Permit violation is first to court

BURBANK — Kevin Muldoon, a longtime City Hall critic, is scheduled to appear Thursday in Burbank Municipal Court for filming without permission, the first violation since the city’s film permit policies were amended in January.

The misdemeanor charges stem from a May 1 incident at Bob’s Big Boy where he and Steve Schuneman were capturing footage for their website, livecarshows.com, a collection of uploaded and streaming video of unusual automobiles and the stories behind them.

About 6:20 p.m. Burbank police Lt. J.J. Puglisi saw the pair with about 100 pounds of filming equipment, including a camera tripod and boom, according to the incident report. Puglisi asked if they had a film permit and was told that one wasn’t necessary because they are media and using only a hand-held camera. Adopted by the City Council in December, the new film ordinance provides an exemption for filmmakers using hand-held devices and any needed tripods.

“He insisted we stay put until he could get someone with a camera to take pictures of us,” Muldoon said. “He started [documenting] our conversation, then accused us of moving the camera from the position he had seen it in earlier before taking an incident report.”

The pair, which had shot countless hours of footage at the diner on Riverside Drive, packed up their new high-definition camera and gear, and left after being told they could not continue filming if they didn’t remove the boom.

“Our equipment is comprised of one hand-held camera, one wireless microphone, fly-cam and two guys,” he said. “Not what anybody would consider a film shoot.”

Muldoon also argued that despite not having press credentials, typically issued by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the webcasts qualify as news. Employees of news organizations are exempt from the regulations.

Muldoon said he never received a citation that day in May, but that he later received a letter July 1 from the city attorney’s office charging that he violated the film ordinance.

In this particular case, Police Chief Tim Stehr said, the officers took pictures, wrote a report and passed the information on to the city attorney’s office. While they had the option to write the citation at the scene, the officers were probably right to err on the side of safety because of the new ordinance, he added.

“It really is not unusual,” Stehr said.