Journalism or crime? Judge rules freelancer’s suit against San Diego police can move

San Diego freelance photojournalist Edward Baier, a self-described First Amendment advocate, is not afraid to confront police officers and other public safety personnel when he believes those officials have broken the law or infringed on his constitutional rights.

“I get all worked up and fired up and I’m cussing,” Baier said in an interview. The photographer acknowledged that maybe he “should tone it down a little bit,” but he said he can’t help getting angry when he perceives that law enforcement officers have overstepped their legal authority to bar journalists from scenes of public interest, such as crimes, traffic collisions and rescues.

Baier, who sells breaking news footage to television stations, has been arrested several times over the years for his confrontations with police. Last year he sued the city of San Diego in federal court, alleging officers falsely arrested him and illegally seized his belongings in violation of the Fourth Amendment and California law, and retaliated against him for First Amendment-protected activity.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia sided with Baier in the first major milepost of the case, denying the city’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The ruling means the city has to file an answer to Baier’s complaint and the case can move toward trial.

“The Court’s ruling was simply that Mr. Baier alleged enough to allow the lawsuit to proceed,” Ibrahim Ahmed, a spokesperson for the San Diego City Attorney’s Office, said in a statement. “The Court did not rule that Mr. Baier’s allegations are true or that the officers violated the law or were in the wrong.”

Ahmed declined further comment.

The case boils down to whether Baier had the right to film an active police scene in November 2023. Police claimed they had probable cause to arrest him on suspicion that he violated his probation stemming from a prior arrest at a police scene.

Baier, who says he was not in violation of his probation terms, views the lawsuit as a larger struggle against what he believes to be decades of public safety officials infringing on the First Amendment rights of the news media and the public.

City officials view Baier as a habitual criminal offender, not just a newsgathering nuisance. In addition to several guilty pleas and admitted probation violations related to his confrontations with police, Baier pleaded guilty in 2016 to lewd conduct in public for masturbating in his van next to a woman eating lunch in her car.

As for his run-ins with police, Chief Deputy City Attorney Taylor Hearnsberger wrote in a criminal filing that Baier “simply will not behave around police without very specific court-ordered parameters … His years of outrageous behavior demonstrate that he is not the type of offender that can be ‘trusted’ to behave himself.”

A police incident log included in a criminal case showed police and dispatchers have referred to him as a “media imposter” on at least one occasion.

“While police clearly should not be hampered in their performance of required functions, it’s the job of the press to be on the scene, to be vigilant … and to sometimes be the gadfly,” Eugene Iredale, Baier’s attorney in his lawsuit against the city, told the Union-Tribune. “Police should not be permitted to turn their irritation at a minor inconvenience into the accusation of a crime.”

The incident at the center of Baier’s lawsuit occurred Nov. 27, 2023, in Mission Bay, near the Clairemont Drive bridge over Interstate 5. Baier said he went there after seeing a San Diego police helicopter circling, parked his van, walked along the sidewalk on the bridge and began filming the police scene on the freeway below, which he described as a bloodied and handcuffed man surrounded by officers.

Unbeknownst to Baier at the time, the man had jumped from the bridge, according to his lawsuit. Baier alleged that a San Diego police sergeant on the freeway below noticed him and eventually sent other officers to arrest him.

The lawsuit alleges that an officer grabbed Baier’s phone, causing the camera to shut off before the recording was saved, while other officers seized his belongings and searched his van “without probable cause or any legitimate legal basis to justify the search.”

Baier alleges that the sergeant who ordered his arrest also denied his requests to speak with a lieutenant, a captain and a San Diego police public information officer “as per SDPD policy when a media member is arrested.” The suit alleges that Baier spent an hour handcuffed in the back of a police vehicle at the scene and eventually was taken to the county jail, spending a total of 16 hours in custody. No charges were ever filed against him, according to the lawsuit.

The city argued in its motion to dismiss that officers had probable cause to believe that Baier was violating his probation, which it argued would completely shield them from any of his allegations.

But Battaglia ruled that Baier’s lawsuit raised valid questions for a jury to decide about whether the officers had probable cause to arrest him.

Baier’s probation terms at the time of the incident included several unique prohibitions related to being at San Diego police scenes, including that he must stay “at least 15 yards away from police conducting an investigation or securing a scene.” The probation terms also directed him not to obstruct the movement of officers or their vehicles and not to engage in conduct that causes officers to have to divert their attention.

Battaglia wrote that nothing in Baier’s complaint or the city’s motion to dismiss conclusively proved whether Baier violated his probation. He also ruled that a jury should decide whether any potential probation violation was willful or accidental.

Baier contends that he was in compliance with his probation terms at the time of his arrest. After viewing police body-worn camera footage of the incident, he and a former attorney from Iredale’s law firm measured the distance from where he was filming on the bridge to where officers were surrounding the man on the freeway below. Images filed in the case purport to show he was 71 feet away, or roughly 24 yards.

Last year, Baier appealed some of the unique terms of his probation that prohibited certain interactions with police, arguing they were unconstitutional. A three-judge panel from the San Diego Superior Court Appellate Division partially ruled in his favor, finding three of the probation terms were unconstitutionally vague.

Iredale said that decision will have little effect on the civil case because the city is arguing Baier violated other terms of his probation that were neither challenged nor overturned on appeal.