"Would it have been so difficult for you to just stop taking photographs when these guys told you to stop?"

Via the Progressive Review's Sam Smith comes this personal account of San Francisco transit cops, and then real cops, harassing a photographer for the non-existent crime of photographing in the city's transit system.

Comments

[Adam]

saw a story on the news last week about a dude who filmed people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. he told the park police, who apparently have the final say on who can and can't film on park land, that he was doing a nature video or something like that. saw it on fox, so after they interviewed the ranger, they had a couple more idiots on talking about how filming the golden gate bridge is a national security issue and they want to stop teh distribution of the suicide video to protect national security. of course. and sodomy's a national security issue too, and the judicial activists on the supreme court helped the terrorists win by legalizing it.

[kmw]

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Let's play name that quote.

[MP]

Yeah Adam, old news.

[Ignoramus]

I like this version better.

Of course, that don't mean having a revolution every day like them South American yellow-bellies, or every time some jobholder goes to work and does something he ain't got no business to do. It is better to stand a little graft, etc., than to have revolutions all the time, like them coons, and any man that wasn't a anarchist or one of them I.W.W.'s would say the same. But when things get so bad that a man ain't hardly got no rights at all no more, but you might almost call him a slave, then everybody ought to get together and throw the grafters out, and put in new ones who won't carry on so high and steal so much, and then watch them.

[Rhywun]

Leave it to New York and New Jersey to be one step ahead:

http://nycsubway.org/photoban.html

[SPD]

A kinder, gentler form of fascism: welcome to post-9/11 America!

[SPD]

If this is the type of nonsense with which law enforcement officials waste their time, our money and our freedoms, then we can stop sending troops overseas; the terrorists have won.

[Poustman]

SPD, your sad words are all too convincing.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

I give up, Ignoramus: Who said it?

[Isaac Bartram]

Tim Cavanaugh

Mencken - ah the marvels of google (I didn't know myself).

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/decind.html

[misanthrope]

Ah, yes. Once the divine right to take pictures of subways has been abrograted, we are all but slaves.

[Isaac Bartram]

I meant to say in full.

I didn't know myself but it was such a cool passage I had to find out. 🙂

[Isaac Bartram]

misanthrope

Wouldn't you agree that this is a stupid and wasteful use of law enforcement resources, and indicates a slapdash disregard of individual liberty on the part of these cops.

[keith]

This is so... 2003

http://citypaper.net/articles/2003-02-27/cb.shtml

[Poustman]

One of the elements of this that is of concern to me is the subtlety of the 'be reasonable' argument for letting liberties go. Getting along is certainly a worthy goal, but placing it above liberty is dangerous. Why? Because as far as I know most totalitarian societies began by giving up liberties for similarly real but lesser values like 'getting along'. 'Lebensraum' is something all peoples need, but it isn't the greatest value.

Clearly it's an enormous jump, but it is arguably a similar idea on a much smaller level. Then again, I could be a satisfied coprophage.

[kmw]

Ah, yes. Once the divine right to take pictures of subways has been abrograted [sic], we are all but slaves.

Misanthrope,

The fact is, the officers involved wouldn't arrest the man on any charges related to photography, but rather drummed up trespassing charges. On public property. That the photographer's taxes pay for.

If a situation exists where cops can pull laws out of their ass - to serve whatever purpose they want - and it can't be called a police state, then what can it be called?

[Nobody Important]

Good thing he didn't piss off these SF transit cops.