A Washington man who had been having disputes with some neighbors was standing outside his home with his video camera, which led to a further confrontation with neighbors who had been walking on the sidewalk across the street.
They took issue with his camera, even though he wasn’t even pointing it at them at first, and even though they were not even visible when he finally did point it at them after they started yelling at him.
Ironically, it wasn’t until they walked towards the edge of his yard that they became visible to the camera.
The couple was walking with a child, who was never visible in the video, but the woman was under the impression that he was trying to sexually gratify himself by recording the kid, accusing him of being a “pedophile.”
The man plans on filing a police complaint.
This is how the man with the camera, who asked to remain anonymous, explained it in an email to *Photography is Not a Crime:*
> This past memorial day I asked a neighbor to stop revving his engine after 45 minutes of it and finally having enough of him interrupting our dinner.
> That evening after having to call the police on him because he called me a pedophile for having security cameras I decided to go out and take a quick video of my truck and house as a neighbor had told me that they heard him planning to egg my house.
> While my wife and I were outside a different neighbor came walking home with his wife and teenaged daughter.
> We waited for them to go home so that us having the camera out did not provoke them, BUT I turned it on and kept it to my side just in case.
> Thankfully I did as they decided that they wanted to have some words with me.
> Now they have decided to post all over the neighborhood that I and my wife are pedphiles. This is something I could normally shrug off and show people the video of him drunkenly trying to fight me.
> However I am a photographer by trade, I shoot children and families as part of this, a single accusation no matter how outlandish of being a pedophile can ruin my career.
> And the pedophile BS only started on the 30th of May after I put up a security camera in my backyard because neighbors houses had been egged and vandalised.
> Apparently protecting your property = pedophile.
> And no, the camera could not see into their yard.
