Well, in terms of dealing with the police, I mean, for my almost 40 years on the street,
one of the things that is really important is for photographers to not be this nameless,
faceless media.
It's like this, you know, kind of just thing over there with a lens, and they don't see
a person, they just see, ah, it's a guy with a camera or a girl with a camera, get to know
your police departments, meet with people, ask to meet with people, whether it's a public
information officer or the training officer.
So you become a person, and be respectful on the street.
It's really important that, you know, they know that you're a professional, that you're
going to do your job, and it's an important job, but you're going to stay out of their
way and let them do their job.
And there's really no shortcut to doing that.
You treat them the way you want to be treated, that may not work, you're going to still find
some cop who's going to say to you, get out of here, leave, throws his authority around
who tells you things that are not actually truthful or the law, but he still has a badge
and he still has a gun, and arguing is not going to get you anywhere, except that you're
not going to be able to pay attention to why you're out there, which is to record.
So, you know, you have to judge each situation, if there's somebody that you could appeal
to, whether it's ask for the public information officer, ask for a supervisory personnel.
Other than that, you know, move away, go find a different place to shoot from.
It's really hard.
They're all fact driven, but getting into an argument with somebody, especially somebody
that sees themself as an authority figure is not going to get you anywhere.
You might win at the end of the day, I mean, we see quite a number of suits where photographers
have been arrested, the charges end up getting dropped, and then they bring a federal civil
rights action, and as the case I was telling you about with Glick, you know, the city of
Boston settled for $170,000, you know, money that these municipalities can ill afford to
waste on these kinds of things, but it continues to happen, but the point is, you know, he
wasn't a news photographer, he was actually a lawyer.
But when you're out there as a person for the media, I mean, the whole idea is to get
out there and to cover the story, not to get in an argument with somebody, not to get arrested,
not to become a story by yourself.
So that only comes with experience and the kind of person you are and how you comport
yourself, if you act professionally, if you act respectfully, it's something that you
end up spending a lifetime working at gaining respect, and you can lose it in an instant.
You know, I mean, there were many times that the police would tell me things that were
off the record, and, you know, I might have gotten a scoop, but I'd never get anything
again, or, you know, I'd be branded as, you can't, he can't be trusted, and you don't
want that, you don't want that to happen.
