The Case of the Six Missing Screams: Nydia Tisdale’s video edited by sheriff’s office?

It looks like the “public” Pumpkin Farm Republican campaign rally headlined by Gov. Nathan Deal not only caused a citizen journalist to be roughed up and evicted, and her camera taken, apparently the local law edited her video recording to remove the sound of her screams.

Jim Galloway wrote 22 September 2014, The Case of the Six Missing Screams,

You’ll remember Tisdale as the citizen-journalist from Roswell who was arrested in August at a GOP rally at a pumpkin farm in Dawsonville for pointing a video recorder at candidates. Which is what she does.

In front of the top of the GOP ticket, including Gov. Nathan Deal, Tisdale was grabbed — then roughed up. Her camera was confiscated by a Dawson County sheriff’s deputy.

But when the camera was returned several days later, the single computer file that should have been the result of the rally recording had been divided in two. And six screams were missing.

Galloway reminds us that there’s an independent sound recording of the missing time period by Brian K. Pritchard of FetchYourNews.com, in which you can clearly hear her scream for help, and the speaker at the podium laugh about it. Here’s Tisdale’s video. Notice it stops before the screams for help. But you can hear the deputy refusing to identify himself.

Maybe there’s a reason for that, if Tim Adderholdt is correct in his op-ed in the Cherokee Ledger-News 17 September 2014, Sheriff’s office policy gets it right,

So, unless the off-duty officer was witness to a forcible felony or a car crash, CCSO policy requires the off-duty officer to call an on-duty officer to take over the situation. Trespass is not a forcible felony, so the policy of the CCSO forbids what happened at Burt’s Pumpkin Farm, where an off-duty deputy acted as a bouncer/enforcer and forcibly removed a female citizen journalist for not turning off her camera and leaving when asked. The Cherokee Sheriff’s Office has it right.

If the deputy really wasn’t on duty, maybe he didn’t want to identify himself as a Sheriff’s deputy because he actually wasn’t one at that time.

Kimberly Boim wrote for the Dawson Advertiser 1 October 2014, Tisdale claims portion of video deleted,

“Several people have watched my video of the Dawson rally and compared it to a audio recording by Brian (Pritchard) at FetchYourNews.com,” Tisdale said Friday. “If you play the two recordings simultaneously, they are not in alignment … the part where I screamed for help and representatives in the tent are laughing at my cries for help, that part is missing.

“I don’t understand why. I have no answers but a lot of questions,” she said.

Tisdale admittedly has not done the comparison herself.

“It’s upsetting for me to watch the video,” she said. “I have not made any allegations. I don’t know what happened. I can’t make any determinations. It would take the skills of a forensic investigator. …It is inconceivable that I could have turned the camera off and back on with my hand behind my back while I was bent over the counter.”

Dawson County Sheriff Billy Carlisle said he would welcome an outside forensic investigation into whether Tisdale’s camera was altered.

To date, no investigation has been launched, Carlisle said.

Carlisle also said nothing was altered, yet there’s no investigation. And he said no charges had actually been drawn up, although supposedly:

Tisdale faces felony charges of obstructing an officer and misdemeanor criminal trespass.

She is accused of elbowing and kicking Capt. Tony Wooten, who made the arrest.

And:

“I thought it would be over with by now,” Tisdale said. “I cannot leave the state of Georgia. I can’t visit my elderly mother in North Carolina or my husband’s family in Tennessee without getting permission from the court.”

Tisdale posted a $6,200 bond and was released from the Dawson County jail Sunday, Aug. 24.

That’s some fine southern hospitality, Pumpkin Farm. As the Alma Times editorialized 8 September 2014, The camera never blinks,

The media coverage of the Tisdale incident has put Georgia in an embarrassing light — we’re now known as the state that beats up journalists.

Videotape is a reality of modern-day politics. If you decide to run for public office, you have to assume that your public remarks are likely to be recorded by somebody. That’s how the game is played these days.

If you’re running for office, or in office, and you’re at an event advertised as open to the public, you might as well learn to smile for the camera.

The headliner at the Pumpkin Farm, sitting in the front row as citizen journalist Nydia Tisdale was roughed up and ejected, was Gov. Nathan Deal, who did nothing then or later about it.

Deal did earlier accept $10,000 in campaign contributions from Spectra Energy’s PAC, and more from three other pipeline companies, for a total of $21,300, while Spectra’s proposed to gouge it’s Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline through Georgia and Deal does nothing about that, either.

Democratic Candidate for Governor Jason Carter, meanwhile, has spoken up against what happened to Nydia Tisdale, has not accepted any campaign contributions from those companies, and has spoken up against Nathan Deal accepting contributions from them.

Nydia Tisdale’s previous court victory, City ordered to pay $12k in fines for Open Meeting violation, is top of the front page on Jim Zachary’s transparency project of georgia. Maybe Zachary will learn something from Tisdale about open records at his Open Government Symposium in Macon. Hm, she’s not listed as a speaker….

-jsq