And So It Continues

A couple weeks back I mentioned that harassment of photographers seemed to be on the rise.  Scanning through Google Reader this morning I came across two more cases, this time involving video photography.

The first comes via Chris Nixon at Photografr.com.  An Albuquerque news photographer gets roughed up and arrested:

APD is supposedly reviewing the tape. The story goes that the photographer setup to cover a shooting and thought the suspect was in custody. The police said he needed to move to a media staging area. The photographer asked where it was, and the police couldn’t tell him. They later told him where to go and the photographer says, "Was that so hard?" and that is when the beating commenced.

Yeah, it’s 3am or so and everyone is tired, but I really don’t know if the snaky comment was necessary. Worth beating the crap on of someone, definitely not. Even still, the cop really goes off on the guy and does not tell the photographer he is under arrest until well after he roughed up the guy and almost broke the camera.  Your tax dollars hard at work, Albuquerque!  Keeping the streets safe from photographers.

The second comes via Attorney Carolyn Wright who runs the Photo Attorney blog and it is related to the article I linked to earlier about photography in Washington DC’s Union Station. While the local Fox affiliate is interviewing an Amtrak spokesperson, Joel Lawson, in Union Station, a security guard tells the news crew to stop filming and cannot answer why [link to the video - I couldn't get it to embed]. (Carolyn also links to the Albuquerque story).

It makes one thing you could almost start an entire blog dedicated to photography not being a crime.