Even retired cops get harassed for photography

October 29, 2009 @ 3:07AM

Even retired cops get harassed for photography

By Carlos Miller -...

Would you hire Aline Gonzales to plan your event? (Photo by Mark Bralley)

Mark Bralley, retired police officer and longtime Photography is Not a Crime reader, is no stranger to getting harassed for taking photos.

The man who spent 24 years as an Albuquerque police officer has been thrown off the University of New Mexico campus – which happens to be his alma mater – at least five times for taking photos, including last November for photographing uniformed Secret Service agents during a John McCain rally.

The latest incident took place at an event where Lt. Governor Diane Denish was speaking. He happened to be an invited guest. He began taking photos for his blog, where he covers New Mexico politics.

He was thrown out because he was not the hired photographer.

It’s a pretty absurd situation considering the woman who had him thrown out – Aline Gonzeles – is an “on-call employee” who was hired by the university to coordinate the event.

She is nothing but a freelance party planner.

In Miami, they are a dime a dozen. And they are usually pretty friendly towards photographers because they understand the power – and danger – of publicity.

But Gonzales obviously hasn’t a clue. Maybe she will once her picture starts making the rounds. Or when potential clients start Googling her name and discover she acts more like a mafia goon than an event coordinator.

This is how Bralley describes the exchange:

“If you take one more photograph, I’m throwing you out,” she said.

As Denish began to speak I took a photograph. The woman swiped my back, ordered me not to take pictures. She grabbed my arm several times. I didn’t move or pull away from her grasp, but I did take her picture.

She said she was calling security.

I returned to my seat and made a few more photographs.

As Denish wrapped up her speech I was approached by a number of people with UNM SUB nametags and a uniformed UNM police officer.

Four more cops arrived. Not one asked for his side of the story. Even after he showed them his invitation and told them he had a recording device at the podium, which one of them ended up retrieving.

They escorted him out the room as Denish – who happens to live on his same block – stood at the podium watching without saying a word.

The only person who stepped up was my former Public Administration’s Professor and Advisor T. Zane Reeves, who came out into the hallway and asked openly, “did the former police union president get…?”

After a pregnant pause, I said, “arrested?” “No charge but yes arrested.”

And the irony of the story?

Denish, who is running for the democratic governor nomination, was speaking about the importance of an open and accessible government.

Diane Denish (Photo by Mark Bralley)

Comments

Anonymous

2 years ago

Send in the goon squad. Amazing he just took it. Not much he could have done but I would have been angry and tempted to react. Probably not wise, but I only said tempted.

Anonymous

2 years ago

i thought aline was a man until i read the story. feel sorry for her in many ways.

4 months ago

fishing for a public indecency charge

Anonymous

2 years ago

Carlos,
Do you know if any Digital Cameras or Video recorders on the market have password protection for the memory, if cameras were equipped with this feature then the “Officials” would be unable to simply scroll through cameras and delete images of their choosing without the password.
Or a better solution would be cameras or video recorders with burst transmission capability so that images could be immediately uploaded to an on-line storage site, pending publication to a Web-Site, thereby also protecting images and video from being erased.
Regards.
Giovanni

Anonymous

2 years ago

Giovanni, I’ve been thinking of writing software to do exactly that since I started reading this site..

Anonymous

2 years ago

Elliott, I’d buy it

This is so hilarious until you think hard and realize this isn’t some joke or fiction, it’s real!

An invited guest and ex-cop, some “open government.”

Anonymous

2 years ago

Deleted files are easy to retrieve. I do it often enough for accidental deletions all the time. The file names are gone, but the data is still there. If anyone is interested, I can show you how.

Anonymous

2 years ago

But the point is to put the pictures/video beyond the reach of the person. They could still do something to the card but it wouldn’t matter because a copy already existed elsewhere.. And I’ve retrieved deleted stuff from my cards as well..
E.

Anonymous

2 years ago

Was the photography illegal? Was the arrest illegal? How about some journalism, please?

If I’m invited to a party, it doesn’t mean I can go there and whip my dick out… or does it?

Anonymous

2 years ago

2009-October 30
Elliott is precisely correct…you can’t retreive deleted pictures off of your camera if you can’t retreive the camera itself.
With regard to wether the pictures were illegal or not: This point is immaterial. It is an issue for judges to decide…not police officers. I suspect that most photographers would be glad to have all their photos reviewed by a judge in open Court….I don’t think the particular police involved in this incident would feel the same.
Giovanni.

Anonymous

2 years ago

Giovanni:
Check out the Eye-Fi memory cards. I haven’t used them, so can’t speak to how well they work, but they are SD cards with a built in wifi adaptor which upload the photos to Flickr (or other sites?) when in range of a configured access point. Might be worth taking a look at…

Anonymous

2 years ago

Hello, everyone. I would like to share a little story of my own, about how I was harrassed by rangers, at the beach in Malibu.
We were in the shade of a palm tree and other bushes around it, with my girlfriend, taking pictures of each other(wearing tunics and surrongs). Also I was taking shots of different birds of the lagoon and ocean side.
2 rangers came close to us, and start asking, what kind of pictures we were taking, and why we were taking them. Then, one of them was demanding my camera, and asked me to show him pictures I just took. And if I refuse, he would take my camera away.We were shoked and confuse, and scared, and I had to show him my privet pictures. I felt harrassed, so did my friend. But we did not know our rights, and couldn’t argue with them. I still don’t understand the reason, they acted that way.
If there anything, we could do about this harrasment?