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posted by martyb on Wednesday February 27 2019, @07:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the Get-Off-My-Lawn-Supplies dept.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/22/an-arizona-cop-threatened-arrest-year-old-journalist-she-wasnt-backing-down/

When a small-town Arizona cop stopped a 12-year-old reporter who was chasing down a story tip on Monday, he probably had no idea what he was getting himself into.

Hilde Kate Lysiak, the preteen journalist whose exploits have inspired a Scholastic book series and an upcoming TV show, made a name for herself in 2016 by being the first to report on a grisly murder in her hometown, then firing back at the haters who suggested that a 9-year-old girl shouldn't be hanging around crime scenes. Since then, she has continued to break news about bank robberies, alleged rapes and other lurid crimes in the Orange Street News, the paper that she publishes out of her parents' home in Selinsgrove, Pa.

"NOTE TO DEALERS: OSN Will Not Be Intimidated," she wrote last month, after reportedly receiving threats because she had published text message exchanges between an alleged drug dealer and a woman whom he had reportedly solicited for sex.

So naturally, she didn't back down when Joseph Patterson, the town marshal in Patagonia, Ariz., allegedly threatened to throw her in juvenile jail on Monday, then falsely claimed it would be illegal for her to film him and publish the video on the Internet. Instead, she posted their exchange on YouTube and in the Orange Street News — which in turn prompted town officials to discipline Patterson, as the Nogales International was the first to report on Wednesday.

[...] In the Orange Street News, Lysiak wrote that she was riding her bike to investigate a tip at around 1:30 p.m. on Monday when Patterson, whose position in the small town is equivalent to that of a police chief, stopped her and asked for identification. The 12-year-old gave her name and phone number and mentioned that she was a member of the media. She said Patterson told her, "I don't want to hear about any of that freedom-of-the-press stuff" and added that he would have her arrested and thrown in juvenile jail.

Later, Lysiak ran into Patterson again. This time, she was filming.

"You stopped me earlier and you said that I can be thrown in juvie," she can be heard asking in the video. "What exactly am I doing that's illegal?"

From the seat of his white Chevy Silverado truck, Patterson started to reply, then interrupted himself. "You taping me?" he asked. "You can tape me, okay, but what I'm going to tell you is if you put my face on the Internet, it's against the law in Arizona."

In fact, there is no such law. Recording a law enforcement officer in a public place is protected under the First Amendment, as Lysiak noted when she posted the video online later that day.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @07:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @07:08PM (#807746)

    I should say, I'm assuming you're tangomargarine posting from a not-logged-in computer or device. If you're someone else entirely, sorry for the confusion, but two people sincerely believing the same mistaken notion doesn't add anything to the conversation either -- not when evidence to actually settle the question is just a google away.