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Olga Khazan writes in The Atlantic that police in Ferguson, Missouri, arrested two reporters Wednesday night as protests over the police shooting of an unarmed teenager continued for the fifth day. The journalists, the Washington Post's Wesley Lowery and the Huffington Post's Ryan Reilly, were only detained for about 15 minutes before being released, but the incident provoked widespread outrage over the Ferguson police's increasingly brutal tactics.
Lowery wrote that armed officers stormed a McDonald's in which he and Reilly were working and demanded to see ID. They then told Lowery to stop video recording them, and finally they ordered the reporters to leave and claimed they weren't leaving fast enough. According to other reports, the Ferguson police also demanded that an MSNBC camera man and a local Fox News crew take down their cameras. Police hit the crew of Al Jazeera America with tear gas and dismantled their gear.
"The arrest and intimidation of journalists for documenting the events in Ferguson is particularly disturbing because it interferes with the ability of the press to hold the government accountable. But actually, anyone journalist or otherwise can take a photo of a police officer," writes Khazan. "Citizens have the right to take pictures of anything in plain view in a public space, including police officers and federal buildings. Police can not confiscate, demand to view, or delete digital photos."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mendax on Saturday August 16 2014, @11:05PM
About a week and a half ago the there was a police action I witnessed. I don't know the details of the arrest made except that it involved Sacramento County sheriff deputies, City of Sacramento police, and California Highway Patrol, a wrecked police cruiser, a dented (probably stolen) pickup truck, an arrested perp, and a police chase because the arrest occurred in West Sacramento, which is not in Sacramento County or within the Sacramento city limits. I had my camera with me so I took pictures of the vehicles, the perp, and the police taking pictures of the scene.
They didn't interfere with me, probably because I kept my distance, but they took pictures of me taking pictures of them. Interesting. Well, I can photograph the police and there is not much they can do about it but that also means they can take photographs of me taking photographs of them.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nollij on Sunday August 17 2014, @12:29AM
There could be a legitimate reason for that - it's not a common thing to do, so they might have believed you to be a (potential) person of interest in the case, as opposed to just an interested bystander.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Sunday August 17 2014, @06:28AM
Agreed, and that is what I thought was their rationale, although it's quite unlikely that the perp decided to have his truck rammed by the cop right at the place I happened to be. It just may be standard procedure. Time to start walking around wearing a Guy Faulks mask... or invent a cloaking device, when taking pictures of the police.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday August 19 2014, @05:26AM
So they wandered over and asked "Hi, did you see the incident, could you give a statement", or something like that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @07:20AM
> but they took pictures of me taking pictures of them
It is an intimidation tactic.
When the public photographs them it is to make them more accountable to the public.
When they photograph the public without reasonable suspicion it is a threat that they will abuse their power to hurt the person they are photographing.
You can't prove that they had no reason to be suspicious of you, but the chance that someone who happens to be at the end-point of a chase that ended in a wreck (versus at the start point of the chase) had anything to do with the chase approaches nil.
> but that also means they can take photographs of me taking photographs of them.
Actually it does not. When they are on the clock they are not free to do whatever they want. I'm sure their department does not have a specific policy against photographing random people, and I'm sure that if they were called to account for it they would have plausible deniability as Nollij described. But they surely do have a policy against intimidating random people. It just one of those things that they can get away with because they haven't been effectively punished for it yet. Like the way they used to get away with warrant-less searches the phones of people they arrested.
Watch this cop do it as soon as he gets out of his car. [youtu.be]