By Larry Judkins
Glenn County Observer
You may or may not recall this item from the Orland police logs for Saturday, March 12:
“4:12 p.m., Orland police officers responded to a report of a person harassing postal employees at the Orland Post Office, 831 Fourth Street. Officers determined the person was photographing and recording in a public and no crime had been committed.”
At the time, I thought this log entry was mildly interesting, but it wasn’t until today, Thursday, April 21, that I learned that the man involved was part of a larger project. An acquaintance informed me that this man has a sizable collection of videos on YouTube.
Called the “Bay Area Transparency” project, these videos record the reactions by law enforcement officers and other government employees to the man’s attempts simply to take videos on public property.
Regarding the Orland incident, the postal workers didn’t fare so well – but then, by his own admission, the videographer himself came off in his video as excessively grumpy and all-too-willing to escalate the tensions between himself and the postal workers. On the other hand, the videographer had nothing but praise for the responses of Sgt. Kyle Cessna and Officer Kris Fullmore.
The acquaintance who told me of this video theorized that the many years of Tim Crews and The Valley Mirror writing, preaching, and teaching about open meeting laws, public records, media access to events and places of interest to the public, etc., may have had a positive influence on some officials in Orland and Glenn County.
Anyway, I recommend this “Bay Area Transparency” video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iYdhMazxnY&t=54s
The Glenn County Observer 