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Asheville Newspaper Sues Police over Surveillance Videos

Cara Schulz By |

Asheville, North Carolina – A Gardnerian coven recently posted a video of its 1996 public Samhain ritual that it claims was made by local police. The video is one of an estimated 100 surveillance videos that the Asheville Police Department recorded of various political rallies and religious gatherings since the early 1980’s.The High Priestess of Oldenwilde Coven says the lack of transparency and accountability, on the part of the local police department with regards to the tapes, combined with the chilling effect knowing that this was happening, is a cause for concern.

Over the past 30 years the Asheville police department has regularly video taped tax rallies, environmental protests, and street preachers. The practice of video taping by police came to light when a local newspaper, The Citizen-Times, filed a Freedom of information Act lawsuit to make the tapes public.

Oldenwilde Coven, however, has known about the tapes since sometime before 2008. Its High Priestess, Queen Lady Passion, explained that her relationship with the Asheville PD began in the mid 1990’s when an officer assigned to the occult crimes unit asked her to help the department determine the cause of local Church desecrations. She said, “He would bring me crude Books of Shadows found in such locations, and photos of Satanic graffiti scrawled on their walls, and the like, but the vast majority of such cases came down to reprisals by angry teens who’d been abused by Church elders.”

She says the professional relationship between Lady Passion and the officer developed a mutual respect and when the officer found out the coven’s Samhain ritual had been videotaped by a fellow law enforcement years earlier, he made a copy and smuggled it out to her.

High Priestess Lady Passion and High Priest *Diuvei of Oldenwilde Coven

High Priestess Lady Passion and High Priest *Diuvei of Oldenwilde Coven [Courtesy Photo]

Although the coven has had the video for over six years, they only recently decided to make it public. “Knowing the APD’s long-time practice of videotaping people who attend all manner of permitted public events, we kept the footage for future use when it would prove most effective, which is why we posted two such videos this week in support of the Asheville Citizen-Times‘s having filed a lawsuit regarding the issue,” said Lady Passion.

The coven leaders say they aren’t surprised that their activities were under surveillance. They had spent decades participating in pro-police reform activism. They say that they “…feel strongly that the precious nature of religious rights are constitutionally protected and should be treated with utmost respect.” They add that, “Pagans should be treated as valued community resources, not criminals-in-the-making, nor have their right to peaceably assemble or express their free speech overtly impeded by video-taping, gun-toting cops.”

The newspaper’s lawsuit also notes that the Asheville PD’s practice of routinely recording public gatherings has a chilling effect on free speech. The police department has said that the video’s aid in training and are part of ongoing criminal investigations, although there is no alleged criminal activity on the tapes. City officials have also said that no actionable criminal intelligence has come from the tapes.

David Carron, an attorney licensed in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, and Redesman of the Troth said that while free speech is protected, that protection isn’t absolute. He says:

I would have to say, that this is not legal advice and I have no license for that state, but given the facts you gave, I do have some hypotheses: Free Speech is constitutionally protected but the devil is in the details. State action, when curtailing the content of free speech, is supposed to be narrowly enacted and limited to specific issues. Hypothetically speaking and given the above facts, I suspect that the State’s position would be that this is a general investigation and a criminal issue rather then a free speech one. Assuming the facts as stated, it doesn’t sound like there would be any kind of valid articulable suspicion. I could not speak at all toward any discrimination claim.

Lady Passion says the Citizen-Times was able, through a review of the police department’s records, to confirm that officers had filmed the 1996 Samhain ritual. Yet the coven has a copy of a second video allegedly taken by police that was not listed in police records. Lady Passion says this raises, “worrisome concerns about the laxity of APD’s tracking methods; who sees them; how, when, or if they are ever destroyed.” She says it’s concerning why the police continue to defend the practice of video taping when a city spokesman admitted in an email that all videos taken since the 80’s had yielded no investigative value.

As of press time, the Asheville police department has not responded to questions.

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48 thoughts on “Asheville Newspaper Sues Police over Surveillance Videos”

  1. What a gross act, labeling someone’s faith “occult crime”. Welcome to the police state.

    • I think you mis-read the statement.

      an officer assigned to the occult crimes unit asked her to help the department

      This was mid-90s, mind. The Satanic Panic was beginning to wind down, but was by no means over. I find it refreshing that the officer mentioned actually reached out to a local pagan for aid.

  2. All things considered regarding the actions of a small percentage of clergy, did they similarly record the services at local Christian churches?

    I have heard in our town of very direct voters’ guides being passed out, some then left in the pews…having a record of that for the IRS would be a very important tool for law enforcement.

    • The police take them seriously enough to consult them on evident occult crimes. Apparently the cops are more tolerant of individual religious expression than you are.

    • “Guest”? Shall I take you seriously?

      (Perhaps people can be judged on the worth of their words and actions, and not how they choose to identify themselves–or whether they do?)

      • Well, smart enough to keep his/her identity secret on the internet. Amply demonstrates why he/she should be taken seriously.

    • Agree. I think we can keep a lower profile so we aren’t looked at as wackos. As an Elder, I’d like to say that it’s NOT how you dress, but whats inside you that counts. If you feel that you need to dress in medieval garb to be a witch, you’re totally missing the point.

  4. A prominent Pagan leader at an early (ca 1990) Cleveland Public Square Samhain wore a hooded robe to shadow his face when the media started filming, to protect his kids from being harassed at school. Arguably there is a right of privacy — to select one’s own level of “out”ness — even in a public setting, that police videotaping potentially infringes. Here is the mechanism of a chilling effect by law enforcement on the free exercise of religion. If the police had a compelling state interest in the tapes that could not be answered in any other way, they might be within their rights, but no such purpose has been attributed after 30 years of taping. (I am not a lawyer.)

  5. I don’t understand why it’s a big deal that the cops were filming a PUBLIC ritual. If they wanted privacy, they should have considered doing it within their coven. If ‘Queen Lady Passion’ has had a relationship with the local police as an ‘advisor’ since the 90s, one would think that she wasn’t too surprised by the knowledge that the public ritual was filmed. Law enforcement does that ALL the time.

    • We may have a generational difference here. In this multi-channel digital age, when the slightest passing moment can be immortalized forever and indexed for lightning retrieval and cross-correlating, we may indeed be headed for a totally binary environment: either totally in the broom closet or out to the world. To those of us who go back to the Dark Ages — before, say, commercial introduction of the computer chip — it should be possible to go to a public ritual on one’s own time and not have the fact plastered all over one’s workplace and to the in-laws. YMMV.Collection of who attended a public meeting was used as an intimidation tactic in the Fifties. If a left-leaning group held a meeting at a church, a cop from the local Red Squad would be out in the parking lot jotting down license numbers. When the antics of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) were the topic of a meeting at a California college, two photographers attended the event. If a person’s question or statement was “unfriendly” to HUAC, the party’s profile and full-face were snapped by flashbulb cameras; if “friendly,” no flashbulbs.As regards privacy, we may be in the situation of the frog in the slowly warming pot: the temperature goes up so slowly the frog doesn’t know it’s in danger until it’s dead.

      • Given that the coven publishes videos of their rituals on YouTube, with no logon required to view them, and thus leaving them fully accessible to any law enforcement agencies or other persons, I don’t think they have much standing regarding a privacy issue.
        the chilling/intimidation issue is valid, but the APD doesn’t need to video tape them at all given the self published videos – APD can copy them without any trace of their doing so from YouTube.

        • And the coven voluntarily doing it NOW is different from the coven being recorded WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE OR CONSENT at a time when they had no reason to suspect that they might be recorded.

  6. Key quote of Cara’s article: “The video is one of an estimated 100 surveillance videos that the Asheville Police Department recorded of various political rallies and religious gatherings since the early 1980’s.” One cannot validly conclude that the coven or any other specific group was being targeted.
    Unless the APD takes some further action based on the videos, none of the groups filmed have any recourse, I guardedly assert as a non-lawyer based on similar incidents of which I’m aware. Oldenwilde Coven is well-advised to keep copies of the videos just in case.

    • If the intent of the police is profiling, or if the surveillance is a continuation of religious-based protest of things Pagan that’s part of local history, imho that’s grounds to shut it down. YMMV

        • Because I am making “should” type statements, or observations from experience going back to before many commenters were born, and realize some may not agree.

  7. filming public events for records of criminal intelligence seems more like police fishing. did they film other religious services from other groups. this is unlawful survailance and a violation of privacy and free speech.

        • If a pattern of taping constitutes racial or religious profiling, that might be as good as a group right.

        • No, there isn’t an expectation of privacy, but there is a legitimate expectation in a democracy that police have no business conducting surveillance and amassing data on people and groups unless there is a true public safety need which can be articulated and which cannot be met by some less intrusive means.

          “Because they can” is not a good enough reason in a free society, if it wants to stay that way. The history of police domestic spy programs is not good in this country. They usually have had little to do with real public safety and much to do with using police powers as a political weapon, which is incredibly toxic to a democracy.

          Read up on the Red Squads of the 1960s. It’s a very short step from filming public group activities to compiling dossiers on its members. Very often the next step is to send infiltrators into the group to actively incite criminal activity, lead members or leaders into compromising positions etc.

          Post-Watergate, our society really put the brakes on this stuff with things like FISA, court orders etc. In the post 9/11 climate, we have lost sight of the importance of the Fourth Amendment, and this activity has taken on an entirely new and dangerous dimension with truly Orwellian electronic surveillance technologies. We tolerate this at our own risk.

  8. While the police may have been on the right side of legal, I question why police need ANY video records unless a crime is being committed.

    Especially for something that happened years before.

  9. As I recall, that was the time when the Supreme Court had restricted prayer in the schools and the “We Still Pray” movement was active in Asheville. Public Samhain rituals were protested by the conservative churches and pagan religious freedom had to be reinforced by our mayor. The difference between then and now may be that now, the police are driven by darker motives to track and control the population and all data is evidence for future violence.

    • Or the surveillance is the conservative protest taken to a more subtle level. If so, it needs to stop.

  10. Not my favorite witches but if your in public you can legally be recorded. that is why we are called The Hidden Children of the Goddess. Stay hidden and this crap dont happen. Private Rituals can’t be recorded not like they where skyclad. Public ritual is just that PUBLIC , dont like it dont do it.

    • If you don’t wish to be recorded, don’t leave your house. That’s what your comment amounts to.

    • Stay hidden? You might want to ask the LGBT community how that worked out for them pre-Stonewall.

  11. I’m sorry that more of our press release did not make it into this article — it would have cleared up the confusion many of you all are expressing about why we should have a problem with police filming a public ritual. See http://oldenwilde.org/blog/426/take-action/police-videotaping-revealed/. It’s not somebody filming it per se — of course anyone is free to do so with a cellphone, TV camera, whatever. But this film — like at least 100 others — was shot by our city’s law enforcement officials, without any legal policy to guide how it was done or what might be done with it, and then kept secret for almost 20 years. It really is different when your government films you, because government uniquely can use that film to abuse your rights.

    For example, the missing video QL Passion mentions was video we and many others saw and documented the police shooting of citizens who rallied and testified before our City Council in Sept. 1998 to support making marijuana the lowest priority of our city’s law enforcement efforts. Seriously, at that web link you can see a plaincothes cop who refused to identify himself literally filming people in City Council chanmbers as they exercised their constitutional right to address their elected officials. Sure enough, a spike in local pot busts took place at about the same time. And the APD no longer has that particular video? What do you bet the DEA does somewhere in its basement?

    Our government may have thus unconstitutionally used that surveillance video to effectively punish citizens for exercising their First Amendment freedoms. Seriously, if you all don’t get why unregulated police surveillance is a problem … well, maybe we shouldn’t be your “favorite Witches” (please at least capitalize our religious designation, Turner Cain!).

  12. The obvious solution is to tape and profile the police and place the information on out of country servers that allow access to all..

    • This is emerging as one of the most readily accessible counter-measures we have. We can’t put the genie of electronic surveillance back in the bottle, and forcing the government to restrict its use will be an uphill battle.

      We can, however, force the police to live in the same “eyes everywhere” fish bowl as the rest of us. In urban areas at least, cops are learning that almost anything they do that involves a public disturbance or confrontation will be recorded by cell phone cameras and end up on the news that night. That hasn’t ended the problem of impunity, but it’s forcing the conversation in ways that “he said/she said” eyewitness accounts never could.

      I think white America is still of mixed mind on Ferguson, but the Eric Garner video is forcing even many hardcore law and order conservatives to rethink their blind support of police power. They see that and say “that’s fu…kd up, they killed a guy over a cigarette.” Juries and states attorneys are not finding the heart to prosecute these thugs, but video evidence at least affords the opportunity. It’s also leading to a push for police to wear body cameras.

      It’s also a telling sign of an abusive and corrupt government when they fear two-way transparency and accountability. Until fairly recently, it was a felony here in Illinois to record the police in public. The state Supreme Court struck that down, but already the legislature is trying to outlaw it yet again.

      • I agree. Justice **has** to be a two-way street or it’s simply hypocrisy, if not tyranny.
        Police unions are a powerful political lobby, though, and like all self-interests they want maximum power with minimum oversight. Locally, we’ve found our most effective allies on such issues to be the ACLU and the media, though timing is crucial — the unfortunate reality is that no one would have paid attention to something like our smuggled police video if we’d released it pre-Ferguson, or if the ground here hadn’t been fertilized already by the Citizen-Times’s Freedom of Information lawsuit.

      • I think cameras on all law enforcement is a good idea. But only if they lack the ability to be turned off and broadcast in a open frequency that can be captured by all.
        As for Illinois, the solution is for private citizens to be doing 24/7 surveillance on the state legislature and executive as well.

  13. ‘Occult Crime”? Are they kidding!! Have they ever read the Bible … so many occultist goings on in that book, if they really want to follow and video occult crimes they have numberless opportunities every Saturday and Sunday

  14. I am not certain how one can do ceremony in a public park and the say no one can film the activity. Had this bee a private ceremony in a private place, I think one would have a stronger case. Can one expect privacy in a public place? I admit it does seem like a waste of taxpayer money. How about a taxpayer suit for waste of public money.

    • That’s one possibility, but imho a risky one. Making a day-in-court thing would motivate law enforcement — not just APD but the establishment — to come up with a justification for taping based on valid public need. In this post-9/11 age the chances are not zero that it would be upheld, with the opposite result from the one that one went to court for.

      • There is in fact a lawsuit that’s been filed to compel APD to release the videos they have, as the article notes. They have not been able to come up with a justification, and in fact we’ve heard from the grapevine that most officers support a more transparent policy. We’re not the only ones concerned — the current attention began when this summer when police filmed a local Moral Monday protest against our extremist right-wing North Carolina legislature, attendees questioned what they were planning to do with that film, and the police and Asheville city government gave conflicting and unreasonable answers.

        Our police dept. is in a state of upheaval right now owing to decades of scandal and mismanagement culminating in the city’s current search for a new chief of police. It’s hoped that he or she will feel the pressure to bring APD up to speed with accepted best practices regarding police videos.

    • Please read my comment above or the press release Coven Oldenwilde sent out with this video release, http://oldenwilde.org/blog/426/take-action/police-videotaping-revealed/, or the newspaper article linked to in the Wild Hunt article. ANYONE IS FREE TO FILM OUR PUBLIC RITUALS. What’s NOT OK is for police to use such filming as a means to intimidate or spy on law-abiding citizens. What’s NOT OK is to keep 100 such films locked up in a police-station cabinet for 20 years with no legal justification, no policy to control this information, etc.

      Nowhere have we said that no one can film our public rituals! Geez, is this how rumors start?

      — *Diuvei, HP, Coven Oldenwilde