A University of Miami student has been arrested after police said he placed a hidden camera in his roommate’s bedroom nightstand and secretly recorded him. South Miami police arrested 21-year-old Dylan Hugh Long on Tuesday on charges of video voyeurism and burglary of an unoccupied structure, according to WSVN. Newly released body camera footage shows officers placing Long in handcuffs on campus.
According to the arrest report, the roommate found the hidden camera after noticing a blue light coming from the nightstand and confronted Long, who denied it. After leaving for class, the roommate plugged the camera in and found 49 recordings, several of them corrupted. Some showed Long testing the device, while others captured the roommate walking “to and from the shower without his knowledge or consent,” the report states.
Long has entered a written plea of not guilty, and his attorney says he maintains his innocence. However, detectives said Long admitted putting the hidden camera in the bedroom, but only to check whether his roommate was reading his text messages without answering them. The roommate did not want to comment when a news crew visited the home.
Long told detectives this started over unanswered text messages
In body camera video released Thursday, Long tells a detective, “The arguments have been going on for a year with his lack of communication on things I needed to know.” South Miami Police Detective Jackie Del Sol said Long “planted the device inside to see if he was receiving his text messages because he had been ignoring him.”
Long also denied ever viewing the recordings. “I never saw any of the footage. I didn’t even know how to see the footage,” he told investigators in the interrogation room. He also said the friends in the apartment were “all in each other’s rooms all the time,” so the idea that nobody should enter a room “was not really a thing.”
The roommate told police he did not know about the hidden camera and had not given anyone permission to place a recording device in his bedroom. He found the camera on Sept. 12, and body camera footage from that day shows him showing detectives the recordings in his apartment.
South Miami police located Long in Coral Gables on Tuesday morning, more than two weeks later. Officers took him to the station for questioning, and he was later transported to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. As the judge found probable cause in bond court, Long was ordered to stay away from his roommate.
Privacy complaints involving hidden watchers have drawn attention elsewhere, including a women’s soccer locker room case in which a player reportedly spotted a man above the ceiling. In that case, the man allegedly told police he was reading the Bible. Long’s case, by contrast, involves a roommate and a camera hidden in a nightstand.
His attorney, Matt Shafran, described the dispute in court as “an argument that happened between roommates and then turned a little different.” The defense also told the court that Long has no prior arrest history and has a government job lined up. Bond was set at $3,500, and Long has since bonded out of jail.
“Mr. Long maintains his innocence and looks forward to addressing these allegations through the appropriate legal process,” Shafran said in a statement. “What occurred was not voyeuristic in nature, and we believe this situation has been significantly misunderstood.” Online records list Long as a senior studying political science and economics at the university.
The police account and the defense account describe the same events very differently. Police said the recordings captured the roommate without his consent. However, Long’s attorney said the situation grew out of an argument between roommates. The hidden camera case remains pending, and Long has not been convicted of any crime.
Long is expected to keep contesting the charges as the case moves through court, and further filings or footage could clarify what happened between the two roommates.
Published: Oct 2, 2026 10:45 am