citizen journalism

Maxine Trahan, longtime public information officer for the Acadia Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana, was charged Friday with the theft of public funds in excess of $25,000 – six months after Photography is Not a Crime began a public records investigation into allegations against the media spokeswoman.
Trahan, who has worked for the department for more than ten years, is accused of failing to deposit cash seized from citizens into the department’s bank account, pocketing the money instead.
According to the arrest warrant, the thefts date back to 2010.

Behind closed doors in secret meetings, an attorney for a Florida school board appears to have met with a local state attorney in the hopes to pursue felony criminal charges against PINAC reporter Jeff Gray.
According to emails recently obtained through a public records request, it was revealed that St. Johns County School Board Frank Upchurch III planned a meeting with State Attorney R.J. Larizza in the hopes of keeping Gray from exercising his Constitutional rights to record public officials as well as to obtain public records.

A viral video shows North Carolina police enter a home without a warrant on April 8, claiming they had smelled marijuana.
The home’s residents became upset about being violated and pandemonium ensued when the officers realized they were being recorded.
Vera McGriff, who initially posted the viral video, said police came to her door and demanded to search the house.
When she refused because the officer did not present a search warrant, eight cops barged in anyway and began terrorizing the household.

“Dude, that is the craziest shit I’ve ever seen done to somebody in my whole fucking life,” said the stunned witness recording NYPD make a “black bag” style arrest.
Cops questioned the man over trouble paying a $2.75 subway fare, and later stuffed him into a body bag as the world watched.

A San Antonio school police officer was fired after he was caught on camera body slamming a 12-year-old middle school student, momentarily knocking her out.
We reported about the incident last week before it went viral on mainstream news outlets.

New York Cop Block activist turned fugutive Adam Rupeka was found dead in Tijuana, Mexico this week.
Rupeka ran away with his girlfriend Jennifer Ogden on Easter weekend, claiming persecution related to a nasty divorce after Troy Police charged him and his girlfriend with unwanted sexual contact with a 15-year old minor.

“You’re about to go to jail for being a dumb-ass,” said a Houston Federal Agent Calderon to PINAC citizen journalist David Warden.
Boy, was he wrong.
The Houston Federal Court Security Agent assaulted PINAC correspondent David Warden when he lawfully recorded outside of a Federal Courthouse on its sidewalk.
Just three minutes after Warden began recording in the video below which is going viral, a Federal “Court Security Agent” assaulted the citizen journalist on a public sidewalk, while demanding his identification.

Los Angeles Police Department detained and handcuffed a man for filming in public near LAPD’s Mission police station.
The citizen journalist tells the officers in the video you can see below on several occasions, that he is engaged in constitutionally protected activity.
Then, LAPD cops kept questioning him for recording video.
And spoke nothing of reasonable suspicion that Scott would commit a crime.
Because the police would be the only offenders in this video.

Texas prosecutors admitted they can’t prove their contempt of cop case “BARD” against PINAC correspondent David Warden, who recorded video near a Shell Oil Refinery on the outskirts of Houston.
In other words, state attorneys had no way to prove that David Warden interfered with public duties of an officer last December, as charged, because BARD stands for ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ and officers couldn’t conceive of a single illegal thing Warden did while recording near the oil refinery as you can see in the legal document below.

A former-Arizona security guard tried to censor a video which led to his 2014 assault conviction, published onto PINAC citizen journalist Raymond Michael Rodden’s EMSNews Arizona YouTube channel, which you can see below.
Daniel Lee Ogaz hit Rodden in the head with a soda cup full of ice at the end of the 17 minute encounter on the streets of Tuscon.