Pixiq

what exactly is the crime of “interfence”? I’ve never heard of that one before.

In this case, interference means that you are documenting tax-funded police officers in the line of duty.

Angry that they were being photographed, eh?

Same thing, over and over again.

Fuck these particular police.

No one has the right to disobey a police officer’s lawful order to disperse. These people will now learn the hard way as they move through the justice system. Hopefully they will not make these mistakes again. The officers are to be commended for a job well done.

@DT

“No one has the right to disobey a police officer’s lawful order to disperse.”

What does that have to do with them not liking their pictures taken, or conjuring charges of “interfering?”

These officers are going to cost their city some money.

Difficult issue here. On one hand, all of the violence from just one town meeting seems to be pretty bad, I don’t blame the officers for wanting people out of there, but on the other hand, they didn’t totally go about it the right way.

DT,

Actually, there is something called an unlawful order.

I was acquitted of failure to obey because the cops were telling me to disperse a public area while I was taking photos, and I continued to take photos.

What is it with cops and cameras? This guy was clearly a journalist. He identified himself. It’s on the video.

So it’s obvious he was not participating in any of the violence that was taking place during the demonstration.

There were hundreds of people there. Only six got arrested.

At least two of those arrests were people either filming or taking photos.

There is nothing lawful in ordering a reporter, wearing his credentials in plain view, out of an area on public property, at a publicly funded discussion he is covering, esp. when his presence is not contributing in any manner whatsoever to a threat to public order. In fact, any sizable police force has standard procedures for dealing with working media, and the officers in this matter surely violated the ground rules that are either written, or common sense at the least.

According to the Post-Dispatch, Wagman was arrested for standing where police told him to stand:

“On two separate occasions, police asked our reporter to move farther away from the scene. He identified himself and complied — he was also wearing his press badge clearly visible around his neck. On a third occasion, two police officers asked him to leave.

Before he could explain who he was and that he was standing where two other officers had told him to, a police officer counted to two, handcuffed him and arrested him. Even later, after identifying himself as a Post-Dispatch reporter, the police processed him.”

Full story can be read here:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/nation/story/5420430FD...

And this is one of the many reasons that St. Louis County Police (the ones in brown uniforms as pictured above) are known locally as “The Brown Clowns”.

Brown shirts on cops. How a propos. Someone should publish those cops’ names and addresses.

What is wrong with the paper? There was a time when if a cop, or other, puled a stunt like this he would find that he was page one with every dumb stunt he had ever puled laid out for all to see.

@Roger

I’ve gotten so used to newspapers being weak corporate-chain-entities that it didn’t even occur to me to think of that.

I suspect that time has passed.

Although it also occurs to me that perhaps the paper has laid off/bought out all the more experienced journalists that knew about all the historical shenanigans, and held the institutional memory.

The less-well-paid, younger, less experienced staff left may not know to do such things.

Good god you make feel old. I do remember a time when this was so. I remember a fiew run ins with bone headed cops and how we handled them. But that was 40 years ago, times have changed.

A case I heard of a few years ago.
A new photographer and a older reporter were covering a demonstration when the cops waded in busting heads. She was arrested for “inciting a riot”.The reporter, being more experienced, escaped and called there editor. She was placed in a jail bus and told to shut up and she could bail out in “about three days’ and that her cameras were confiscated and she would never see them again.
As the bus was puling out it was suddenly cut off by a patrol car and a police Lt. jumps out and orders her release and the arresting officer to return all her items and to pay for any damages.
He then apologize and drives her to her papers office and returns her car with out impound charges, stating she will be given” exclusive scopes”.
She then asks the reporter she was with what happened, he directs her to the publisher.
The publisher states just a little “pro que”. He called the police chief to inform him that the paper was considering a special addition of him and the mayor in photographs ” you know the ones with the hookers”.
As Capone said, you can accomplish more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.

Javonne Spitz is lying. She was antagonizing people all day at this town hall and participated in the Kenneth Gladney attack. She was not arrested for taking photographs. She kicked Gladney while he was on the ground. She hurled racial epithets at another black man earlier in the day. On a video on YouTube she is caught doing this. A man says to her, “You’re a racist” and she replies, “You’re right. I am a racist.” It will all come out when she receives a summons to come to court.

Angela,

If you’re going to bring up a youtube video, please post it.

Sorry. Here you go. Javonne Spitz appears around the :55 mark. She’s the gray-haired woman in the pink shirt.

http://tinyurl.com/lr7n2d

Angela,

I did not see anything in that video that merited her arrest.

I also believe the term “racist” is hurled much too liberally by both sides.

If you can post something that shows her kicking Gladney while he was on the ground, I would gladly include it in the above post.

You know it is possible for a photographer to interfer with an arrest. Just because you have a camera doesn’t mean you have the right to walk up into the middle of an incident and get in the way.

Police officers are trained to keep people out of the way when they are taking action. Take your pictures but back up when the police tell you to. Don’t cameras have a zoom function? Why do you have to be less than 10 feet away? Officers dont need to have to worry about a camera in their face while they are trying to arrest someone. All these “journalists” need to get off their cross and use some common sense.

@Johnny

Eh? Nobody was “less than 10 feet away” and the news photog was arrested AFTER complying and moving back to where he was told.

“Officers dont need to have to worry about a camera in their face while they are trying to arrest someone.”

Since there aren’t actually any cameras in anyone’s “face,” no, they shouldn’t be worried about being photographed/recorded… as long as they’re doing nothing wrong.

Which means they have no reason to make up “interference” charges where they don’t exist.

Nice straw man John. I agree. Arguments are much easier when you make up your own facts and argue forward.

gg

I see scenes like this and I just stay far, far away. Who needs this drama in their life?

Thanks for being part of the problem Spokker.

Carry on…

I’m a newspaper journalist. I’m also a diehard libertarian. I’ve also had enough (personal) run-ins with idiotic cops that I have no affinity for the police.

That said, the whole “media credential” defense makes me uncomfortable. A cop’s order to disperse is either unjust in itself, or it’s not. An arrest is either unjust in itself, or it’s not. A human being doesn’t gain moral and legal privileges by being “credentialed,” and an uncredentialed human being doesn’t lack them.

If it’s a problem that someone was arrested for taking photos, then it’s a problem because “someone was arrested for taking photos” — not because that someone happens to make a living a certain way.

(I know this blog has been around awhile, and I’m sure topics like these have been argued, hashed out and clarified ad nauseam. But given that there are posters here writing defenses like “this guy was clearly a journalist,” I feel justified raising this point.)

And I feel justified in disagreeing with you strongly, Tom, having worked in media relations for many years, including the logistics for media covering major, major news events. There simply is a difference between the thousands of “civilians” with camera phones, and the limited number of credentialed working photogs assigned to cover a story. The reality is they are handled differently. It can often be problematic to have an area open to the public, yet acceptable to allow credentialed media. I would be shocked if you honestly have not encountered this situation professionally, and furthermore benefited in your work from such a distinction.

The main reason cops do not want reporters, and most importantly photographers, recording the scene is they want only there view point recorded and no other. The last thing they want is to submit reports and testimony and have some video or photograph show up and expose there lie. There fore, they try to control what is recorded to insure that theres are the only “facts”.

@Joel

Credentialed media access to a physically limited space or access point in advance is one thing; booting people from a public area based on “credentials” alone is another.

I think you meant area NOT open to the public in your example there, btw.

Not asserting a right to information regardless of “major” media affiliation leads to other problems. Like the police deciding they get to decide who the “real” media are:

http://iminurfortkillingurdudes.blogspot.com/2009/04/this-post-does-not-...

Special access is one thing. Public access in a public area, or to public information however, is another.

(And yes, I got the info: http://iminurfortkillingurdudes.blogspot.com/2009/05/april-cm-aftermath....

Michael Joyner only managed to slow things down a little and make himself look a pompous ass in the end.)

I don’t disagree there is an increasingly complex landscape regarding media, obviously with the recent proliferation of independent media, including blogs.

My larger point is that any professional police force would understand the lack of pragmatic wisdom in arresting a credentialed member of the major media, much less one who is working in a position and manner that in no way threatens public order.

I would hope we can all agree this is not Iran, or China, and such treatment of the press are unacceptable in a mature democracy. “Interference” in this instance is something that Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson would have charged of the police–interfering with free exercise of the press. If anyone feels the need to indulge a dislike or distrust of the media, that is their right, but not to exercise it in a manner that restricts their work. There is nothing American about that.

“Hi! We’re the police and we’re here to take action!”

I’ve really got to wonder now what Douglas Adam’s inspiriation was for the Vogons.

interference is when you bump the goalie in the crease.

but seriously, these cops aren’t angry yet… just wait til their pensions are forcibly cut after the upcoming nationwide municipal bankruptcy filings.

“Thanks for being part of the problem Spokker.”

Hey, if wanting to stay away from chaotic scenes where people are fighting, insulting each other and getting pepper sprayed makes me part of the problem, then consider me part of the problem.

Here’s a shocking police resignation: http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090810/NEWS01/90810042/1001/NEWS

Super, they would take food out of starving children’s mouths before they touch the pigs pensions . Disgusting, how cops get to be labeled “good guys” without much thought if the moniker is correct.