Archive Page 96

First Amendment Travesty: Michigan Reporter Sentenced

Published June 1, 2009 Assault , Harassment , Photographers' Rights , Photojournalism , Police Harassment 1 Comment
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Photo from the Michigan Citizen

It was Michigan Citizen reporter Diane Bukowski’s rotten luck that her sentencing came on the day that GM announced it was filing for bankruptcy. Already this story wouldn’t have gotten much play in Detroit, but now it’s as good as done.

Bukowski was sentenced to 200 hours of community service and ordered to pay a $4,000 fine today for two counts of resisting and obstructing an officer at a crime scene in November. Of course the story is as shady as a big oak tree. It was a police car chase that ended in the death of two men. Bukowski is well known for reporting on police corruption. The officer in question manhandled Bukowski, deleting all of her photos – and the jurors saw the raw Fox 2 news footage that substantiates that she never crossed the police tape. Nevertheless, the cops have friends in high places and now Bukowski will pay.

She is appealing the ruling.

Watch the original Fox 2 news report here.

Article from the Detroit Free Press

More Made Up Laws Regarding Oil Refineries

Published May 31, 2009 Photographers' Rights , Police Harassment , Street photography 7 Comments
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Photo by wmliu

One of the Daily Kos site’s diarists, Androsko, posted about a recent incident he and a friend experienced while taking photos outside of the Hess Refinery in Port Reading, New Jersey. While they were there to shoot a comedy sketch, the local police smelled terrorism.

A police officer pulled up and told them – surprise! – they weren’t allowed to take photos and they’d have to delete them. Why? As Androkso writes:

He responded that there were town ordinances that were mandated by the state and the Department of Homeland Security. I then asked for the specific ordinance or law, saying that I had read a lot of stories about police and photography in public places. He failed to provide me with anything specific, citing Homeland Security “stuff”.

The officer asked for their driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers, while insisting they weren’t being reported, just that he had to enter their information in the system. The photos were not deleted in the end and they parted amicably. And the harassment goes on….

A commenter points out that the canon of laws is so vast that cops can’t be expected to remember them all, further adding:

So they sometimes operate the way most of us do, sorta figuring if it seems like it might be illegal, it probably is. … Whether or not any laws got passed, it seeped into the collective consciousness, and a lot of folks have vague impressions that ‘you’re not supposed to scope out such places’. Your cop obviously had that vagueness floating around in the back of his mind.

I get that rationale; police officers are human and they can’t be expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of law. But they need to have a better-than-average one – and more importantly, if you’re stopping someone to tell them they’re breaking a law, you damn well better know which one. (And if you don’t, radio into the station, read up on laws that pertain to your district, bone up for god sakes!) This type of thing is going on all the time, and no matter how wrong, how egregious, how unlawful, it doesn’t seem to matter.

Read Androsko’s whole post here.

Photography at Rush Hour

Published May 31, 2009 Photographers' Rights Leave a Comment
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Photos of traffic don’t sound entirely enticing, but these are different. Benny Chan‘s show, “Traffic!,” debuted at the Pasadena Museum of California Art today, consisting of enormous 8×10 prints of aerial views of LA’s tangled freeways. Chan documented the freeways at rush hour for five years – with a custom-built camera that weighs 14 pounds, has a 300-millimeter lens and cost $25,000. Despite the underlying message – that the traffic in LA is insane – Chan told the LA Times’ Culture Monster that he’s not political: “There’s another side to this too, that it is beautiful. But I do hope people will realize that this is not sustainable.” The exhibit goes through September 20, 2009.

For more information on the exhibit, go to Pasadena Museum of California Art.

Read Chan’s interview with the LA Times’ Culture Monster blog here.

Hey Joe – “A Hendrix Experience”

Published May 29, 2009 Photojournalism , Street photography Leave a Comment
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Newspapers are dying. Multimedia is the future, or so they say. Here’s an example of what the Los Angeles Times is doing to stay current.

Photographer Mel Melcon followed Hollywood Boulevard’s Jimi Hendrix impersonator, Anthony Aquarius, and it’s actually a very cool little piece. I like how Melcon somehow briefly but very vividly captured this Jimi’s life – a group of teen guys rocking out to him on the sidewalk; Aquarius on the mattress in his bleak bedroom; a couple taking a photo with their phone and we see the result before they will; a passerby dancing to the music through several frames so you can feel the movement; Aquarius’s own unique insight: “The only reason why this works is cause there’s doubt.”

To see the piece, go to “A Hendrix Experience in Hollywood.

Update: LAPD Addresses Photography in Roll Call

Published May 29, 2009 Photographers' Rights Leave a Comment
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Photo by wirralwater

So it’s not the ideal outcome, but one gets the feeling changing the way police view photography will take a seismic shift in thinking – and most likely a huge lawsuit, sad to say it.

As we posted earlier this week, David Sommars and two fellow photographers were stopped by the LAPD on a public sidewalk near the Port of Los Angeles, harassed, bullied and threatened with arrest. Sommars lodged a formal complaint with the Office of the Inspector General, who agreed to look into the matter.

Yesterday Sommars got a call from an LAPD commander who said the officers were wrong and they addressed the issue during roll call (which I would guess went something like this: “It’s come to our attention that photography is legal on public streets, so let’s refrain from the detainment and threats”).

Sommars says: “Also the OIG will investigate, but most likely the officers will not get in real trouble – they save that for unlawful force stuff. They will use this for training purposes.”

How much do you want to bet nothing changes?

ACLU to DOT: Why Harass Photographers?

Published May 28, 2009 Photographers' Rights , Security Guard Harassment , Street photography Leave a Comment
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Photo by spiggycat

In April we posted on the consistent and regular harassment photographers, including families and tourists, have experienced outside the Department of Transportation headquarters in Washington, DC, and now the ACLU is getting involved. Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the National Capital Area chapter of the ACLU, wrote a letter to the DOT’s acting general counsel requesting explanation of what seems to be their no photography policy on the public streets surrounding the building. As Spitzer writes: “We are not aware of any law that imposes such a rule, and we do not believe DOT has the authority to impose such a rule.” See the whole letter here.

Flickr via Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection

6 Inches of Separation

Published May 27, 2009 Documentary , Photojournalism Leave a Comment
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0366A001Photo by discarted

Photographers’ Rights Rally June 6th & 7th

Published May 25, 2009 Harassment , Photographers' Rights , Police Harassment , Protests , Rally , Security Guard Harassment 1 Comment
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NPRO Rally June 6th & 7th

The National Photographers’ Rights Weekend Rally is just two weeks away. So put your rally lens caps on and clear your schedules because this year’s event is taking place over two days (not just one like last year) and will certainly cause some controversy – as well as raise awareness for photographers’ rights.

For more info, email npro@discarted.com.

LAPD Lies, Bullies Photogs Off Public Sidewalk

Published May 24, 2009 Photographers' Rights , Police Harassment , Street photography 10 Comments
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20040401-IMG_0092-797245Officer Thomas Malloy, Badge #8641, Serial #22934/Photo by David Sommars

Photographer David Sommars and two friends went to the Port of Los Angeles on Saturday night to take photos of the amazing industrial landscape. As they walked on the sidewalk with their tripods, they noticed they were being followed by a black SUV. Being as the driver was shifty and suspicious, the photographers were more worried that they were being cased for their gear.

But, as it turned out, the driver was Officer Weiss from the LAPD, who had called the three men into the station. When a police cruiser showed up, Sommars asked the officer what law they were breaking, but Officer Malloy declined to offer any information. He just told them it was illegal to audio record him and if they didn’t stop taking photos of him they would be arrested.

His boss, Officer Chacoh, also on the scene, was unfortunately just as ill-informed and tight-lipped. He said they had to go to a different city to take pictures. He was not willing, or capable, of citing a  law they were breaking; he was only able to repeat that if that they continued to take photos they would be taken in.

As Sommars points out, the photos they were taking from public sidewalks were essentially not any more detailed than what you’d find on Google Maps. The police can’t come up with a valid law because there isn’t one, and their harassment of photographers on public streets is illegal. “I’m actually getting very used to being “Lied” to by police officers,” Sommars writes on his blog. “This is not a good thing, and it’s not legal. But hey, they have guns and we don’t, so deal with it.”

UPDATE: Sommars called the number on the card he was given by the officers and was told he could be put in federal prison for 10-15 years for photographing refineries. Wow! If that’s really a law on the books and someone can point us to it, please do.

UPDATE #2: Sommars received a communication from a special investigator on May 26 that the Office of the Inspector General has launched an internal investigation into the officers involved in this incident.

Read Sommars’ full account, along with photos, here.

To voice your concerns regarding this incident, contact the following:

Los Angeles Police Station – Harbor Area
2175 S John S. Gibson Blvd, San Pedro, CA
Phone (310) 726-7700
Fax (310) 726-7739

Office of the Inspector General Los Angeles Police Dept.
Phone (213) 202-5866.
Fax (213) 482-1247
oigcompl@lapd.lacity.org

Janice Hahn – District 15 City Council Member
City Hall Office (213)-473-7015
200 N. Spring Street, Rm 435
Los Angeles, CA 90012
councilmember.hahn@lacity.org

In the Midst of War, Pink Boxers

Published May 23, 2009 Photojournalism Leave a Comment
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Media Pink Boxers
Photo by David Guttenfelder/AP

Talk about right place, right time. AP photographer David Guttenfelder’s shot of Spc. Zachary Boyd trading fire with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan would have been fairly ordinary – if it weren’t for the fact that the soldier was wearing pink “I Love NY” boxer shorts.

The shot, which is on its way to becoming one of those iconic war photos, landed on the front pages of the New York Times and Boyd’s hometown paper, the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas, reports the AP.

Boyd called his parents to warn them about the photo, and the AP says he was seriously worried for his job. Thankfully, his parents got a huge kick out of it, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he wanted to meet the soldier next time he’s in Afghanistan, commending his “special kind of courage.”

As for the photo, Guttenfelder said:

“It doesn’t really belong to me anymore,” he said. “You put it out there and it takes on a life of its own.”

Article from AP

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