July 7th, 2009 | 
Author: This time at 11th Avenue and 33rd Street as a photographer was waiting for the fireworks show to begin. As he explains it he was setting up his gear and even asked permission from the police to set up at that location which they had no problem with. BUT he made that gravest of errors and violated another of New York’s Finest unwritten and nonexistent laws – he pointed the camera in the “wrong” direction. According to the photographer:
I started taking a few random shots of the barracades, and the skyline that was visible in the setting sunlight. Can anyone guess what happened next?
So one of the cops who had been standing on the corner of 11th and 33rd starts walking down in my direction. Now, there are cops everywhere, and a few had walked by and hadn’t batted an eye or even given a look in my direction, including a couple of supervisory officers, but you could tell that this guy was walking towards me. Whether he was taking his initiative, or if he’d been prompted by a superior, I have no idea, but as he pulls up even with me, he starts chit chatting, asking about what I’m taking pictures of, why I’m on 11th instead of down by the water, and why I was sitting facing away from where the fireworks were going to be. I answer all of his questions politely, and I guess I allayed any suspicions he may have had, but as he began to walk away, his parting comment was, “Well, if you keep taking pictures in the wrong direction, don’t be surprised if someone else comes by to ask you for your ID.”
There is NO WRONG DIRECTION for taking pictures from public property in the City of New York. We find it absolutely incredible that this officer had the unmitigated gall to issue a veiled THREAT that the photographer would continue to be harassed if he did not conform to what they feel is the only right direction to point a camera. Since this is the second incident in as many days we can only assume that the NYPD is blatantly ignoring the operations order and continuing to engage in harassing photographers throughout the city.
Posted in Photography and the Law
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When they take your ID information down, don’t be surprised to find out that they’ve entered it into the NCIC and NJTTF databases. That happened to me last year – Port Authority PD in midtown.
The photography Operations Order probably just reduces the number of actual arrests, while the information gathering continues.
This is criminalization of photography, the artist’s equivalent of the Terry stop.
NYPD: How many cameras were used in bringing down WTC? The Pentagon? Right, I didn’t think any were.
Considering that very tiny, very high resolution cameras are available for just a few hundred dollars, the terrorist that actually needs a camera can now be discreet when taking pictures of buildings, bridges etc.
Here’s what I just posted in that Flickr thread:
I am not a lawyer, but I did some research on the law after I was stopped by the police after taking pictures in a subway station.
Here’s where I laid out my research, but the upshot is:
–New York state DOES have a stop-and-identify law, forcing you to provide ID;
–However, the stop-and-identify law, which can compel you to show ID (rather than just asking you for it), is only triggered when the police are “detaining you”, as in a Terry stop. This requires that the police can articulate “reasonable suspicion” that you are engaging in criminal activity…and the state Office of the Attorney General has held that “the refusal to identify oneself will not alone give rise to ‘reasonable suspicion.’”
–A case called People v. De Bour lays out a four-part test for differing levels of police intrusion in New York State. It’s actually more restrictive than federal law. At the first tier, “an officer may request information from a civilian about his or her identity, reason for being at a particular location, or travel plans, where the request is ’supported by an objective, credible reason, not necessarily indicative of criminality.’” The second tier, called the “common-law right of inquiry”, allows an officer to more closely question a civilian in search of more explanatory information, but the civilian is always free to leave. (This level requires a “founded suspicion” that criminal activity is afoot, but the questionee doesn’t have to be the suspect.) The third level requires “reasonable suspicion”, is equivalent to a Terry stop, and the officer can detain the civilian and compel them to identify themselves. The fourth tier requires “probable cause”, and is an arrest.
–As the appellate court wrote in De Bour, “innocuous behavior alone will not generate a founded or reasonable suspicion that a crime is at hand.”
Again, I’m not a lawyer, but thought this information might be useful.