Vermont ‘journalist’ ordered off private property, accuses landlord of assault

By Ted Cohen

A videographer embroiled in a battle with city officials for allegedly harassing municipal employees got in a weekend scuffle filming an ambulance call.

“You're on private property,” a woman at The Hood Plant in Burlington tells Todd DeLuca as he's taping a medical emergency in her parking lot, according to video he posted online after the incident.

As the unidentified woman tries to shoo DeLuca away, he says, “please don't put your hands on me.”

She says “please don't be in my parking lot.”

He says, “I don't even know who you are. You're just a random stranger. I'm just here to record the incident ma’am.”

She says “I don't know who you are. You're on private property.”

When DeLuca asks who she is she says “you don't need to know who I am. Don't record on my property.”

He says “do not touch me. That's the second time you've touched me.”

Following the incident the woman posted on DeLuca's Facebook page, telling him she filed a complaint with Facebook after he allegedly posted the video of their confrontation.

“Delete the footage you took while trespassing deep into The Hood Plant property and posted online,” she posted. “You Tube removed it for violating terms.”

DeLuca replied, “The footage showing the owner of The Hood Plant physically attacking a journalist recording firefighters responding to an overdose call in an open, shared parking lot? You can see that attack on X or Instagram. Now that you've reminded me, I should post it to Facebook and TikTok too, now that I'm on those platforms.”

The Hood Plant responded, “No. Not at all.

“You crossed an entrance gate into private property, camera rolling, walked a half a block into a dark corner of the parking lot, mistook and mis-labeled the event as on overdose which it wasn’t at all, recorded a person on private property receiving care, stuck a camera in the property owner’s face demanding to know who that person was in their own backyard and was politely asked to leave private property over and over again. When the owner gently touched your elbow with one finger to guide back out of the gate, and asked you once again to leave, you freaked out like a soccer player, acting as if you were assaulted and then posted it all over the place, as if you have a right to enter someone’s backyard and pull these antics at 10:45 at night.

“You were 100% in the wrong.

“This one doesn’t pass your ‘I have the right to invade people’s space because I’m out in public’ test.

“In proving your point about filming people in public you proved our point that you were violating privacy on our property. You idiotically recorded yourself trespassing and narrating your actions along the way. Look it up in the land records - not an open, common parking lot at all. Cornering a lone woman late at night, in a dark corner and sticking a video camera in her face is bad enough in public, but in own backyard? You don’t even introduce yourself and identify your media before demanding people give you names. Take (the video) down.”

DeLuca has made a public reputation through his Facebook postings as a continuing critic of Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak’s alleged violations of what he describes as his First Amendment right to film in City Hall.

Mulvaney-Stanak’s so-called security team has given DeLuca several warnings suggesting he is unlawfully trespassing while loitering in City Hall with no expressed purpose or intent of conducting official city business.

DeLuca maintains he has every right to take his camera into City Hall to record city staff.

He extended his taping privilege to the parking lot at The Hood Plant, a privately owned building on the corner of South Winooski Avenue and King Street, located behind a building that houses the city’s cable provider.

Video: DeLuca confronts unidentified private-property representative

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DP1n6GoieFr/?igsh=MW82bnRlaTRlbjJkNQ==

Todd DeLuca Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1GvFp9omXm/