Pixiq

He should have let them arrest him and then sued them for all they could, THEN had the photos published which would have generated more publicity…

the photographer did the smart thing & followed the detective’s orders

this looks to me like a win-win situation for all involved: the police had timely access to the evidence & the photos were published to wide acclaim

looks like the guy was just looking for matches …

Oh Brad, don’t flatter yourself and your ilk.

Maybe the photographer did the right thing but the police certainly did not. They stole the photographers property. This overzealous, overbearing, illegal conduct by the police has got to stop.

I’d also bet that the detective is outside of department policy running over to the photographer with her weapon out of it’s holster. I’m sure she’ll claim that she thought he photographer had a weapon hidden in his camera and that’s why she approached him alone with her weapon drawn.

Carlos, if they keep an unauthorized copy David Proeber has a copyright infringement claim against them. This could be very interesting. The statutory and punitive damages for copyright infringement like this could easily end up being hundreds of thousands of dollars. $750 to $30,000 an image with a 3x punitive multiplier.

since the photos were evidence in a homicide case, the Police did have a right to those photos to preserve as evidence. Typically, the state attorney or the department will issue a subpoena for the photos. However, if there is a fear that the evidence could be destroyed, they can confiscate it, but they have to return it unaltered.

There is no copyright infringement if the department chose to keep copies of the pictures for use as evidence. They simply cannot publish it without permission.

since the photos were evidence in a homicide case
Who said anything about a homicide? Last I checked Mr. Sylvester is alive and in the hospital after being wounded by the police. By this time he’s probably safely housed in the county jail.

Do we have to go through this again. The police don’t have right to just take property from people that aren’t accused of a crime and have not committed a crime. Thinking it’s evidence is not an excuse to seize your property even though it’s commonly used as one. If your house is burglarized and the cops catch the burglar with the property he stole from your house I’m sure we can all agree it’s evidence. Yet the police are required to return that property to it’s owner before the trail. Most of the time within a day of it’s recovery. They only are allowed to keep that property to allow making photographs of it and recording serial numbers and other identifying marks on it before returning it to it’s owner.

You can rest assured that no press photographer or any real photographer is going to destroy any image that he’s taken. Ask anyone that’s even half serious about photography if they ever distroy any images. I for one never do, you just never know. Media is cheap, images aren’t.

The ownership of a photo image is expressed in it’s copyright. The right of ownership is set when the image has been fixed in some media, such as the data card. By taking a copy unauthorized by the copyright owner they police have violated his copyrights. That is why they are asking for the DVD back, it’s an unauthorized copy and violates the copyright. The only way the police are entitled to keep a copy of the images is if the court issues an order allowing them to do so.

This guy was treated improperly. That’s why what happened to him is news.

Sylvester is dead.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,476646,00.html

But still, I don’t believe police the right to confiscate the photos on the basis that they believed the photos would be destroyed because it is obvious they were meant to be published, not destroyed.

Officer Brad,

The police under no circumstance should have tried to obtain Proeber’s photographs at the crime scene.

The media professional has the right to cover a breaking news event, and those rights are protected by law. What the officers did to and took from the photographer constitute assault and illegal search and seizure.

You like most police officers have no clue how to handle the media at the scene and it shows by your comment.

There are legal ways to obtain the images taken by the photographer which should be handled through the court system.

ever been shot at? ever shot someone because you thought they were about to kill you?

cut those cops some slack, they were probably experiencing an adrenaline dump and were trying to do their jobs the best they could, seconds after being in fear for their lives. until you can attest to superior performance and utterly perfect decision-making skill under that kind of stress and fear, lay off the peacemakers.

how about comlimenting them and offering some support? none of those officers showed up to work that day “jonesing” to shoot another human being, and they definitely didn’t PLAN to take the memory card. i’d be more than willing to bet they wanted it just to find out what the hell just happened!

Cut the officers some slack? They are chosen and paid to/because they are professionals.

The “evidence” could have been requested with threat of arrest, without placing hands on him, without confiscating and fiddling with his camera (as was the case), etc.

In NO WAY does anyone have the right to seize any images from a member of the press.

The officers, in my opinion, seized his photographs to see if they showed any misconduct. Sure, they did so in a moment of high stress, but the cannot use “stress” as an excuse to VIOLATE SOMEONE’S CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.

I’ve run into rogue cops over making images before. Was taking pictures of a loose dog in my neighborhood at 9pm one night and had the police show up as I was taking pictures of the dog from a roadway in a driveway (not the owners). I was making pictures of the dog as evidence, as the dog was running free for about a year and I had just come home and found the dog had broken into my garbage, throwing it all over my property.

So the dog owners were breaking the law as they let their dog run free, and had no issue from the police. I, on the other hand, had an issue for taking pictures from my car on a public road with a 24-120mm lens, a D2Xs and an SB-28DX.

I was threatened with arrest, etc. Really bad.

Mike