Hey everybody this is Steve. I'm going to share a personal story about how police use ill-conceived laws to punish people who assert their rights. A few weeks ago I was in Maryland District Court facing two criminal charges from an incident that happened last June and through the discovery process that's where the prosecution shares their case evidence with the criminal defendant me I got body cam footage from the two Montgomery County police officers who were on the scene. I already had video footage from recording the officers with my smartphone which was something that triggered them to issue at least one of those criminal citations. Let's just go to officer Christopher Brown's body cam footage because he is the officer who pulled me over. Hey yo I'm you got to stop I'm pulling you over because you ran the stop line back there. You're in the roadway you got to follow the rules of the road. Do you have ID? I don't need to give you my ID. My name is Steve I can tell you that. Okay it's fun. How can I help you? I need to get your information for the citation. Steve Silverman. Steve with a V or a pH? With a V. Is that your full eagle or the Steve M? Did you see me back there before? I did. You saw me talking to the young man. I did. It was detained. And so you're giving me a ticket because of that because I stopped at that stop sign. No everything here's been recorded. You did not stop at the stop sign before that. That's good. I'm glad it's being recorded. Yeah you didn't stop at the one before that. I'm not going to tell you how to do your job if you're going to if you're going to penalize me for forgiving education or what information to the young man. Educator have you one. Educator have you one. I'm penalizing you for running a stop sign. Just so we're clear. And just so we're clear officer Brown penalized me with a criminal citation for failure to stop at a stop sign while writing my bicycle in a quiet residential neighborhood. That happened moments after he spotted me talking to a young black man who officer Brown and his partner released from the earlier detention I mentioned. So back to my detention with officer Brown. He didn't appreciate my refusal to show him my ID but because I was detained I gave him my full name. I gave him my address in date of birth and those things were enough for him to check for outstanding warrants and for the county to mail me the citation. That should have been the end of the story but the officers had other ideas. Quick question. Do you just try to intimidate me because you don't want me to give you a ticket or why? I'm not going to answer that question. Okay. I don't think you would. I can't speak for officer Brown and his conception of intimidation but my best guess is that he mistook the assertion of my constitutional rights as disrespect for his authority. And as he wrote me up I had this exchange with his partner Corporal Jason Halco. I'm mostly recording the duration of this account. Well you don't have a right to record when you're stopped and detained for a violation. I disagree. It's the first mile right to record. Oh all right. On the legal merits I'm right and Corporal Halco is wrong. Every state and federal court to rule on this question has concluded that filming police in public is first amendment protected activity. If you were illegal to record him here Corporal Halco could have given me a lawful order to stop but he does this instead. It's the first minute right to record. Oh all right. Oh okay. Can you check that? You have a registration sticker? The county registration sticker for your bicycle. A registration sticker for my bicycle? Yeah. Hey Fitz keep bringing the man over here and there and I'm going to have a bike. You heard that right. In Montgomery County Maryland if you don't register your bicycle at the county police can give you a criminal citation and they can arrest you and impound your bicycle. In my case officer Brown chose not to arrest me and Corporal Halco talked him out of impounding my bicycle but they stuck me with criminal citations for a failure to register my bicycle and for a failure to stop and stop the sign. Soon after that event I got a summons from the state of Maryland to appear in court or face up to 10 days in jail. I didn't want to wind up at the criminal record for this nonsense so I hired a fantastic defense attorney and went to court in the suit and tie. Lucky for me both officer Brown and Corporal Halco were absent that day and when my attorney described the charges the judge just shook her head and disbelief in the prosecutor kind of chuckled as he dropped the charges. I'm very fortunate because I could afford to hire greater attorney. I didn't need to find child care or risk losing my job to make that court date but for many the defendants I saw in court that was not the situation. Here are my final thoughts for lawmakers for police leaders and for the rest of us. Lawmakers please stop passing laws that give police more power to stop and arrest people because police will inevitably find creative ways to use those laws to harm people in ways you not in 10 and if you see that the police are for example misusing mandatory bicycle registration laws repeal those damn laws police leaders if you want your community to trust and support you please direct your officers not to punish people who engage in otherwise legal behavior. If for example officers punish someone who video records them you must discipline those officers to enforce the culture that you want to see and that's for the rest of us. We know that flexing our constitutional rights is not easy it can cost you your time your treasure and in rare circumstances your life but we assert our rights not merely because it's a cost that we bear to live in free society we do it because it's what we do and it's who we are.