It’s astounding that the police actually listen to the directives and allow the private security staff to dictate that rules and laws, rather than the police themselves listen to both sides and make an informed desision based on law.

Thanks for the visit.

Carlos has pages and pages of incidents where the Police have arrested photographers for doing the above.. and the charges have been thrown out of court.

In a lot of cases the offended photographers have sued the Police Dept’s and been awarded 20 – 30 – 40 or more “THOUSANDS” of dollar$ $$$$$$.. yet these same Police continue on doing the same thing over and over again.

You’d think they’d learn the first time from their mistake.. wouldn’t you!?

Rail Car Fan

Welcome to the age of hysteria. I guess we all already knew that-we’ve been living in it for a while.

Shawn what a story. I’ve read about this issue on and off over the past few years but had no clue about that town… I am going to read the rest of those articles today.

Political fearmongering is right. The problem too is where seemingly public spaces are actually run by private companies. From HOAs to “retail lifestyle centers” many of these places mimic traditional U.S. streetscapes, but unfortunately are tightly controlled. I’ve proposed in the past that cities need to LIMIT how much of these public parcels (and our streets,) are given away – and not roll over when just by tax dollars. A private business on a corner lot is one thing, but when you have enormous parcels including streets and infrastructure just given away – that’s bad bad bad.

Next time this happens I hope Jeff Ferrel, author of “Tearing Down the Streets” is at my side.

Thanks for the good comments and links…

Very useful link, I didn’t know there were specific laws in regards to this sort of thing.

@James:

The result of all the political/media fear mongering.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shawnblog/420490209/

Details here http://www.freeourstreets.org/