Activist Alison Bane (Miller) McLeod DOB 1963, photo from the video " Border Patrol in The Bushes"

Bisbee anti government activist, Alison Bane McLeod lives at 939 E Border Rd AZ (520-432-1476), a few miles east of Bisbee where she confronted Customs and Border Patrol Agents from the Horse Patrol in the process of apprehending illegal border crossers.  Holding a video camera McLeod approached the agents and was asked courteously, not to video their faces (this is on the film.) McLeod ignored their request, got closer with her video camera and began verbally heckling them and then asking questions.  She was repeatedly asked to stand aside and not film their faces or the face of the man in custody but simply ignored their requests.  One of the CPB agents then explained to her that they were not authorized to answer her questions and gave her the number at CBP headquarters where she could contact a public relations officer.  This is standard procedure for just about every agency from police to fire departments and many corporate entities.

McLeod took detailed video of the CPB Agents after being asked repeatedly not to video their faces, then irresponsibly posted a very derogatory video showing the CBP Agents faces on YouTube. YouTube removed the video.  The border in that area has become a very dangerous sector and it is definitely a reasonable request for CBP Agents to want to protect their anonymity and respect the identity of the man in custody.

McLeod states she has the right to video government officials in public but these men where government workers doing an assigned job. Professional multimedia reporters have the courtesy and respect for agents safety, and blur direct face shots if the video is of course not accusatory but still news worthy.    This video was neither, but if anything should prevail in the video, it would be how the CBP Agents handled the situation with a great deal of patients and professionalism in dealing with McLeod and the respect showed for the individual in custody.

This shoddy video is merely another piece in the No More Deaths campaign (Culture of Cruelty) to systematically assault  US Customs and Border Protection. McLeod was immediately  defended by the ACLU. Of course  McLeod did not include any personal information of her own in the video. McLeod’s information in this article came form public web search.

An interesting note is that McLeod had no concern for any rights but her own when she even used copyrighted music of the popular James Bond Series as the soundtrack for her video which the ACLU posted on their website with total disregard for copy right protection laws, the safety of CPB Agents or the rights of the man in custody.

ACLU Says Bisbee Activist Has First Amendment Right to Post Border Patrol Video on YouTube     

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday, September 30, 2011

CONTACT:

Alessandra Soler Meetze, ACLU of Arizona, (602) 773-6006 (office) or 602-301-3705

PHOENIX – In a letter sent Thursday to YouTube administrators, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona criticized the online company for censoring a video of United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents arresting a man with a bloody nose.

The 5-minute video, dubbed “Border Patrol in the Bushes,” was taken by Bisbee activist Alison McLeod, who pulled out her video camera and started filming Border Patrol agents arresting an individual after she heard helicopters and saw several agents, on horseback and on foot, on her property on August 31^st.  The video shows four CBP agents walking an individual in handcuffs through her property to a white CBP truck parked on a public road. McLeod posted it on YouTube on September 2^nd where it received “hundreds” of views within hours. Ten days after the video was posted, YouTube officials took it down, citing privacy complaints by CBP agents.

“This is yet another example of a private online community trampling on our First Amendment rights and trying to exercise greater control over what we share and watch online,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona. “People have the right to film government officials carrying out their duties in public places. By censoring this type of protected speech, YouTube officials not only violated their own guidelines, but they’ve managed to silence debate around U.S. immigration practices along the U.S.-Mexico border.”

According to YouTube, three complaints about the video were filed; two of them were posted by CBP agents. Within hours of the YouTube posting, a CBP supervisor showed up unannounced at McLeod’s doorstep, telling her 19-year-old daughter who was home at the time that he was inquiring about the YouTube video. The agent then offered to give McLeod and her daughter a tour of the Border Patrol facilities and the local search area.

“This is the reality of border enforcement for those of us living on the border,” said McLeod, who has been living on the border since 1997. “Rather than trying to intimidate residents like me who are simply trying to make CBP more accountable to the public, they should respect the rights of all people living on the border.”

The ACLU sent a separate letter to the CBP’s Tucson Field Office, arguing their involvement in trying to remove the video constitutes “severe government interference with McLeod’s constitutional rights.”

“Customs and Border Protection is now the nation’s largest federal law enforcement agency and it operates with total impunity, accountable to no one and with little government oversight,” added Meetze. “This video and CBP’s response to it underscores the need for greater transparency.”

Although YouTube has privacy guidelines that allow them to remove content where an individual is “uniquely identifiable,” the ACLU argues in its letter to both YouTube and CBP that public officials have no reasonable expectation of privacy while exercising their official duties in public places. The ACLU letter also points out that “nothing distinguishes McLeod’s videos from the hundreds of videos already on YouTube demonstrating various law enforcement activities.”

“YouTube boasts that it is the biggest news platform in the world,” wrote ACLU of Arizona Legal Director Dan Pochoda in his three-page letter to YouTube. “One of the goals of a free press is to hold government officials accountable for their actions. Granting law enforcement a de facto veto over materials they find objectionable or unflattering would violate and jeopardize that mission.”

The letter to YouTube asks the company to allow McLeod to repost her video and any future videos of government officials performing their duties. The ACLU also is asking CBP to stop interfering with McLeod’s efforts to videotape and photograph CBP activities on her own property or public land, and to rescind its complaints seeking the removal of the video from YouTube.

Click here to read the letter to YouTube.

Click here to read the letter to CBP’s Tucson Field Office.

 

A remake of the video titled Border Patrol in the Bushes Dos has been posted again on YouTube.

Update:  Alison McLeod now tries to silence this blog 

Attacking the United States Border Patrol with such wild and fictitious allegations is totally irresponsible. The fact is that this action is merely a smoke screen to divert attention from their illegal activities.

They claim to be faith-based humanitarians, except by the social and cultural standards of the United States they are just antigovernment anarchists.

This new book, Culture of Cruelty by No More Deaths is no better than the previous one in that it is entirely based on hearsay information from a biased source. Not independent moderation of oversight, they just wrote it.

Hear say evidence has never been admissible in a court of law. Even if you swear that the story you heard is correct and you swear that you have not embellished it for you own gains. Interview techniques are the same as surveys you can prove anything by the way the question is asked and then recorded and then presented. This applies to both sides of the coin. If you are going to put on the gloves lets be honorable, fair in our presentations and professional and objective in the information gathering.

It is called the “chain of evidence”  (physical or real property) Interviews, statements confessions, etc, must be recorded or signed and notarized and the victim must be available to testify under oath in a court of law. There are many criminal cases that are dismissed because this chain was broken or not conducted properly.

If law enforcement where allowed to collect evidence in the manner that NMDs did in their new book, we could just wing our constitution out the window and embrace a dictatorship.

As quoted in part from the 6th Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Border Patrol Agents must be allowed the same rights as all United States citizens.

Excerpt from “Living on the Border” Documentary 

Controlling the media was very important, so not only did they bring in their own international media teams sympathetic to their cause but they began carefully screening journalists who wanted to cover their work in the field and any that are approved, are assigned special media persons and given a false tour with no interaction with volunteers who have not been briffed or illegal migrants.

They also realized that right wing conservative news won’t criticize faith based humanitarian groups and left wing liberals are supportive of it with out asking to many questions. This puts government officials and politicians in an uneasy spot.  So with decades of experience No More Deaths and the Samaritan’sleaders who were no strangers to organizing anti government tactics, began their new agenda by first creating a cloud of false government persecution in which to operate under.

First there is “Abuse Documentation” or stories they have heard or made up that will foster sympathy for their cause and open a can of worms for any government agency that takes to close a look at their activities. Playing this abuse documentation angle also keeps them very well funded, with large grants from the Unitarian Universalistic Funding Program and tens of thousands of tax free dollars from other churches and non profit activist groups under the disguise of the Social Justice Ministry. The term they like to use for their actions is “Civil Initiative”, nothing more than a gentle  for euphemism for revolutionary or anarchist.  To give this trump card an air of validity, they even published a book.

Feature length documentary is available on DVD at www.livingontheborder.com

Karl W Hoffman

Documentary Film Producer

Freelance Photojournalist

Multimedia Reporter

For information on photography exhibits and prints, lectures, interviews, photo usage, border tours and to order the documentary on DVD and view Living on the Border documentary trailer please visit: www.skullcreekmedia.com

The self proclaimed faith based humanitarian group No More Deaths (Truth about No More Deaths) ludicrously assaults Border Patrol in their new book “A Culture Of Cruelty”. Hear say stories and foundation less accusations take aim at Border Patrol Agents and supervisors in all areas of this government organization and at all levels.

A rally to celebrate the release of the new book was held at the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Tucson. Then a fired up group headed to Customs and Border Protection Headquarters to hold a demonstration in hopes of giving their cause some validity and gain some attention.  They got neither.

Arriving at BP Headquarters one could only chuckle at the circus like procession with actors dressed in costumes. Led by the famous instigator, John Fife, of course today he was the Reverend John Fife, dressed in his black shirt and white collar. Then came the “Professionals”  lady attorneys in their suites, hippies, volunteers in earth clothing, activists in all their glory, doctors and nurses in scrubs and lab coats complete with stethoscopes around their necks and followed by minstrels playing guitars and singing, but there were no jugglers just a gaggle of amateur photographers and videographers recording the debacle.

Border Patrol gates where closed to the dismay of the procession.  Heads where hung, signs and posters were rolled up, camera crews packed it in, and the activist left in a very anticlimactic exit. What ever their grand plans were, they never came to fruition.

Of course the liberal bloggers have claimed it a great success and major media this time of year is always looking for a filler.

Excerpt from Living on the Border Documentary series 

With decades of experience dating back to the Sanctuary movement,  No More Deaths and the Samaritan’s leaders who are no strangers to organizing anti government tactics. They began their new agenda by first creating a cloud of false government persecution in which to operate under. First there is “Abuse Documentation” or stories they have heard or made up that will foster sympathy for their cause and open a can of worms for any government agency that takes to close a look at their activities.

Playing this abuse documentation angle also keeps them very well funded, with large grants from the Unitarian Universalistic Funding Program and tens of thousands of tax free dollars from other churches and non profit activist groups under the disguise of the Social Justice Ministry. The term they like to use for their actions is “Civil Initiative”, nothing more than a gentle  for euphemism for revolutionary or anarchist.  To give this trump card an air of validity, they even published a book in September of 2008, “Crossing the Line” with over 100 pages of the most horrendous accusations, in the form of written accounts and affidavits, based solely on hearsay, against U.S. Border Patrol Agents working in the field and detention facilities that had never been visited. Down load PDF version of the book “Crossing the Line” This hearsay documentation was actually presented at Congressional briefing in Washington D.C., hosted by Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.). The U.S Border Patrol says that these allegations are false. Rep. Grialva has long been a supporter of No More Deaths and the Samaritan’s work as well as their cause.

If something works, why not try it again?  So another book is published and a larger smoke screen has been created to operate an illegal smuggling operation.

For more information on the subversive antigovernment history of No More Deaths: When Humanitarian Aid Really Does Become a Crime