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Photographer’s Tripod Mistaken for Machine Gun Leads to Police Search

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Every once in a while someone talks about the violence in the realm of photography. We talk about the images used to ‘shoot’ photos, or ‘take’ photos, and if we’re lucky our gear can ‘fire’ 14 fps.

This incident, though, takes it to a whole new level and while many photographers carry a Canon around with them, one photographer in Pennsylvania was suspected of carrying an actual machine gun.

Turns out someone noticed a person walk into an office building with what looked like a machine gun and called 911.

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Police Detectives Mistake Camera-Stabilizing Rig For A Drone; Warn Crew Not To Fly It

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A rather funny, and perhaps somewhat worrying, video shows an encounter between Dallas Police detectives and a camera crew that took place a couple of days ago.

As we’ve seen too often lately, police are quick on the scene once a drone is around and in this case they were making sure the team wasn’t flying the device near the airport.

That would all be perfectly fine, except the ‘drone’ in this case wasn’t flying anywhere, with our without the FAA’s approval.

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Woman receives $117,500 in settlement after being arrested for recording police

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An Illinois woman, who was arrested and charges were filed against her after she recorded police officers on her friend’s property without their consent, decided to fight back and stand up for her rights.

Ironically enough the officers themselves were not given permission to enter the property in the first place. Additionally, the Illinois Eavesdropping Act under which the woman was arrested had already been ruled unconstitutional.

PINAC reports that after filing a lawsuit against the city of Naperville, a suburb of Chicago, and the police officers involved, the woman accepted a $117,500 settlement.

In the settlement agreement the city insists that the agreement is not an admission that the police “acted wrongfully”, but the videos below paint a different picture.

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Sex offending suspects in Switzerland will have their pixelated photos published… And then unpixelated…

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Swiss police came up with a new, and highly controversial, plan to get suspects to turn themselves in.

According to Ha’aretz newspaper, the police will release a pixelated photo of suspects to the media, along with a message warning that unless they turn themselves in within a week, unpixelated photos will be published and the public will be asked to identify them.

As you can imagine, the new policy is said to cause quite a stir among politicians and lawyers.

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Police Shut Down Shoot After Photographer Shows Up On Location With A Tiger, Wolf, & Bobcat

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A word to the wise, if you rent a location for a photoshoot, you may want to let the location owners know in advance if you plan on bringing along a tiger, a wolf, and a bobcat. Photographer, David Yarrow, learned his lesson the hard way after he tried bringing along a small herd of exotic animals to the Packard Plant in Detroit, Michigan.[Read More…]

Correctional Officers Threaten To Have Camera Crew Arrested While Filming on Sidewalk

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First off, allow me to preface this post by saying that I regard anything coming from Photography Is Not a Crime with suspicion. From what I’ve learned in life, anyone who is that dogmatic about something is typically biased.

With that out of the way, PINAC posted a video showing a June 11th run-in with correctional officers in Baltimore who demanded a PINAC film crew (and I use that term loosely) cease operations on the sidewalk outside the Chesapeake Detention Facility. In the video, a correctional officer tells them, “Nah, nah…state property, you can’t film here.” To which the PINAC crew said hogwash and began a typical round of photo rights protesting.

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Spectacular Lightning Strike Video Captured by a Nearby Police Cruiser’s Dash Cam

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If Sgt. Mark Rodriguez’ mother ever told him not to go outside during thunderstorms because it’s dangerous, the Mississippi policeman will be hearing about this incident for the rest of his life.

While some people have to go out of their way to capture photos of lightning strikes, Rodriguez was lucky enough to have the lightning come to him. He was even luckier to have a dash cam installed in his cruiser and luckier yet that the lightning didn’t hit any closer…

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Colorado law makes police harassment of photographers illegal

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I know that we have been reporting many anti photography laws lately. It’s a drag. But sometimes, the law makers surprise us and actually work towards making the world a better place for photographers..

This new Colorado law is called “Stop Police Interference Cop Incident Recordings”. The summary of the proposed bill stated:

“The bill creates a private right of action against a peace officer’s employing law enforcement agency if a person records an incident involving a peace officer and a peace officer destroys the recording or seizes the recording without receiving consent or obtaining a warrant or if the peace officer intentionally interferes with the recording or retaliates against the person making the recording. The person who recorded the peace officer incident is entitled to actual damages, a civil penalty of $15,000, and attorney fees and costs.”

We are happy to announce to our police-stalking shutterbugs that House Bill 15-1290 was signed into law by Colorado governor Hickenlooper (gotta love a man of power with that name) on May 20th.

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Police Capture Fugitive Turned Model by Setting Up a Fake Photoshoot

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So many things can go wrong when you’re working on a set, especially when there are more people involved; the make-up artist can call in sick, your assistant might oversleep and there’s a risk the stylist might get lost on the way to your studio, just to name a few.

I’ve heard of all these, and many other last-minute problems happening more than once, but what I’ve never encountered was a model who got arrested on his arrival to the studio.

Luckily the scout who hired the model was an undercover British police officer and the company, WOU Photography, was actually operated by the Wanted Offenders Unit – WOU (did you see what they did there?)

Ben Fiberesima modeled for tops brands such as Nike, Calvin Klein and Tom Ford while he was a fugitive in Australia, though his next outfit won’t be as glamorous.

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US Marshal Appears To Attack Pedestrian Photographer; Knocks Phone From Hands, Smashes It With Foot

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These types of clips are popping up so frequently these days, it’s almost not even shocking to see anymore. But, this video posted yesterday on YouTube shows a heavily armed US Marshal charge a woman who was photographing a group of officers. The Marshal grabbed the phone out of her hand, then proceeded to kick and smash the phone as it hit the ground. The entire group of law enforcement officials appear to have then walked away from the startled woman.

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