Arlington Police Chief Will Johnson spoke out Monday following the arrests of three ‘cop watchers' over the weekend.
Cop watchers are known for following police around on their patrols and videotaping their confrontations.
Johnson says there is a fine line between shooting video and interfering with a police investigation, and he says over the weekend, that line was crossed.
A video filmed Saturday night was posted on Facebook, and cop watchers are calling what happened in it an assault.
Arlington police pulled a driver over that night, and the Tarrant County Peaceful Streets Project, a cop watching group, was there rolling video.
At some point, Janie Lucero was arrested. Lucero is the wife of Kory Watkins, who is the President of Open Carry Tarrant County and an outspoken critic of Arlington police.
Shortly after Lucero was arrested, Watkins and fellow cop watcher Joseph Tye were also arrested.
“An officer has to be able to do the job that the community has asked them to do,” said Johnson.
Johnson says his officers are used to being recorded on camera and seeing videos of encounters with officers being posted online.
But in Saturday's incident, he says his officers on scene asked around 20 or so people, many of them shooting video of the traffic stop, to step back to a certain distance to give his officers room to work.
"With any type of external variables, whether it might be cars or roadway or speed or people, pedestrians, that might distract them from their ability to do their job,” said Johnson.
Normally, only videos posted by the cop watchers are seen, but in this case, Arlington police released some of their video to FOX 4 from the dash camera of a backup officer.
When the officer arrived on scene, Johnson says the cop watchers were surrounding his officers from three sides.
Watkins can be heard yelling at the officer, and he can be seen armed with a black powder pistol, which is legal to open carry in Texas.
"They're responsible for the safety of those that are on the scene that they are conducting, and we have to make sure that all parties' interests are represented,” said Johnson.
Alex Kim, the attorney for Watkins and his wife, says Watkins was minding his business, complied with officers' requests and was arrested anyway.
"They were quiet,” said Kim. “They weren't disturbing anybody. They were on a sidewalk on a public street, just recording the police like they're entitled to do.”
Kim says Watkins was arrested in the same area he was asked to stand by police.
"…And then one officer came around and grabbed [Lucero] individually and started pulling her out, and that's when she jerked away,” said Kim. “My inclination is to think mostly because she didn't even know who was grabbing her, it was just kind of a knee jerk reaction.”
Johnson says he has asked for dialogue with cop watching groups.
"We haven't been able to get anyone to accept that invitation,” said Johnson. “We're still open to doing that.”
Chief Johnson also pointed out that twice that night, prior to the incident, there were traffic stops that were being recorded and there were no issues whatsoever.
