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Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Ind. Courts - Still more on: "Allen courts to ban cell phones, all electronics"
The Dec. 29th story on the Fort Wayne courts' cell phone ban, reported in this ILB entry, did a good job explaining how the ban will work, but did not tell the story behind the ban.
News Channel 15 (WANE) does that today, according to this story:
Banning cell phones in Allen County court buildings has more to do with safety than avoiding interuptions.Newschannel 15 discovered people are using cell phone cameras to photograph people on the witness stand, judges, and attorneys. This can be dangerous, especially in cases when identities need to remain confidential.
There are several web sites where people will post these pictures. One we found lists descriptions and details about informants; things like pictures of people's cars and their reasons for becoming an informant. Police will sometimes use confidential informants to infiltrate a criminal inner circle. The people who do this are often criminals themselves, and use that to gain trust and lead police to a larger target.
While on one web site we found more than 20 different listings for Northeastern Indiana. They all involve people who got busted and now work for the police. Again this is the main reason behind banning cell phones in court buildings. They don't want people taking pictures of confidential sources testifying in court and posting them on the internet as a snitch.
"With the technology, having cameras, streaming video, audio recordings there's not a need for those things to be in the courtroom. Those proceedings are between the judge, the jury and people on the stand," Allen County Sheriff's spokesman Steve Stone said.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 2, 2007 07:27 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts