Man Acquitted of Obstruction in Filming Officer-Involved Shooting
Colorado prosecutors argued Dean Schiller ignored 60 commands and became a distraction from police efforts to save lives and secure the crime scene simply for the sake of gaining more viewers.
Landwebs
Dean Schiller, who in 2021 filmed and live-streamed the fallout from and officer response to a mass shooting at a Boulder, Colorado shopping market, has been acquitted of obstructing police, a misdemeanor, after his lawyers argued that being a temporary distraction does not equate to keeping police from doing their job, reports Colleen Slevin of the Associated Press.
Prosecutors argued Schiller ignored 60 commands to move farther away from the store over 1 1/2 hours, becoming a distraction from police efforts to save lives and secure the crime scene simply for the sake of gaining more viewers for his channel. In July, a Denver-based U.S. appeals court that oversees four Western and two Midwestern states became the seventh appeals court to rule that people have a right protected by the First Amendment to film police while they work.
