{"id":11230,"date":"2012-02-05T23:30:37","date_gmt":"2012-02-06T04:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=11230"},"modified":"2012-02-05T23:30:37","modified_gmt":"2012-02-06T04:30:37","slug":"george-f-will-the-street-photographers-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2012\/02\/05\/george-f-will-the-street-photographers-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"George F. Will, the Street Photographer’s Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A.<\/a><\/p>\n

Perhaps I’m not alone in finding it surprising that a prominent right-wing spokesperson has come out in defense of creative photographers harassed by the police for making pictures in public places. Especially since the police excesses have happened in the name of fighting terrorism. Whether or not I have company, I consider it worth noting (and applauding) that no less a conservative eminence than George F. Will has castigated an increasing police tendency in the U.S. to interfere with and intimidate photographers exercising their legal right to use their cameras in the streets and other public spaces of our cities, making him an unlikely ally in the perpetual struggle against state-sponsored censorship.<\/p>\n

Here’s the core paragraph of Will’s January 18 column for the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>,\u00a0“A snapshot of our times”<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Washington<\/a>“When the Los Angeles Police Department developed a\u00a0Suspicious Activity Report<\/a>\u00a0program, the federal government encouraged local law enforcement agencies to adopt its guidelines for gathering information ‘that could indicate activity or intentions related to’ terrorism. From the fact that terrorists might take pictures of potential infrastructure targets (‘pre-operational surveillance’), it is a short slide down a slippery slope to the judgment that photography is a potential indicator of terrorism and hence photographers are suspect when taking pictures ‘with no apparent aesthetic value’ (words from the suspicious-activity guidelines).”<\/em><\/div>\n
\"Los<\/a>

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Richard Gylfie<\/p><\/div>\n

The specific cluster of cases Will cites involve three Los Angeles-based photographers variously questioned, threatened, and otherwise abused by officers of the famously citizen-friendly LAPD, all of them of course with substantial training in determining the presence or absence of “apparent aesthetic value” in a street scene.\u00a0Click here for a video of\u00a0Los Angeles County Sheriff ‘s Deputy Richard Gylfie, Badge No. 2955<\/a>, acting in his official capacity with admirable professionalism by lying to professional photographer Shawn Nee<\/a> \u2014 claiming falsely that the LA Metro policy prohibits photography\u00a0\u2014 and then abusing his authority by threatening to submit Nee’s name to the FBI’s\u00a0Terrorism Liaison Officer (TLO)<\/a>\u00a0so that anytime Nee tries to travel or take any kind of public transportation he’ll be “stopped, detained, and searched” because he’ll “be on the FBI’s hit list.”<\/p>\n

\"Los<\/a><\/p>\n

Nee’s run-in with the mendacious and bullying Officer Gylfie happened on October 31, 2009.\u00a0Despite Nee’s filing of a formal complaint, Gylfie was never disciplined for his excesses. This, plus an accumulation of equivalent subsequent incidents, led the\u00a0ACLU of Southern California to sue the Los Angeles County Sheriff\u2019s Department and several of its deputies. The federal suit was filed on October 27, 2011. (See\u00a0Richard Winton’s report of that date for the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>,\u00a0“ACLU sues Sheriff’s Department, alleges photographers were harassed.”<\/a>\u00a0And\u00a0click here for the full text of the lawsuit<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Suspicious Activity Report (SAR)<\/a>\u00a0in question, developed by the LAPD and finalized in June 2008, is now recommended by the\u00a0U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ); the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA); DOJ\u2019s Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (Global); the Criminal Intelligence Coordinating Council (CICC); and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)\u00a0for study and implementation nationwide. This has already begun to take place.<\/p>\n

Which means that it jeopardizes the freedom of anyone photographing in public in the land of the free, so long as loose-cannon cops like Richard Gylfie consider it a license to bully photographers. Here’s the exact language of the SAR protocols:<\/p>\n

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