Cops threaten woman for filming traffic problems at U.S. mosque

  Some big new operation opens in a closed high school in a residential neighborhood and there are traffic problems, conflicts over the use of a public park and late-night events disturbing the peace. No response from the city to citizen complaints. So one resident starts videoing various violations, including traffic offenses. And the result?…

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Some big new operation opens in a closed high school in a residential neighborhood and there are traffic problems, conflicts over the use of a public park and late-night events disturbing the peace.

No response from the city to citizen complaints.

So one resident starts videoing various violations, including traffic offenses.

And the result? Police threaten her with a charge of harassment.

It's because the suspected violators -- individuals connected to the Islamic Al Farooq Mosque and youth center in Bloomington, Minnesota -- said they didn't like being recorded.

The American Freedom Law Center has filed a lawsuit against Bloomington, Minnesota, on behalf of resident Sally Ness.

It alleges that the city, two officers and the Hennepin County attorney have violated her rights under the First and 14th Amendments by "threatening to enforce local and state laws against her for filming public information exposing various zoning and other violations committed by a local mosque and its associated school."

Robert Muise, who co-founded AFLC, said the First Amendment "fully protects our client’s right to gather information through photographing and videotaping. And this is particularly the case here because she is filming public matters related to a public controversy."

"As the courts have explained," he said, "the right to freedom of speech includes not only the actual expression of one’s views, thoughts, opinions, and other information concerning matters of public interest, but also non-expressive conduct that intrinsically facilitates one’s ability to exercise free speech rights, including efforts to gather evidence and information by photographing and videotaping. Here, the city and county seek to make a crime out of what under the Constitution cannot be a crime. Their threats of prosecution are aimed directly at activity protected by the First Amendment."

Ness has been capturing on video "zoning and other violations" by the mosque for several years.

Just months ago, police officers warned she could be charged with a crime.

According to police reports, "Ness was advised that she could be charged with harassment if the parents and principal felt intimidated by her actions."

City officials followed up by adopting an ordinance that "no person shall intentionally take a photograph or otherwise record a child without the consent of the child's parent or guardian."

AFLC said that because Ness "seeks to expose, among other violations, DAF's and the Success Academy's noncompliant and overuse of a local city park – a park in her neighborhood that she would often attempt to use with her grandchildren – her information gathering efforts include, quite necessarily, photographing and videotaping the use of the public park by children associated with DAF and the Success Academy."

"Additionally, Ness has taken pictures of students being dropped off to Success Academy and weekend school to document the noncompliant number of students attending the schools and the unsafe and noncompliant drop off conditions. There is no doubt that this newly minted and unusual city ordinance was directed at her," the legal team said.

David Yerushalmi, senior counsel for AFLC, said: "If you publicly criticize Islam, it is called 'hate speech.' If you exercise your First Amendment right to collect evidence of a mosque violating zoning and other laws via photographing and videotaping and expose this evidence to the public, you can be prosecuted for 'harassment.' This case is another example of the encroachment on our liberties when Islam is involved."

The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the Minnesota harassment statute and the city's new anti-filming ordinance are unconstitutional.

"Defendants have deprived Plaintiff Ness of her right to freedom of speech in violation of the First Amendment as applied to the states and their political subdivisions under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution," states the complaint.

The defendants have "injured Plaintiff Ness in a way likely to chill a person of ordinary firmness from further participation in her free speech activity."

The lawyers argued to the court, "Filming in a public forum information for public dissemination regarding the DAF/Success Academy controversy is fully protected by the First Amendment."

They said the way the law is written and being applied, "empowers DAF and Success Academy patrons (hecklers) to veto the exercise of Plaintiff Ness's First Amendment rights by claiming that they feel threatened by the exercise of those rights."

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