Comments on: Man Allegedly Arrested for Taking Photos of the Police

By: Pak Man in Soup for Taking Lady's Photo in Metro Station - Page 4

Pak Man in Soup for Taking Lady's Photo in Metro Station - Page 4 — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:28:46 +0000

[...] Re: Pak Man in Soup for Taking Lady's Photo in Metro Station Don't click your mobile camera every here & there , coz , you never know Man Arrested for Taking Photos of the Police , Philadelphia. " police told him that he broke a new law that prohibits people from taking pictures of police with cell phones." Thomas Hawk Digital Connection Blog Archive Man Allegedly Arrested for Taking Photos of the Police [...]

By: DSLRBLOG - Photography Business Blog - Starting and Running a Business as a Professional Photographer » Blog Archive » Photography and the Law: Arrested for snapping a Policeman

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:40:39 +0000

[...] worrying event in the ongoing “law versus photographer” trend. The latest reported by Thomas Hawk is a guy who was arrested for taking a photograph of a policeman making an arrest … Cruz, 21, [...]

By: kevin

kevin — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 20:19:00 +0000

Anon writes: …, the writer of this blog, has called for the arrest of photographers in the past.

sad – that lady who takes pics of crying kids (or her husband) is apparently still trolling here…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 18:02:00 +0000

I think if your a public police officer you should be able to be photographed by the public, unless your undercover, but if your in uniform, pictures, video, should all be allowed. Face it if there someone targeting police officers for what ever reason they can just park by a poilice station and get what ever photo’s they need. Thats what the FBI and CIA do best, under cover operations, and photgraphing them in anyway should be illeagal, unless unknowing photographing them. For expample taking picture of your kids and they happen to be in the background ect… Sorry, a law to stop picture taking is just an escape goat. If a police officer is off duty, laws protecting normal citizens should appy to them in their off duty state as they do for us. I’m glad theres cameras on police cars, this does give added protection to protecting us for bad officers. Theres always the good and the bad. It will never be all one way, hopefully in the future it will all be the good way as technology progress’s, like video camera’s on cop cars.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 14:01:00 +0000

Andrew Petersen, the writer of this blog, has called for the arrest of photographers in the past.

By: ColScott

ColScott — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 23:59:00 +0000

Actually the owner of this blog should be arrested for being criminally moronic

By: Steve Portigal

Steve Portigal — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 13:36:00 +0000

I was at SFO the other night on a flight greeted by Chief Heather Fong and several officers. We figured someone on the flight had been arrested or was being extradited, or maybe a dignitary. We had no idea; as we were waiting for our shuttle we could see the limo outside baggage claim. Several people came out of baggage claim and shook hands with the policemen and chief. There was hugging and tears. At this point I wondered if this was family of a killed police officer. This turned out to be true. I was frankly curious about the display of activity involving a public figure, and I sorely tempted to take pictures from our vantage point. And then I imagined one of the policemen approaching me and taking my camera, taking my name, or worse.

This story only further confirms that fear.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 12:56:00 +0000

Ray Said:
"Your right about they shouldn't let police officers family be photographed...But your totally wrong about the rest."

Not sure what you mean by 'the rest'.

Notorious california gang MS13 (Mara Salvatrucha) is known to do just this sort of thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_Salvatrucha

And I am not saying that cops are all nice friendly boyscouts like me, I am saying they have a legitimate reason to be nervous about being observed. That some many or most cops abuse these protections is besides the point.

That said I do think that if anyone witnesses police doing wrong, then they should record the event, and knowingly be willing to be punished for it.

Aside, in the case of the article, it did say that this was a new law for the area, so I would expect some leniency in that context.

-sam

By: Seth Schoen

Seth Schoen — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 12:27:00 +0000

I was pretty sure that there was a successful 42 USC 1983 claim in Pennsylvania last year against a police officer (in his individual capacity!) for arresting someone for photographing the police. I can’t find it at the moment, but I’ll keep looking.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 12:11:00 +0000

Wow, another one. I keep coming across these articles were people are exercising their rights under the 4th amendment and find that most commentators seem to be in favor of doing away with it. Their arguments seem to run towards, “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, why should you need to have privacy when making a phone call or walking the streets?” The first wahoo to comment here claims that the very reason we know this kid got hasseled by the cops was because of ,”shoddy journalism.” Scary America, very scary. All I can do is shake my head and wonder what is happening to my country when people begin to question the rights of citizens to document what they think of as wrong. The Bill of Rights was written to protect against tyranny, but it seems that a number of Americans have decided that tyranny is a good thing. I notice that the police department hasn’t issued a statement saying that it is legal to photograph an officer in the line of duty. One would think that a police deparment that wanted to reassure the public they serve would want to clear that issue up right away.