So says a state prosecutor, dealing with an arrest for this non-crime. According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune,
Randy Sievert did not commit a crime when he snapped a photo of an undercover Manatee County sheriff’s vehicle from the road, a state prosecutor said this week in a case that has drawn national attention.
Deputies confronted Sievert in February and ordered him to erase any photos he took standing at the scene of a drug-related search warrant. Authorities called Sievert a “known” drug dealer whose photos jeopardized officer safety. Sievert, 20, was charged with interfering in a search warrant….
Sievert has been jailed without bail since his arrest; the obstruction charge violated his probation in two drug cases.
A person cannot be charged with obstruction or resisting arrest if the police detention is unlawful, an assistant state attorney, Tony Casoria, said in a memo released this week. Sievert did not physically interfere with the search warrant, the prosecutor said.
Casoria said Sievert “took a photograph in a public place, across the street from the home where law enforcement were conducting their search.” …
In declining to prosecute Sievert, the state pointed to a decision in a federal lawsuit in which a judge awarded a man damages for his arrest for videotaping police…. “The activities of the police, like those of other public officials, are subject to public scrutiny,” [the judge in that case wrote]. “Robinson’s right to free speech encompasses the right to receive information and ideas.”