ASHEVILLE--Two prominent Wiccans made public what they say is a police video of a Halloween Witch Rite.
They say a police officer, who was uncomfortable with the department's policy of recording public gatherings, smuggled the 18-year-old video out of the department.
It is one of about 100 recordings the department keeps in an archive dating back to KKK rallies in 1980.
The Wiccans said they obtained the recording sometime before 2008. They decided to make it public after the Asheville Citizen-Times sued the city to call attention to the practice.
The video, released Thursday, shows a public gathering that includes a Wiccan ceremony. The person recording the event can be heard telling someone at the gathering that he works for the police department.
Police did record a "Witches Gathering" on Oct. 31, 1996, according to a list of videos in the department's archives obtained by the newspaper under the public records law.
The Citizen-Times started investigating the police department's practice of recording public gatherings in August after two people complained about a police officer recording to Mountain Moral Monday rally at Pack Square Park.
This week, the newspaper filed a lawsuit asking a judge to make public all of the videos.
The city deemed the recordings criminal intelligence after the newspaper asked to see them. Criminal intelligence records are not public in North Carolina.
The newspaper's lawsuit alleges the videos are public records. It argues the practice of routinely recording public gatherings will have a chilling effect on free speech.
The video does not appear to have captured any illegal activity. Police have developed no actionable criminal intelligence from the recordings, the city has said.
Deputy Chief Wade Wood and City Manager Gary Jackson did not immediately respond to questions Thursday.
Steve Rasmussen, whose Craft name is Diuvei, said he and Dixie Deerman, whose Craft name is Lady Passion, raised concerns about the practice of recording public gatherings in 2000, when the police department was facing reaccreditation.
He said Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies took no action.
The police department has no retention scheduled for the records that would set out how long they can be kept before being destroyed. State law requires retention schedules for government records.
"Fourteen years later, APD continues to film people without any transparency or accountability," Rasmussen said.
Deerman said she believes the practice is meant to stop free speech.
"We deem it outrageous that they refuse to reassure the public about their storage methods, who has access to the footage, and if and how the film is ever destroyed," she said. "It's easy to conclude that the APD turns sinister cameras on people who assemble in an attempt to repress their free speech."
The department has recordings ranging from KKK rallies in the 1980s to protests about logging, animal rights, gay rights, abortion, immigration and banking.
It has filmed gun rights rallies, tea party political rallies, nearly all of the Occupy Asheville events and two Moral Monday rallies.
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