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A North Carolina blogger was threatened with arrest Thursday after attempting to photograph a cop making an arrest.

When the blogger demanded the cop’s name, he lied and provided the name of a fellow cop.

The woman who runs Crime in Charlotte then called the public information officer, who informed her that the First Amendment did not apply in Charlotte.

According to a North Carolina blog called Cedar Posts and Barbwire Fences:

When Crime In Charlotte requested the officer's name he told her that his name was Williams. Turns out he forgot that his name was M. Thompson and that the other officer's name was Williams.

When Crime In Charlotte called CMPD's Public Information Officer Rosalyn Harrington to discuss what happened, Harrington was unapologetic saying that officers were within in their rights to arrest Crime In Charlotte. When Harrington was pressed on the validity of the law she stated that Charlotte had rules that are different from other cities like Baltimore, as she continued to explain away the officers actions as justifiable.

A casual glance through Crime in Charlotte reveals a very police-friendly blog praising June’s Officers of the Month and reminding readers to “Commend a CMPD officer! while filling in the rest with the usual police blotter.

She was even the one who dialed 911 to report the felon that police arrested on an outstanding warrant Thursday morning, the one she tried to photograph.

Now the blogger is so distraught that she not only won’t write about the incident, but believes it’s “time to take a break” from blogging.

So maybe she wasn’t cut out for it in the first place.

Or maybe she should just come to the dark side and start shining a critical light on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.

UPDATE: Not all CMPD cops threaten to arrest citizens when they are being videotaped or photographed. An alert PINAC reader sent me the video below that shows a group of young, black men walking around downtown Charlotte with a video camera when they come across a group of cops making an arrest and searching somebody's car.

Rather than start threatening the men with arrest, one of the cops pulls out his own video camera and starts filming them.