Pixiq

Doesn't seem like anything is amiss in this case. Yeah it sucks for the waste of time, but I cannot see how such things can be different under the stated circumstances.

Slow news day? This has nothing to do with him being a photographer. From everything you reported, the cops did nothing wrong. Maybe something like this would be more worthwhile:

http://www.scpr.org/news/2011/08/19/28335/fullerton-police-face-wrongful-arrest-lawsuit/

i think he's haitian, so its all good...

what about it?

Other than being too dumb to know the difference between being Black or Hispanic and short hair or long hair this seem legit.

Nothing amiss here, as far as I can tell. Cops were just doing their job. Decades ago, when I was in college, I had a room mate who was out for a walk, when the cops surrounded him and held him for about a half hour because he fit the description of someone who had just raped a coed in the area. The coed said not the guy and he was released. But the moral of both this story and the New Mexico case is how close we all are to being pulled over for some crime we didn't do. What is really scary is that all it takes is for the victim to compound the cops mistake by saying, yup, that's the guy.

Just a unwanted story for me, really bad.

Think about this. What if the motorist had been shot and died right after he told the police the description of the car and shooter. It could have been very bad for the photographer. Things like that have happened many times in the past and the police have been known to botch things and cover up for their mistakes. That's why we need to get rid of the death penalty.

Cops are always suspicious when there's a case of someone driving while black.

It is still a problem. The police get a very generic or wrong description. They pull a lot of people over but not the perpetrator. That is both a waste of time, harassing, and lets the real criminal get away.

If the description is so vague, it is useless. Also, haven't they heard of cell phone cameras? There is probably an expensive police equivalent and/or I assume he has a driver's license pic in the DMV database. I can multi-media SMS a picture in about a minute. Instead he was held for 30 starting with a gun pointed at him and in handcuffs for that time.

The lack of proper police work in getting the description does not excuse what amounts to harassment of random motorists where one in 20 random people might match the amorphous description.

Police getting the wrong guy - even for this heavy handed detention - is a serious matter.

If something else went wrong, he could have easily been shot to death.

Putting an innocent citizen's life in danger and assaulting and imprisoning him even for a short time while the real criminal gets away? Nothing is amiss?
Be a good little sheeple?

I will say the problem was not with the officer pulling over the motorist, but with the policy that made him do it.

1. Don't do anything immediately or urgently if the description is too vague. If you have a full license plate number, detailed make and model, a detailed description, maybe, but not a nearly bald or bald dark skinned man in some kind of white car. Spend the extra few minutes to get a detailed description so you won't waste time and stop with the first near match during the adrenaline rush but can get the actual criminal. The whole point and goal is to find the person who did the crime, not someone who matches the description. That seems to be lost on the department and the police.

2. If we are going to have a surveillance state anyway, I assume that all that multimedia should be available. If his DMV pic didn't match, or a simple photo didn't, it would have been over in 5 minutes or less instead of a half-hour (and I assume he was driving the vehicle registered to him so they could have gotten the data before the officer even exited the car). Why is it expensive high-tech toys are "needed to fight criminals", but when they could prove someone innocent very quickly they aren't there or aren't used?

3. Change the reward system so that this whole series of events would have been considered a big negative. Right now the officer is rewarded for letting the criminal go. He is NOT usually in danger from an innocent person sort of matching the description. He is in danger from the actual criminal. If you have the choice, which one would you pull over given that you will not really be rewarded more for getting the actual criminal endangering your life and won't be punished for detaining someone innocent?

You can apply all of the above to uselessly detaining or otherwise harassing photographers or others with cameras trying to record them.