CRANE COUNTY--Chasing storms is what Brian Barnes does for a living. And it was while he was doing just that, that he says he found himself in a difficult and strange situation involving a Crane County Sheriff's Deputy. Barnes was out on Tuesday in Crane County as severe weather moved across the region. Crane County was under a tornado warning for about an hour Tuesday night.
"I told him that I was helping out the National Weather Service in San Angelo, and they were relaying my reports to Midland. He told me he didn't care, and that I needed to go."
Barnes thought it was his obligation to stay put and follow the storms, a decision that landed him in jail.
"He jumped out and put me in handcuffs. I turned around and I remember him slamming me up against his vehicle, and then it all got kind of scary."
Among the witnesses was Dennis Greer, who had a similar run-in, with the same deputy, just minutes earlier while he was shooting picutures of the same storm for the local newspaper.
"His first words to me were, 'are you a blankety-blank idiot?' He told me if I didn't leave, I was going to jail, flat out," Greer said.
Barnes was arrested at a road side park on Highway 385 and charged with obstruction of a highway or other passage way.
According to witnesses, there is plenty of room on on the road in front of the park for a vehicle to get by. That's why they are questioning the validity of the charge.
Kind of why I am willing to give Cedric Benson the benefit of the doubt. I have met enough cops to know for every 10 or 20 good ones, you get some loser with a Barney Fife complex that goes on a power trip because he has a gun.
