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Police Stop Journalists From Photographing Metrorail System
schwit1 writes with this excerpt from Reason.com:
"Carlos Miller, who runs the Photography Is Not a Crime blog, and veteran photojournalist Stretch Leford decided to test the photography rules in Miami-Dade's metrorail system. Before embarking on their test, they obtained written assurance from Metro Safety and Security Chief Eric Muntan that there's no law against non-commercial photography on the system. The two didn't make it past the first station before they were stopped. Employees of 50 State Security, the private firm contracted to provide the metro's security, stopped the pair first. They then called in local police. The private firm and the police then threatened the two with arrest, demanded their identification (to check them against a terrorist watch list), demanded multiple times that they stop filming, and eventually 'banned' Miller and Ledford from the metro system 'for life' (though it's doubtful they had the authority to do so)."
Unfortunately, the only way to really fix this is to go ahead and get arrested. That's what it's going to take to turn this crap around; a lot of journalists getting arrested and writing passionate articles about the experience while hopefully being exonerated.
Yep. The key to this is to behave calmly and rationally (although one might argue that telling the cops to fuck off is the rational thing to do), and to have someone document the incident on video with a hidden camera from a distance, then post that video on Youtube and other places ASAP. A perfectly reasonable response by the photographers, along with the written assurance, the video and a decent lawyer should go a long way towards getting this shit fixed.
Something similar happend to a good friend of mine in Canada of all places. He was taking pictures of some properties that were for sale to review with his business partner, and the local police pulled him over and general police fuckery ensued, and the harassment continued after he idintified himself and explained his business and what he was doing. He had to call a lawyer.
Sometime the authorities can be stupid beyond belief. Do the think that there isn't any imagery of their precious system? Or perhaps that detailed satellite imagery doesn't exist with convient, detailed maps of all potential routes of escape and schedules even? Holy shit, look at that! Better go arrest Google.
Bunch of fucking retards.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Spot on! This is exactly the way to deal with this. Test it, get arrested, document the whole process and manage to be professional enough about it so you arise the interest of main media journalists, PBS, BBC, etc. Expose, just like they do here, underlying causes, like top security acknowledging of the rights, and private security and local police involved in arbitrary and erratic behavior.
The result: big public embarrassment for those involved, instigating fear of the same for like-minded small-time tyrants doing this everywhere.
This is a job of public education and the two photographers involved here are doing the right, appropriate and efficient thing about it. My hat to them!
The only bullshit part of it is that the fact you were arrested shows up on any criminal background check. It's the kind of thing that could deny you employment in the future. Sure, you can explain why the arrest happened, and most management types will listen to your explanation and decide "he's an activist troublemaker who might rock the boat, a loose cannon" and throw your application in the trash. Of course it's unjust.
It's bullshit because a criminal background check should never show arrests. It should show convictions only.
You can get your record purged of non-conviction arrests after a few months. I'm no law-talking-guy, but if you're ever arrested for bullshit charges that later get thrown out, remember that you can get the arrest record wiped clean.
You can't take the sky from me...
Hmmm
That all sounds wonderful, except that you do not have to actually be resisting arrest for you to be charged and convicted with resisting arrest. You merely need the police to state that you were doing so...
Unless the event is recorded, or there are a substantial number of witnesses to the event willing to back your story, the word of the Police is almost always believed by the courts. One reason so many police officers want it to be illegal to record them, though obviously they claim it is for security or privacy concerns and never for accountability reasons...
This was the very goal of the 9/11 attacks and we have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker.
That's what bin Laden wrote, years before 9/11. That was his plan. Read Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America., published in 1999.