Skip to content

A town square for an unsquare town

redbankgreen

Standing for the vitality of Red Bank, its community, and the fun we have together.

RED BANK: ATTORNEY MAKES ISSUE OF CAMERA

greg-cannon-032217-500x375-9693480Borough Attorney Greg Cannon at Wednesday’s council meeting. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)

By JOHN T. WARD

hot-topic_03-220x138-2130637Former Red Bank Council President Cindy Burnham blasted borough Attorney Greg Cannon after he redirected a video camera she was using to record the governing body’s semimonthly meeting Wednesday night.

Mid-meeting, while others on the dais were speaking about unrelated matters, Cannon walked from his seat beside Mayor Pasquale Menna to the front row of the audience and re-aimed Burnham’s tripod-mounted camera before returning to his seat.

Burnham was seated away from the camera at the time, and the incident went unnoticed by some on the dais and in the audience. Menna said afterward that he hadn’t seen it.

But during the public comment portion of the meeting, Burnham, who lost her council seat in November after one term, called attention to Cannon’s action, which she termed “so bizarre.”

She said Cannon had approached her in the hallway before the meeting and “asked me to turn my camera away because Linda feels intimidated,” she said, referring to Councilwoman Linda Schwabenbauer, a onetime Burnham ally.

During the meeting, Burnham said, she had stepped away from the tripod when Cannon approached it and touched the camera.

Burnham said that in recording, she was doing nothing different than Morford Place resident Suzanne Viscomi, who both Facebook streams the council and other committee sessions live from a front-row seat and posts full-length meeting videos afterward on YouTube.

If Schwabenbauer feels uncomfortable being recorded “that’s your problem,” she said to Schwabenbauer, “but I don’t see why I can’t videotape this.”

Cannon disagreed that Burnham and Viscomi were doing the same thing.

“You have the right to tape the meetings,” he said. “What you don’t have is the right is to come into the council chamber and make people who are seated on this dais feel uncomfortable by zooming in on their face.”

“I didn’t zoom in on anybody,” Burnham shot back.

Unlike Viscomi, Cannon continued, “you are clearly doing it, in my view, for some other purpose that’s not valid.”

“I turned your camera to view the entire dais,” he continued. “I didn’t turn it off. We didn’t take it from you. But you’re not going to be allowed to come in here and point the camera at people and pan in on their face and make them feel uncomfortable in a public setting like this. That’s just the way it’s going to be.”

“Aren’t you just a bully,” Burnham replied.

“It’s my job to protect the validity of this process up here,” he said. “If you don’t like the way it’s done, that’s fine, you have recourse, but that’s the way it’s going to be, and we’re going to set a policy that that’s the way it’s going to be.”

“I’m just appalled,” Burnham shot back.

Locust Avenue resident Ben Forest, a former journalist who was seated beside Burnham’s tripod, told Cannon he thought his action was “very inappropriate, and I was really shocked that you did it.”

A board of education member and regular attendee of council, planning and zoning board meetings, Forest said he had never witnessed such a scenario. A policy that says videographers must be at their cameras when recording “seems reasonable to me,” Forest said, if it is applied to everyone.

“But to go up and touch the device and to point it, that’s kind of bizarre to me, too,” he said.

Afterward, Burnham told redbankgreen she had been recording meetings for her own viewing and had not published any. She insisted that the camera was “always pointed at all” those seated on the dais, capturing the full width. She called the claim that she was singling out Schwabenbauer “bull.”

She declined to share her video with redbankgreen.

Schwabenbauer told redbankgreen that she had not asked Cannon to take any action against Burnham, who she said had been recording her for several months. “I just asked him a question: was it legal?” she said.

“I was objecting to being singled out,” she said, adding that the camera “was clearly pointed in this direction.”

Menna, a lawyer who has served as borough attorney in other towns, told redbankgreen that the courts have ruled that citizens have a right to record public meetings as long as the recording doesn’t interfere with the meeting itself. The issue of the videographer’s intent doesn’t factor into it, he said.

Cannon, a 33-year-old third-term councilman in Aberdeen who was appointed Red Bank’s borough attorney in January, declined to answer questions after the meeting, instead sending redbankgreen this statement via email:

“Ms. Burnham is seeking to confuse the issue and use the First Amendment as a sword rather than a shield.  The issue is not whether a citizen has a right to videotape a public meeting – no one is challenging that right.  Another citizen, Ms. Viscomi live streams and videotapes every meeting and posts the meetings online as a terrific public service.  The issue is that Ms. Burnham has been using her video camera to target, intimidate, harass, and bully one particular councilmember, who also has the right to come to a public meeting and feel safe in conducting the public business.”

Remember: Nothing makes a Red Bank friend happier than to hear "I saw you on Red Bank Green!"
redbankgreen Classics
Partyline
STREETCORNER SERENADE
An Irish doodle named Cheddar listens to native New Jerseyan, singer/songwriter and former Houston resident Tom Foti, (identified in the hea ...
Red Bank 5K Fun!!!
Red Bank Classic – June 14th, 2025 (photo by Partyline contributor Adam Kaplan)  
RAINBOW OVER RED BANK
Saturday, before and after the storm that rolled through town. (photo by Partyline contributor Thomas Doremus)    
Mini Ballers Bring the Heat at Fusion Basketball School
As the temperatures heat up, so does the competition in the mini baller clinic at Fusion School of Basketball. These little tykes are intens ...
DOZENS OF PLEIN AIR ARTISTS “PAINT RED BANK”
Plein air artists take over town for first ever "Paint Red Bank" event. (click to read)
RED BANK: SIGN ON ICONIC DANNY’S STEAK HOUSE COMES DOWN
The sign hanging from the shuttered Danny's Steak House comes down ten months after a manager reported Danny's Steakhouse would be back "bet ...
FOR YANKEES FANS, GOOD TRASH PICKIN’
A collection of framed photographs of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and other New York Yankees greats was placed curbside along with a ...
RED BANK: NEW HANDICAPPED PARKING, WEST SIDE MEETING PLANNED
New handicapped parking sign West Side advocate had pressed for is installed, with meeting planned to discuss other concerns. (click to read ...
SUNSET AT SUMMER’S START
Crazy sunset clouds shot from Monmouth Boat Club on the Friday evening at the start of Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer. ...
SIDEWALK GOES FROM WORST TO FIRST
P (photo by Brian Donohue) What had been, in our estimation – and apparently in the eyes of the several people who have emailed and te ...
RED BANK: PEERING FROM ON HIGH, ACROSS THE DECADES
Roofers on the Azalea Red Bank top off the project in the shadow of a sculpture depicting another generation of construction workers who toi ...
BRICK FACELIFT CONTINUES ON MONMOUTH STREET
A million-dollar brick sidwalk makeover of Monmouth Street in Red Bank continues.
JAY AND SILENT EAGLE
A very loud blue jay squawks at an indiferent bald eagle in a treetop alongside the Swimming River in Red Bank this week. (Partyline photo b ...
PIZZA LOVING SQUIRREL SPOTTED IN RED BANK
Pizza squirrel spotted in Red Bank. (click to read)
GET YOUR MA SOMETHIN’ NICE AT THE RED BANK FARMERS MARKET
It’s a beautiful and sunny Mother’s Day for the first instance of the farmer’s market, held every Sunday, beginning in May ...
SIGN? WHAT SIGN?
Folks in Red Bank Wednesday exercising their riparian rights to access tidal waters first encoded into Roman law in 500 AD and later adopted ...
FANTASTIC MR. FOX
Partyline contributor captures photo of backyard fox.
STRIPER RUN AT MARINE PARK
An angler pulls in a striped bass from the Marine Park bulkhead Tuesday evening. (photo by Partyline contributor Boris Kofman)  
COLD AS CANADA? CHECK.
A pair of goose sculptures propped atop an air conditioning unit on River Street in Red Bank.
SUNRISE OVER A GLASSY NAVESINK
Sunrise over the Navesink River, seen from NJ Transit Train 3320. (photo by Partyline contributor Karly Swaim)