped his probation. He also judged that a jury should decide whether a potential probation violation was deliberate or accidental.

Baier maintains that he was in accordance with his probation conditions at the time of his arrest. After viewing images of cameras used by the body of the incident, he and a former lawyer for the Iredale law firm measured the distance from the place where he turned on the bridge towards the place where the police surrounded the man on the highway below. The images deposited in the case claim to show that it was 71 feet distance, about 24 yards.

Last year, Baier called on some of the unique terms of his probation which prohibited certain interactions with the police, arguing that they were unconstitutional. A panel of three judges of the appeal division of the Superior Court of San Diego partially ruled in his favor, depending on whether three of the terms of probation were unconstitutionally vague.

Iredale said that the decision would have little effect on the civil affair because the city maintains that Baier has violated other terms of its probation which have not been disputed or canceled on appeal.

California Daily Newspapers