A Republican lawmaker's bill limiting bloggers who film police looks to be on life support after reaping strong opposition from the state's largest police officers' union.
The proposal would incriminate people who film police activity within 25 feet, or within 100 feet if the person is carrying a handgun.
Traditional news media would be exempted from the Class B misdemeanor charge, said Dallas Rep. Jason Villalba, who has said that the bill targets "independent bloggers who are focused on keeping law enforcement accountable."
Villalba's bill was set to have a hearing Thursday, his 44th birthday, but he withdrew the bill from the committee agenda. That came a day after he heard complaints from the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas.
Villalba insists he withdrew the bill because it's being amended and the hearing would run very late. But the association's executive director, Charley Wilkison, said Villalba suggested he was pulling the bill permanently during a phone call Wednesday after both of them appeared on FOX News.
"His indication was that he wasn't going to go forward with it," Wilkison said Friday. "We would have been opposed in the hearing, but we didn't even get that far."
Jordan Hunter, Villalba's spokeswoman, said the legislator is working with Wilkison's group to finesse the bill "to where they might be able to support it a little more."
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If scrapped, it'd be the second failed Villalba proposal session -- he killed another bill amid pressure from Texas businesses.
Wilkison, whose group boasts more than 18,500 members, said the proposal is unnecessary and dangerous. Now, he said, Texas' 76,000 licensed peace officers have discretion on where to cordon off a crime scene.
Setting limits as Villalba has proposed would be "worse for the rank-and-file," and hard to enforce, Wilkison said, quipping, "so the officer's going to have a tape measure at the scene?"
As news of Villalba's bill spread, so did the opposition. Groups like the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas raised concerns about violating constitutional rights. The vitriol was especially apparent on Facebook, where someone created a "Recall Jason Villalba" page days after the proposal was filed; the page now has about 4,500 "likes."
But Villalba maintains that his bill is to promote police accountability, and came at the urging of his hometown police.
Frederick Frazier, the first vice president of the Dallas Police Association, said he asked for the bill after tense encounters between police and people with cameras in Tarrant County, Houston and Dallas.
