This is part two of my recollection of what happened at Palmer District Court yesterday morning. Part one, which covers court security’s outrageous response to camera-toting activists, is here.
As you may be aware, I was arrested for video recording in Palmer, MA’s town hall back in October. At the time, I was given a report from the arresting officer, Raymond Tenczar, indicating he believed I was guilty of “disorderly conduct” for allegedly loudly causing a “disturbance” outside of the room in which the city was going to hold a tax sale. If you watch the video of the arrest, you’ll see that I do raise my voice, but only at the time Tenczar places his hand on me to arrest me.
Apparently, the Palmer police and/or prosecutor realized that they had no case for disorderly conduct, and the misdemeanor charge was dropped. More detail on the charge droppage later in this article.
However, they completely changed the circumstances of the charge and the evidence in their case for the remaining town ordinance “disorderly conduct” violation. Now they are alleging that I was “disorderly” in front of the open house, which happened prior to the tax sale. In an unsigned report, allegedly written by Palmer police officer Sean M Ford, he claims I was yelling at the town attorney and attempting to intimidate him.
Is the cop telling the truth? Here’s video of what actually transpired at the home showing, where I was allegedly being “disorderly”. Also, here is the Palmer town ordinance for “Disorderly conduct”:
§127-2. Disorderly conduct; profanity.
No person shall behave himself in a rude and disorderly manner or use any indecent or profane language in any street, lane, alley or other public place in the town.
Apparently if you do something that someone considers rude or disorderly, it’s up to a $300 fine! If I’m guilty of something, it’s asking questions they don’t want to hear or think about, regarding stealing people’s homes. However, those questions are asked quietly and in a calm manner.
As with the case with activists being banned forever from the courthouse in Keene, the Palmer “disorderly” charges also stem from recording bureaucrats and asking them questions. Of course, this is exactly what the media should be doing, but the bureaucracy is used to media being their sycophants – always afraid of offending the bureaucrats out of concern that they will be on-the-outs with the state, and not be granted interviews and given information.
That is one way the mainstream media became the lapdog and mouthpiece for the state (the other is through licensing). Now that we can skip past the old media gatekeepers and connect to a virtually unlimited audience via the internet, the state agents are encountering more independent media, and they believe they can intimidate and arrest their way out of the problem. In New Hampshire, at least, it’s only going to get worse for them. More people move here every month for the Free State Project, which just means more independent journalists will be shining the light of their recording devices on the aggressors’ bureaucracy.
But I digress. Back to Palmer.
Before entering the courtroom, I had conversation with the court clerks regarding an appearance that was to be filed by an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts in my case. The appearance was supposed to have been filed that morning before court, but the clerks claimed no knowledge of it.
After about a half-hour, the courtroom was opened and the peaceful victims of the state trudged in and sat in the pews. The robed woman came in and sat on her throne, but not until her security agents secured the courtroom from people wearing hats. In case after case, the state’s victims took plea deals and agreed to pay money to the court for harming no one. At some point, the prosecutor invited me back to the negotiating room for what was the inevitable plea deal offer.
He claimed he’d never looked at the case before (he was different from the prosecutor who I spoke with at the arraignment) and appeared to examine the case file. He then offered to drop the misdemeanor charge if I were to plead “responsible” to the town ordinance violation. I told him that I had done nothing wrong and would not be taking a plea. He then left, and I returned to the courtroom and watched more of the sad proceedings that are all too typical in district courts across the country.
About ten minutes later, prosecutor Ed and I were back at the negotiating table. This time, his offer was much better. (This is one reason to not take a plea deal – the second deal always gets better.) The second offer was that they would drop both charges, meaning it was not even a plea deal, in return for me paying $50… to a local charity!! I was surprised by this offer – it was a preferable variant to the original offer I had made them back in October at arraignment. At that time, I actually was willing to take a plea just to not have to continue to return to Massachusetts, something I find quite undesirable. They’d offered a $50 fine and dropping the misdemeanor if I’d plead “responsible” to the town ordinance. I countered the offer by saying I would be willing to pay the $50 to a local charity. The prosecutor deferred to the robed woman, who refused my offer. So I withdrew the offer and said we would proceed to trial. That’s why I was surprised that they would come back with the idea of paying something to local charity and dropping both charges! Tempting as that was, I explained to him that I’d been wronged by Palmer police. We’d come this far already. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts had taken the case, the last thing I wanted to do was end it there. We came to an agreement that the misdemeanor charge would be dropped but we’d move forward with trial on the town ordinance violation. Trial is currently set for January 25th at 11am at Palmer District court. Stay tuned for updates, and if you missed the video of what happened at the security checkpoint in Palmer yesterday, you can see that here.
For more on what happened in Palmer yesterday, you can listen to Free Talk Live from last night where we covered the Palmer scene in-depth.
