Pixiq

I would have repeated the refrain we should all know by now:
"Am I being detained?"
"I do not consent to any searches or seizures"
"I do not consent to this conversation and will not answer any questions"

My first reactions was "spineless indeed" but I don't know. I'm 68 years old and probably would not do well after a good roughing up by the thugs in blue. If I had somebody video taping from a safe distance I'd do as Nathan J suggested above. Its really hard to tell if these "protect and serve" types are just ignorant of the law of if they're just professional assholes.

EDIT: I need to add that I've had many interactions with police officers over the years and about 95% of them have been really positive and I've only dealt with one real a.h. & that makes me wonder just where these buttwipes with a gun and a badge come from.

I would have asked..

Is it against the law to photograph kids in swimsuits?
Which law would one violate if they photographed a kid in a swimsuit?

Then I may have asked him if he thought about kids in swimsuits.

I would only ask questions however and be clear that they are questions not statements.

But cops tend to hate someone that's smart. So it's easier to walk away.

You don't ask anything except if you are being detained. If the cop says 'no', then walk away, interaction over. If the cop says 'yes', then ask what crime the cop suspects you have committed or are about to commit. Do not engage in small talk with the cop, do not consent to any search of your belongings, including viewing any photos. Once a cop has approached you for what he views as a crime (even if you know no crime has been committed), the cop is not your friend, and small talk and questioning will not change his or her mind.

Definitely get the badge number or name of the cop and file a formal complaint with the police department. Follow up on that complaint. Be persistent. At the very least, you are wasting the time of the cop's fellow officers as you follow up on your complaint. The original cop wasted your time, so why not keep his or her fellow officers busy.

How do these commercials on tv with kids in diapers get away with it and adds in magazines.

It is very easy to speculate what we would have done, but I will speculate instead what I could have done.

I have practiced the necessary keystrokes on my phone to snap, save, and transmit home, any picture I take. It takes six keypresses from a cold start, and I can do it in 10-15 seconds. From there, if I am asked to delete a photo, I will simply comply, because by the end of the conversation, the picture will already have made its way to my email inbox.

Checkmate.

This is how we should all respond when asked to delete a photo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_58hFhNe2kE&feature=player_embedded

It doesn't help that assholes like Phillip Garrido, the man who was sent away for a long time for kidnapping and holding hostage Jaycee Dugard, was using his wife to video tape little children at the playground and luring them into their van so she could further tape them doing splits for her asshole husband's gratification.

Follow that with journalists (such as CNN's Anderson Cooper) who warn parents to watch out for people taking videos in the park and we are setting up a culture of harass the photographer.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2011/08/03/exp.AC.drdrew.Garri...

Because of crap like this I am afraid that more people will be finding themselves detained, in spite of their best interests to try and explain themselves and clear their names.

Do not talk to the cops.

I don't get it. If there's nothing obscene about the kids running around in public view in their bikinis, what makes a photograph of same kids somehow obscene? How is the subject matter transformed from innocent to obscene by virtue of being recorded instead of directly viewed?

Officer if you claim that I have broken the law, that I have evidence of that on my camera, your order to delete it is a felony, GET YOUR SUPERVISOR.
AM I being detained? am I free to go? I will not answer any questions without a attorney I may choose to speak to your supervisor when I am filing my complaint.

But then there is Reality, the reality in this strange world is that Sex offenders might as well kill themselves, there lives are over. Prosecutors judge themselves and brag on the golf course about putting innocent people in jail. After all that is the test of a good prosecutor, isn't it. IT is one thing to have bravado. Its another when your whole future might depend on a SHITTY public defender retarded jurors and a good prosecutor.

Taking pics of a federal building is one thing. Add kids and your just being stupid.

Sorry, but this guy is spineless.

"I deleted the picture, and walked away. As I walked, I felt pretty spineless. I know I didn't have to delete it. I didn't like what I was accused of, but after hearing so many stories of shit like this going south, I really didn't want to be center stage on the next story of "cop abuses power" on reddit."

The reason why things like this go south is because police aren't taught that taking pictures is legal and it only furthers their belief that it is illegal when people simply obey. I have no respect for this guy. He knew he didn't have to delete it, and he is one of millions of people who doesn't believe freedom is worth fighting for.

Given that the officer was a woman, and female officers (In my experience from years of observations dating one) tend to be a little crazier than their male counterparts just so people will take them seriously, I don't really blame the guy for wanting to get out of the confrontation as painlessly as possible. I don't know that I would have backed down, but I do consider that there were children around and I wouldn't want to expose them to me telling the cop to go fuck herself with an 18" chainsaw either.

Sorry, already uploaded to Facebook. Have a nice day.

As I see it, "THEY" want to keep us afraid of everything to keep us under "THEIR" control. "1984" is near.

Good luck to anyone trying the 'delete it or else' schtick on me; my camera doesn't *have* the ability to delete footage in-camera - as a very deliberate design choice. You can only delete when you hook the drive up to a computer.

Mike