How to deal with Police when out photographing (& Photographers Rights)

[Benicio]

Whilst they are a part of the problem, to simply lay the blame at their feet is letting us all off too lightly.

Scotty

I forgot to use the sarcasm emote

[Norman]

G'day all

With other threads on photography rules and regulations i thought this may be of interest/amusement

I have been taking pics around Melbournes waterways and docks for as long as i can remember (am 58) and until recently (last 5 years) have never had a problem with the law , local national or otherwise but things are getting ''silly'' lately and it has prompted me to post this thread

I was in the station pier area of Melbourne recently taking pics of various shipping that interests me it was a weekday morning , i had a tripod and my Nikon D3 with 200-400 mounted thereon and was happily snapping away until i received a tap on the shoulder by a large ''private'' security person asking me what exactly it was that i was doing and did i have a permit to do what i was doing !!!! eh????? what??? says i,,,, i am just taking pics of some freighters out in the channel and a few of the vintage sailboats i told him politely and i do not need a permit for that !

He said ( now process this !!) '' That lady there (pointing to a lady with a small compact camera) is using a camera ,,,,YOU HAVE HI-TECH SURVEILLANCE GEAR AND I WANT TO SEE A PERMIT !!!!

Well there are many replies i could have made but instead i am afraid i giggled at him and said i can't believe what he is saying to me we exchanged a few more words as i continued to take pics during which time he continued to ask for my permit which i ignored then he started to become irrate and said he would confiscate my gear to the amusement of myself and the small crowd that was gathering ,,,keeping calm i requested he fetch a policeman if he was so worried and we will put his views and accusations to the test, i told him there was a police van nearby in the carpark, he then threw his hands in the air and said '' you tech heads are all smart A***s's'' and stormed off ! never to be seen again and i stayed there for over an hour and forty minutes, quite bewildered but realising that i had just had an encounter with a private lawmen gone crazy , now i never asked him anything i.e what right do you have to accuse me etc etc etc but i remained calm

But consider if you will

I spent four months in Europe last year photographing all manner of public/private buildings, military objects train/tube area's and in Hong Kong with my 200-400 in dock and waterfront areas where i was asked by Police and Chinese Army gaurds where i bought the 200-400 and was it any good !!! never ever once in all that time was i questioned what the hell i was doing

Now this is not the first time this has happened to me in Aus in fact it is becoming so frequent i have my response down pat ,,i stay calm and ask to meet with a policeman and thats where it ends i have never been questioned by police

Now if you really want some laughs go try to take some pics with your hi-tech surveillance gear during a sporting event in Melb, you wont be able to operate a big lens on the fence at the MCG or Grand Prix etc etc i really had fun during the Comm Games in melb taking pics of shipping as we had the water police, chubb security, port of melb authority, port of melb harbour security, Fed Police,army response team, navy water patrol, and a few others i cant remember their names but can post pics as i took photo's of all of them i found it so amusing

It saddens me we do not have the intelligence to handle this issue correctly and with ''manners'' as it should be

Rant over

Cheers

[old dog]

agree totally Norman.......it`s really getting silly out there. Thanks for the heads up about asking for a real cop to intervene, etc.

[PH005]

A sad sorry sign of the times.

[Chilcotin]

Where I live, (Canada) I have never had a problem. Mind you I walk around with two camera's hanging from my neck and a lens bag as well.

I do believe though common sense comes into the picture.

[Xenedis]

i giggled at him and said i can't believe what he is saying to me we exchanged a few more words as i continued to take pics during which time he continued to ask for my permit which i ignored then he started to become irrate and said he would confiscate my gear to the amusement of myself and the small crowd that was gathering ,,,keeping calm i requested he fetch a policeman if he was so worried and we will put his views and accusations to the test, i told him there was a police van nearby in the carpark, he then threw his hands in the air and said '' you tech heads are all smart A***s's'' and stormed off ! never to be seen again

Hilarious.

Rent-a-cops unfortunately aren't terribly good at handling facts and challenges to call upon a real law-enforcement officer.

Your anecdote was quite amusing; it would have been jolly good fun to have witnessed the spectacle for myself.

[peterb666]

The private "pseudo police" in Australia are poorly trained and largely ignorant people who could not get another job. Too many of them make up for their low standing in the community be having grand ideas of their status and their knowledge of the law. All power corrupts but it is also dangerous when mixed with ignorance.

[Xenedis]

While poking around on the Web this morning, I stumbled across a letter Emeritus Professor Des Crawley wrote in response to a personal story Port Macquarie photographer and APS member Rob Smith related on his Web site about the time a police officer confronted him as he was photographing people (including children) in a public place for a project on which he was working.

Firstly, Rob's article:

http://www.predatek.com/wowfactorpix/signoftimes.htm

This is well worth a read. Rob very candidly goes into what he was doing (which was in no way wrong, perverted or insidious), and relates in horror what happened to him when the police officer turned up in response to anonymous, well-intentioned but grossly off-the-mark concerns by members of the public about a middle-aged man photographing children with a telephoto lens.

Rob handled the situation very well, as you'll see upon reading the article.

Des Crawley responded to that story, and has some very wise and passionate advice to offer on the matter. Here is his response:

http://www.predatek.com/wowfactorpix...s_dcrawley.htm

This alone is well worth a read, even if you hadn't seen Rob's story. As it turned out, I read Des's response before reading the article it was addressing, but the advice is generic enough to stand on its own.

Please, read both of these articles, be aware of what we face (as if you weren't already), and take on board Rob's approach to handling situations like what he encountered.

__________
Mod note: Merged Thead

[ameerat42]

Xenidis. Thanks for such a doubly interesting post. Am.

[Scotty72]

I remember this article came up in another thread but, good post

this is something that we should not let die

Scotty

[OzzieTraveller]

Thankyou Xenadis for highlighting this issue again

Earlier this year I posted a note regarding an unwanted & unwarranted 'confrontation' I had with the police while doing 'what comes naturally - taking photos' - at a funfair

Since then I have followed Ken Duncan's lead and had some text burned onto the fluoro-orange safety vest I wear when out taking pix anywhere where traffic is passing me by ... in 10cm high letters it says "PHOTOGRAPHER" under which is "I am not a criminal"

But I do like Rob Smith's idea of supplying the local coppers with a wanted-style poster, mug shot identifying him/myself so as to avoid any further issues

It's just a damn shame that we have to do this - or even to feel the need to do this
Regards, Phil

[Xenedis]

Thanks guys. We need to keep our eyes on this sort of thing, as it's really got out of hand.

Re Rob's approach of sending a self-generated mugshot to the local constabulary, I don't believe it's at all necessary, and perhaps his doing so was more to send a strong message than to make the police aware that he's a photographer exercising his lawful right.

By the same token, I wouldn't be sending the police a photo of myself, declaring that I own large, sharp kitchen knives, and indicating that if anyone in town gets stabbed, I wasn't the perp.

[OzzieTraveller]

G'day all

I met this article on a caravanners / travellers forum and liked it ... hope you do too
= = = = =
Recently, SAPOL ran an e-mail forum (a question and answer exchange) with the topic being "Community Policing."

One of the civilian email participants posed the following question;
"I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?"

From the "other side" (the law enforcement side) Sgt. Kym Webb of Mount Barker police, (a cop with a sense of humor) replied:

"First of all, let me tell you this...it's not easy. In the Adelaide Hills we average one cop for every 600 people. Only about 60% of those cops are on general duty (or what you might refer to as "general patrols") where we do most of our harassing.

The rest are in non-harassing departments that do not allow them contact with the day to day innocents. At any given moment, only one-fifth of the 60% general patrols are on duty and available for harassing people while the rest are off duty. So roughly, one cop is responsible for harassing about 5,000 residents.

When you toss in the commercial business, and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 10,000 or more people a day.

Now, your average eight-hour shift runs 28,800 seconds long. This gives a cop one second to harass a person, and then only three-fourths of a second to drink a Farmer's Union Iced Coffee AND then find a new person to harass. This is not an easy task. To be honest, most cops are not up to this challenge day in and day out. It is just too tiring. What we do is utilize some tools to help us narrow down those people which we can realistically harass.

The tools available to us are as follows:
PHONE: People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. "My neighbor is beating his wife" is a code phrase used often. This means we'll come out and give somebody some special harassment. Another popular one is, "There's a guy breaking into a house." The harassment team is then put into action.

CARS: We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars with no insurance or no driver's licences and the like. It's lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light. Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, they are drunk, or have an outstanding FINS warrant on file.

RUNNERS: Some people take off running just at the sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as satisfying as running after them like a beagle on the scent of a bunny. When you catch them you can harass them for hours.

LAWS : When we don't have PHONES or CARS and have nothing better to do, there are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks. They are called "Statutes" . These include the Criminal Law Consolidation Act, Summary Offences Act, Road Traffic Act and a whole bunch of others ... They all spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people.

After you read the law , you can just drive around for a while until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them. Just last week I saw a guy trying to steal a car. Well, there's this book we have that says that's not allowed. That meant I got permission to harass this guy. It is a really cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty well.

We seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because for the good citizens who pay the tab, we try to keep the streets safe for them, and they pay us to "harass" some people.

Next time you are in the Hills, give me the old "single finger wave." That's another one of those codes. It means, "You can harass me" - Its one of our favourites."

Cheers,
Peter

= = = = =
Regards, Phil

[farmer_rob]

That's quite amusing OzzieTraveller - but photography is not against the law, and the copper with a sense of humour failed to note that there are times the police don't bother seeing if it is against the rules, they just "harass" anyway.

(Also, the one-finger wave up our way is when you lift one finger off the steering wheel to acknowledge someone driving past - I didn't think that was an offensive gesture. Perhaps he meant the 'one-finger salute'.)

[warhammer]

great advise... a hot topic for a lot of people, as to be expected..

[aramis]

Just noticed you can join Arts Freedom Australia for $2. I just joined http://www.artsfreedomaustralia.com/...1#comment-5695

[Kym]

From the UK

http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk...ws_302937.html

Protests by photographers have forced bosses of an Edinburgh shopping street to review their photography policy in a move likely to see managers back down, Amateur Photographer (AP) understands.

Managers at the Multrees Walk shopping area came under fire over the weekend after a video showed 'heavy-handed' security officers clash with photographers.

The crackdown on photography followed concerns that pictures of the shops may increase the risk of the retailers being ram raided.

Security staff were briefed to approach photographers on a 'fact-finding' mission.

However, AP has learned that managers are this week reviewing their policy and that this may result in what many photographers will view as a welcome dose of common sense.

Management now concede that if they ban cameras then they might just as well outlaw the use of camera phones – a policy impossible to police.

Stemming from


and

[Xenedis]

Re "The crackdown on photography followed concerns that pictures of the shops may increase the risk of the retailers being ram raided"...

I suppose security staff also insisted that people walking past the shop shut their eyes in case they saw the store and were compelled to later do a ram-raid on it.

Rather than cracking down on photographers, it would be nice to see a crackdown on ignorant fools who come up with stupid, impractical, fear-driven and sublimely ridiculous anti-photography policies and then expect the public to bend over and cop it.

[Scotty72]

The ignorance of many authorities in the UK and this country is absolutely breath-taking.

I might add, that the acting principal of my school is joining the ignorance.

She has announced, yesterday, that all photograph taking is banned unless she gives permission on a case by case basis - permission will only be granted if 15 criteria are met.

She also declared that the thousands of pics that I, and another teacher, have taken are now DET property.

Of course, we immediately deleted all our images and invited her to sue us for their return.

All this because ONE teacher thought it inappropriate that pictures be taken of a girl in a leotard on stage.

I have been in a series of heated arguments with this ignorant woman.

Today, I wore (and it will be getting a fair work-out) my 'I'm a photographer, not a criminal t-shirt." :P

Scotty

[kiwi]

Isn't the school effectively private property ? So, can't the owners, det, ban photography if they choose to ?