For Immediate Release

June 24, 2008

Contact: Chad Kister (740) 707-4110 or chadkister@gmail.com

Columbus Police Seize Filmakers’ Video

            Columbus Police illegally seized author and filmmaker Chad Kister’s video tape when he got off the airplane October 23, 2005 having just returned from Florida, with footage of the beginning of hurricane Wilma.

            “An Airport police spokesperson today said that he could not imagine that that could happen at the Columbus airport, asking if I had the right airport,” Kister said.  “I grew up in Columbus, and am outraged at the fascist, dictatorial ways of the police, who ignore civil liberties and grossly abuse their power.  Police had no right to seize my tape, and still have yet to return it.”

Police later called back, and admitted that they did seize the tape.  "They said they would look into what to do about it, and contact me," Kister said.

            The videotape is critical to a film about climate change that Kister is working on.  Kister filed another Public Records Act Request June 24, 2008 to the Columbus Police, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Security Agency demanding the return of the tape.

            “Columbus police act like we live in China with their dictatorial ways,” Kister said.  “We need some justice.  We need the creation of local, state and federal departments of civil liberties protection, paid for by fines against police.”

            Concerns about terrorism are grossly overblown.  A 2004 Pentagon Report that Kister details in his second book, Arctic Melting, found that “climate change vastly eclipses the threat of terrorism.”  More people die every day from preventable pollution than died during the attacks on September 11, 2001.

            Police scare mongering about terrorism threatens the most important laws in our land: civil liberties protections.  It is only through the protection of civil liberties, and the vigilant prosecution of violators like the Columbus Police, that America will remain free.

            Federally, provisions in FISA legislation to exempt telecommunications companies from lawsuits for civil liberties violations by the Bush Administration are an unpatriotic effort to erode our liberties that must be stopped.  Anyone voting in favor of exempting telecommunications companies from civil liberties violations is voting against the express demands of our founding fathers for the courts to be the final arbiters, and civil liberties to be championed above all.