An Illinois sheriff’s deputy unlawfully ordered a woman to delete her footage because she was recording inside a government building.
The Lake County sheriff’s deputy appeared to recording with his own body camera.
“I thought it was a joke, I almost wanted to laugh” said Amanda Berg, who recorded the video and uploaded it to her YouTube channel, Pink Camera Magic, where she conducts frequent audits on government buildings.
“A trained supervisor should know they can’t make demands like that”
It was only a year earlier that she was arrested in Cook County conducting an audit and had her footage deleted, so she quickly realized he was not joking.
The incident took place in July but she just uploaded Monday.
Video of the incident shows her standing in the lobby of a probation office in Waukegan when a deputy approaches her, ordering her to delete her pictures.
“Taking photographs in here?,” the deputy asks.
The photographer responds calmly by confirming that she is.
“You need to delete those please,” he responds.
Berg politely advises the officer that her actions are not only covered by the First Amendment but she was also given permission from the intake officer.
The deputy then walks over to the desk to speak to the intake officer.
With the camera still recording, a woman in the lobby tells Berg that she asked for permission to use her phone not permission to take pictures.
“This is my phone, it doesn’t matter. It is my business. This is a First Amendment protected activity,” she responds.
She repeats herself stating that she did not ask to take pictures, only asked to use her phone.
“Yea, I am using my phone, well yeah, it is what it is,” Berg responded.
A minute into the video, Berg pans the video to another officer standing by blocking a door.
“There is a lot of case law, that is current, that is in my favor for this,” she continues.
And she is correct. The latest case law was declared in December of last year. It was also declared in 2017, and declared in 2011 that citizens have a right to film on-duty police officers.
“I was actually there waiting on a friend to come out,” Berg explained in a Facebook post.
“She was actually coming out when I was talking to that officer. You can hear at the very end but the officer said to have a good day and just left and then I left with my friend.”
