HAZARD, Ky. (LEX 18) — In July, Dallas Campbell went to the Hazard Police Department to make an open records request. A process he assumed would take a few minutes ended with him in handcuffs.
Campbell was charged with second-degree disorderly conduct and menacing after Police Chief Darren Williams and a woman working the front desk noticed that he was recording his attempt to submit the open records request.
The charges against Campbell were dismissed recently when prosecutors watched the video that he took on his phone during the encounter. Now Campbell is suing Williams and the city for wrongful arrest, malicious prosecution, and violation of the Open Records Act.
“We're talking about police officers that are the very people that require you and me and other members of the community to comply with the law - if they get to choose and pick and select which laws are the ones that are followed and which ones are important, well the entire rule of law falls apart.”
Campbell’s video of the July incidentshows that Williams told Campbell that it was illegal to film in the public lobby of the police station, calling it a “secure government building.”
Campbell said he didn’t believe it was illegal and continued recording.
“I’m stubborn, and I don’t necessarily like bullies,” Campbell told LEX 18 in an interview Friday. “And I don’t think that’s the right way to go about things.”
After continuing to tell Campbell to stop recording or leave, Williams had Campbell arrested, video shows.
“It appears that the chief of police clearly got it wrong when he told Dallas Campbell that it was illegal, that it was against the law for him to record in the public lobby of the police station,” said Joshua Harp, one of Campbell’s attorneys. “That’s an objective fact, he got it wrong.”
With his initial open records request, Campbell was trying to obtain the names, hire dates, and salaries of the department’s employees. He was asking for the information as part of his YouTube channel, Appalachian News First.
All of that information is public record by state law, but the clerk working the desk – identified in the lawsuit as Amber Hensley – can be heard in the video saying that the salaries can’t be released.
Campbell can be heard in the video saying that the information is public record. When Hensley insists that the information can’t be provided, Campbell asks her to take the request, saying that the clerk can deny it.
Hensley responds by saying she is the clerk.
Things continued to go back and forth until Hensley and Williams noticed Campbell was recording video.
The lawsuit claims that Hensley deleted the recording from Campbell’s phone while he was being arrested. Campbell said he was able to recover the video from the phone’s trash file.
“In my opinion, using the justice system and leveraging that against people like Dallas for asking questions and for actually using their rights that are guaranteed either by statute or by the constitution, to turn around and use the justice system against them and weaponize it in that way in order to try to pressure them into silence – which is what I feel was being done – that’s an egregious offense in itself,” said Rex Kilburn, the attorney who represented Campbell in his misdemeanor criminal case.
Campbell hopes that people who hear about his situation will take away that they shouldn’t be discouraged from asking questions.
“Just because you ask questions of your government doesn't make you a sovereign citizen or anti-police,” Campbell said. “You can support the police and still ask questions of the government.”
Williams is already named as a defendant in a different recent lawsuit. His former deputy chief sued him and the city, alleging retaliation over her reporting an allegation of excessive use of force by Williams.
