Actually, maybe there is a faint ray of hope for the notion of a man’s home being his castle after all…
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Regular readers will recall that I previously blogged a story about a Nashua NH man arrested and charged with illegally audiovideo taping police (saying some unpleasant things) as they stood on the porch of his home (in an attempt to locate his son for an unrelated matter). The man had a surveillance system, purchased at WalMart installed in his property, complete with a small sign announcing its presence.
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It has been my belief since this story first became public that charging the homeowner with a crime of this nature represents a blatant violation of a citizen’s right to private property. My guess is I wasn’t alone with this sentiment. The August 5th Foster’s Online reports:
Police have decided not to prosecute a man charged after he used his home security system to videotape police who came to his home.Police Chief Timothy Hefferan said the department still believes Michael Gannon violated the state’s wiretaping law. But he said he isn’t sure the state would win the case at trial.Gannon said he did nothing wrong. He was arrested after he brought his videotape to the police station. He went there to complain about the officers who came to his home investigating his 15-year-old son…
This is certainly good news for property owners everywhere. One wonders why the police concluded this the way they did. Did they (hopefully) come to their senses and do the right thing? Was it due to the pressure publicity of the case brought to bear? Or were the police wary of further consequences?
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On the conduct of the policemen displayed by the tape, the Foster’s article notes that the police chief
will discipline one detective in the case who was not as courteous as he should have been, regardless of how provoked he felt he was at the time.
Reports indicated that the policemen were talking about how the homeowner was a disabled veteran and that they wanted to make him more disabled with a billy club…
