WATCH VIDEO: Journalist arrested in Bay County in violation of 1st Amendment, lawyer says

BAY COUNTY — Bay County Sheriff’s deputies arrested an independent photo journalist on Tuesday in violation of his First Amendment, constitutional rights, the journalist's attorney says.

Jason Gutterman, a self-described photo journalist and First Amendment auditor, was arrested outside the UPS Customer Center at 3205 Minnesota Ave., across the street from Mosley High School. A Bay County court threw the case out on Friday, however, said Kevin Alvarez, a Tallahassee-based attorney who represented Gutterman after the incident.

“It was not even close to being constitutional,” Alvarez said.

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The entire incident was captured on video by Gutterman and his 17-year-old son, who was also arrested, but never booked at the jail or charged with a crime. The video was posted to Gutterman’s YouTube channel, Amagansett Press, on Saturday. As of 4 p.m. on Saturday, the video had garnered more than 93,000 views.

The channel has more than 304,000 subscribers and has multiple videos with hundreds of thousands of views, all in different states, where Gutterman challenges authorities to see if First Amendment rights there will be upheld.

“We’re gonna pay a little visit on these folks here and find out if they honor and respect our right to take video and photographs in public and from publicly accessible areas of public places,” Gutterman said at the start of his video.

In the video, Gutterman is standing on a public sidewalk, recording video of the UPS building. Under the First Amendment, in general any member of the public can record video or shoot photographs of property or people as long as they do so on public property.

At one point in the video, a deputy approaches Gutterman and asks what he’s doing — noting that he’d received a complaint about a man at the building with a video camera. Gutterman declines to tell the deputy what he's doing, at which point he then calls his superior officer for backup.

The superior officer, who identifies himself in the video as Sgt. Ralph Grainger, then questions Gutterman as to why he is at the site filming. Grainger then tells Gutterman that he is in violation of a Florida statute that prevents anyone from being within 500 feet of a school without a legitimate purpose — in this case being Mosley High School across the street.

However the statute cited, Florida statute 810.0975, was declared unconstitutionally vague in 2008 by the U.S. District Court of Florida. In that case, Gray v. Kohl, the court permanently enjoined the state of Florida and its officers from enforcing the statute.

“The court agreed with me about the statute,” Alvarez said. “It took me about two seconds to look it up … it wasn’t exactly rocket science.”

Later in the video, after Gutterman repeatedly disputes the statute, Grainger arrests him and also orders that Gutterman’s son be handcuffed.

Alvarez said Gutterman spent two days in jail before the court released him and dismissed the charges on Friday.

A Saturday statement from the Bay County Sheriff's Office admits that Gutterman was arrested on basis of the statute. However, it notes that the statute was amended in 2013 and that the problems identified were corrected by the Florida Legislature and that it remains a chargeable offense.

"Despite historical questions about Florida State 810.0975, BCSO deputies decided to err on the side of caution and remove Gutterman from the School Safety Zone," the statement reads. "They believed it was more important to protect the students from potential harm than it was to protect their reputations from any potential damage they would face on social media.

As such, the Bay County Sheriff’s Office could choose to pursue this charge against Gutterman, but has decided not to do so," the statement adds.

In a Saturday email to The News Herald, Alvarez disagreed with the sheriff's office, writing that the Legislature in 2013 never changed the problematic issues with the statute, just added a punishment enhancement.

But to Alvarez, it doesn't matter if the statute was constitutional because his client was still complying with the law.

“The thing is, even if the statute wasn’t unconstitutional, he had a legitimate purpose for being there … he was there for journalistic activities,” Alvarez said.

The sheriff's office statement notes that deputies would receive additional training because of the incident.

"The Bay County Sheriff’s Office remains committed to constitutional policing and protecting the rights of the people we serve," the statement reads. "Our deputies have received specialized training to ensure they protect constitutional rights and in light of this incident, we will be adding to our training curriculum."

This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Bay County Florida sheriff's deputies arrest journalist Jason Gutterman