MOSCOW, Tenn. — Things got heated at a Board of Aldermen meeting in Moscow, Tennessee, when a woman was told to stop using her cell phone to record the meeting or she would be arrested.
Jennifer Howell says she never dreamed using her cell phone to record the March meeting of the Moscow Board of Aldermen would turn ugly. She feels her rights were violated.
“I certainly wasn’t there to cause any issues that would lead to being arrested,” she said.
Howell, a former Moscow alderman, says she recorded the meeting in February for a local Facebook site, to no one’s objection.
Monday night, however, she was told repeatedly to stop recording because signs posted said “no cell phones allowed” in Moscow city hall.
She asked why a local newspaper reporter was allowed to record the meeting.
“Unfortunately they said they would leave her there but I would have to be removed if I continued recording,” Howell said.
She continued to record until, just four minutes into the video, she was asked to leave. An officer told her she would be cited with trespassing if she didn’t leave immediately.
WREG reached out to the Tennessee Comptroller’s office and were told a citizen’s right to record public meetings is a “gray area.”
“It appears a governing body might be able to limit someone recording meetings if those limitations are in place in order to serve a legitimate public interest,” said Lee Pope, open records counsel with the comptroller’s office. “So, it really just depends on what their local rules are about recording meetings and why they are in place, and ultimately a court would have to look at that.”
Moscow’s mayor had no comment, and neither did the city’s police chief.
Howell says she’d like an apology.
