From State v. Gardiner, decided Wednesday by the Oregon Court of Appeals (Judge Jacqueline Kamins, joined by Judges Douglas Tookey and James Egan):
A woman reported that a man knocked on her door, stabbed her in the face, and ran away. Hillsboro Police Officers and medical and fire department personnel responded to that call. In order to find the assailant, the officers deployed a K-9-unit tracking dog.
Defendant approached the area on foot and began filming. At one point, while defendant was present, a bicyclist rode through the area after being told to wait 30 seconds by an officer. Defendant had some interactions with officers, and each of them told him to stay clear of the "dog track." {According to officer testimony, the police dog is "trained for [tracking] fresh human odor" through footprints or air scent. Each dog track is never "exactly the same" because factors like weather temperature and wind direction affect a track. During a track, the dog-handler's primary focus is to observe the dog's behavior as it searches for scents, while other officers provide cover for the dog-handler.} Defendant was arrested after he disobeyed Edwards' order to leave the area because defendant continued to walk parallel to the dog track, thereby "interfering with the scent" and interfering with the duties of the police officers….
Defendant claimed this "violate[d] his constitutional right to film police activity," but the court disagreed. First, the court applied the Oregon courts' framework for dealing with free speech challenges under Article I, section 8 of the Oregon Constitution:
