Moving forward after police called to Cape Vincent town council meeting

Updated 08/18/2009 06:52 AM
By: Katie Gibas

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CAPE VINCENT, N.Y. -- The Cape Vincent town meetings have been getting pretty heated lately. Last week the police were even called.

Town officials' issue is with John Byrne who has been recording the meetings for more than a year. Their biggest concern is that the video is being taken out of context and used on blogs as an attack tactic.

"They're only showing one portion of the videos, which everything you've seen, when you see the blowups, they've only been of them. They have not been any videos of the rest of the audience. No video of how maybe the planning board or town board member got upset to begin," said Thomas Rienbeck, Cape Vincent Town Supervisor.

But legal experts say there's nothing wrong with only posting portions.

"The courts have said that once somebody records a meeting, the fact that it may be edited or altered or even used out of context is beyond anybody's control. It's perfectly valid," said Robert Freeman, NYS Committee on Open Government Executive Director.

Byrne says he's only been posting portions of the meeting because of logistical and time constraints.

"To post a whole meeting would take an enormous amount of time. YouTube allows you to only post approximately 10 minutes at a time, so I try to grab 10 minutes of every meeting that the residents seem to be the most interested in," said John Byrne, Cape Vincent resident.

Town officials are concerned about what will happen at future meetings.

"Where do you draw the line on this saying this is being abusive and disrupting meetings. But they're not coming out and saying that. How far do you go before you say this is enough?" said Rienbeck.

But both town officials and Byrne say they're not going anywhere.

"I will continue to record the meetings. It's a constitutional right. I feel it should be exercised. If they did it, then the citizens wouldn't have to," said Byrne.

And town officials say they're looking into just that.

Town officials say they're also looking into changing the structure of their meetings to prevent further outbursts and arguments.