Update: Uncommon Grounds, the coffee shop that is responsible for the trespassing order, has a Facebook fan page. Some of became fans just to let the others know how much of a disregard this business has for photography rights. Help us spread the word.

By Carlos Miller
A Vermont photographer who specializes in street photography in the spirit of Henri Cartier-Bresson has been barred from entering a shopping mall because of his candid shots.

However, Dan Scott said all his photographs were taken outside the mall on public property.

And there is no evidence he committed a crime.

Nevertheless, if he steps foot inside the Burlington Town Center or any of its 67 business establishments during the next year, he will be arrested. Even if he doesn’t have a camera with him.

Now the question is, how much power should private businesses have over somebody’s First Amendment rights?

Seven Days, an alternative newspaper in Vermont, does a good job on bringing the issue to light.

Scott, 32, is an art photographer from St. Albans who works full time at the U.S. Social Security Administration office on Pearl Street. For the last year or so, he’s spent many of his lunch hours shooting artsy, black-and-white photos of people on Church Street: homeless people, the elderly, families with children, anyone who catches his eye. He insists that all his photos are taken on public property, not inside stores or through the windows or blinds of private homes.

Occasionally, Scott asks his subjects’ permission to be photographed. “And if they tell me ‘no,’ I go away,” he says. However, he admits that much of the time, his pictures are candid shots taken from a distance with a telephoto lens so his subjects aren’t aware they’re being photographed.

Over the years, some of Scott’s photos have been published in local publications, including the Burlington Free Press and Seven Days. However, most are taken for fun, not for profit, he claims, as a way of developing his photography skills.

“Look, I’m not doing anything to try to embarrass people or demean them,” he says. “I’m just trying to capture the human condition as it presents itself in the marketplace.”

The problem started on January 26 when Scott was taking pictures outside the mall. A security guard told him he was not allowed to photograph the mall.

Scott informed the clueless guard that he, in fact, did have a right to take pictures from a public street, regardless of what happens to be in the background.

The mall’s manager told Seven Days that its no-photography policy applies only to the inside of the mall. I’m betting they really have no policy.

After the incident with the security guard, two Burlington cops began harassing him, asking him who he was, where he works and what he was doing there.

Considering he was not doing anything legally suspicious, he was under no obligation to answer these questions. But Scott was trying to be cooperative, which led to officers showing up at his office the following day.

The officer grilled him for 45 minutes, demanding to know who he photographs and what he does with his photos. Scott told the cop he posts them on Flickr.

“He thought that was just despicable,” Scott notes.

Unfortunately, Seven Days did not link to his Flickr site, which is a horrible habit it obtained from the mainstream media.

A month later, Scott snapped a photo of a woman smoking a cigarette outside a coffee shop. He was about 50 feet away. She asked him to stop taking photos. He did.

But when she demanded he delete the photo he had taken of her, he refused.

The following Monday, a Burlington cop showed up to his office and issued him a trespass order that banned him from the mall for a year.

Lieutenant Jen Morrison with the Burlington Police Department says she’s not at liberty to discuss the details of Scott’s trespass order, or even confirm that he was issued one. Oddly, it’s not because there’s a criminal investigation pending; Scott hasn’t been charged with a crime. Rather, she explains, it’s because the police don’t decide whether to issue trespass orders; they simply issue them at the behest of businesses and property owners.

Business owners  say the worst thing he did was snap photos of their customers without their consent.

Not very different from what business owners do with their surveillance cameras.

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He pulled out his lap top and started talking to them through video chat, wishing his children good night before they were tucked into bed.

A United Airlines flight attendant then accused him of being a possible terrorist, as he explains on his blog.

“Security. Cameras not allowed!” was the response. There was clearly no argument.

I protested, but not too loudly. I don’t want to end up stripped searched in a cold basement cell below SFO, after all.

The flight attendant told him communicating on two-way devices is illegal and considered possible terrorist-related.

After all, it would allow terrorists to tuck their kids into bed before taking over the cockpit and flying  the plane into a building.

The real reason, Battelle later discovered in an FAA quidebook, is that it would make it uncomfortable for other seatmates. As if the airline industry actually cares about passenger comfort.

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The photo AMC did not want you to see (Photo by Chalicechick)

By Carlos Miller
Corporations are funny. They try to plaster their logos on everything from football stadiums to cheap give-away t-shirts, but the moment you snap a photo of that logo, they treat it as if it were some Pentagon top secret war plan.

It was only last month that I was told by Camel cigarette employees that I was not allowed to photograph their logo, even though I was standing on a public sidewalk where they were trying to get young adults hooked on their product.

The latest corporation to go Gestapo on photographers is AMC Theatres, the second largest movie theater chain in North America.

A woman named Chalicechick told Consumerist that she snapped a photo of a poster AMC had put up stating that children younger than six would no longer be allowed in R-rated movies after 6 p.m.

Chalicechick was so thrilled at the news that she took out her cell phone and photographed the poster. She happened to be standing outside at the ticket booth when she did this.

Then she walked inside and was confronted by an AMC employee in the lobby.

“You’re not allowed to take pictures of the AMC logo” she snapped.

I thought of pointing out the legal issues with that one, but I’d already paid for a ticket to the 3-d Alice in Wonderland and didn’t want to get kicked out.

“Um, OK” I said. My friend was late and I was standing in the lobby waiting for her. I was bored so I pulled out my phone.

“Are you taking pictures AGAIN?” the employee snapped, racing over.

Again, I was in the lobby. I guess I could have been taking a picture of a movie poster or the popcorn guy or something, but nothing remotely close to photographing a movie or anything actually illegal.

“I’m, um, looking at Twitter,” I said, holding up my phone.

She examined it intently, taking it out of my hand to make sure I wasn’t, in fact, photographing the popcorn guy. I had actually been looking at twitter, so she handed my phone back and my friend showed up and that was that.

First of all, there is no way in hell I would allow an AMC employee to snatch my phone out of my hand. I probably wouldn’t even let a cop do that.

Second of all, if I had been confronted by an employee for taking such a harmless photo, I would probably demand to speak to a manager and depending on how that went, I would probably end up demanding my money back.

And third of all, I would not be complimenting the company on my blog on their new policy. But Chalicechick still salutes them. Literally.

AMC Theatres, Chalicechick salutes you

Maybe she wants free movie tickets or something.

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If Big Brother can watch us, why can't we watch them? (Photo by Jay Black)

By Carlos Miller
A Canadian photojournalist who announced he is giving up the trade because of constant harassment from authorities is now getting defensive towards those who disagree with his decision.

The photographer, Jay Black, stated the following on Flickr where he goes by The Blackbird:

The other stressor that has led to my decision to leave photojournalism is the attention I’ve received from police. Being surveilled many times over the past two years while exercising my guaranteed freedoms under the Constitution of Canada, in covering news stories for The Tyee and Megaphone Magazine, freelancing for such local NGOs as Pivot Legal Society and the BC Civil Liberties Association and supplying photos to the City of Vancouver’s Corporate Communications department, has left me with a chill.

War on Photography wrote about Black’s decision, prompting a photographer named Mark Kalan to state the following:

“Never give up – never surrender!”.

Simple words of encouragement, right?

Not in Black’s eyes.

This was his response to Kalan:

I took a look at your blog and your Flickr photostream and found one photo of a traffic cop writing a parking ticket.

Until you start taking some risks as I have done, photographing police at crime scenes in the poorest neighbourhood in all of Canada, in the lead up to and during the most heavily secured Olympic Winter Games in history with 15,000 police, military and security guards stationed in the Host City, and making those photos public with critical commentary, don’t tell those of us who do to never give up or surrender. You sound like a sports fan who likes to take credit for his team’s success because he was at the game. Trouble is, there’s a big difference between the player taking hits and gutting it out on the field and a binocular-wearing, beer-drinking fan in the nosebleed section bitching because a player on his team went down. The sad thing is, that’s where you’ll stay. You won’t jump in and join the skirmish, you’ll safely kick back like any other armchair quarterback and get fat while those in the field go down. Pretty tough not to “give up” or “surrender” when you haven’t even stepped out onto the field, eh?

Before telling others not to give up, why not try getting involved yourself? And by that I mean more than joining a Flickr group called the harasses photographer. At least then you’ll have earned sufficient respect to leave such a comment here. I still feel harassed … by YOU.

Obviously, Black is a little touchy, perhaps a little too touchy to be out there photographing cops and fighting for basic photographer rights.

As a guy who’s been arrested twice in the last three years for photographing cops and who has been harassed countless other times by security guards – not to mention criticized numerous times on this site by anonymous commenters – perhaps I may have a little more credibility in Black’s eyes to state my opinion.

So here it goes:

Jay, you’re nothing but a quitter. And a whiner. And a drama queen. And that’s coming from someone who’s been accused of being the king of drama queens.

You’re a good photographer and obviously very passionate about your work and your cause, but to allow the authorities to intimidate you into quitting casts a negative shadow over all your work.

A true artist would only get stronger under such conditions.

Perhaps that’s the Canadian in you. Yes, I know that’s a cheap shot, but as an American, the best way to define my spirit is to quote from Theodore Roosevelt’s famous Man in the Arena speech:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Now get your ass back into the arena.

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"prison trees" from Broken Lens Blog

By Carlos Miller
In the eyes of prison security guards, it appeared to be a scene straight out of The Great Escape when a man on a bicycle pulled in front of the prison and began snapping photos of the trees.

Yes, trees.

He was immediately surrounded by security guards in three vehicles who demanded to know what he was doing, which is always an annoying question when it’s obvious what a man with a camera is doing.

This is how he described it on his blog.

they had bullet proof vests under their “security” t-shirts and gun holsters with guns in their utility belts.  as one all three get out of each of their cars, i realize that i probably shouldn’t have stopped to take pictures.

the chubbiest of the three men asked in a kind-hearted manner “what are you doing?”  i explained that i was only taking a photograph of the sad-looking trees, he asked to see the pictures and after about 10 mins of interrogation to make sure i wasn’t a terrorist or trying to break anyone out, he let me go.  i nearly got arrested for this shot.

Besides the obvious annoyance of not using capital letters to distinguish sentences, this nameless photographer in a nameless state was under the false impression that the fat security guard was “kind-hearted.”

But that kind-hearted security guard violated his rights by demanding to see his pictures and used strong-armed intimidation tactics to make the guy think he was going to get arrested.

Even if the photographer was taking pictures of the prison walls or the guards themselves, there is nothing they could do about it as long as he wasn’t on prison property. And even if he was, they could just order him to leave.

It’s not like he was on the inside. So they didn’t have to treat him that way.

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By Carlos Miller
Who hired the thuggish security guards who brutally assaulted and detained a pair of photographers last week during a celebrity wedding?

Disney/ABC TV, which was filming the segment of The Bachelor on the beach at the time of the incident, denied hiring O&R Security.

And Next Entertainment, the production company owned by Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss, also denied hiring the security company.

Officials from the Terrenea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, where the assault took them by surprise, also denied hiring the security company.

Despite all the denials, the photographers have a pretty good idea who hired the company because they have filed suit against Disney/ABC TV and Next Entertainment for battery, false imprisonment and negligence, according to X17 Online.

Meanwhile, the thug who runs O&R Security, Antonio Revilla, was threatening to file assault charges against the photographer, even though the image above shows Revilla grabbing the photographyer from behind in a violent chokehold.

Also, all charges against the photographers were thrown out, but that still doesn’t make up for the fact that they were detained by citizen security guards before being handed over to police who jailed them for 20 hours.

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Naturally, that prompted El Paso Police Officer John Chavez to cross the street and confront the man with the camera.

Chavez told KTSM news manager Hollis Grizzard that he was affecting “the integrity of the victim” by filming the scene.

If Chavez was so concerned about the integrity of the victim, he would have remained by the victim’s side to ensure he received the best care from the paramedics on the scene.

It doesn’t appear that Chavez has concern for the integrity of being a police officer because he was recently accused of assault.

This, of course, was not the first time El Paso police tried to prevent journalists from doing their job. Last year, El Paso Police Sgt. Raul Ramirez arrested a pair of reporters for trying to cover another accident.

Check out the raw video of the latest incident.

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In hindsight, I should have asked for the money I spent in probation and fines, but the deadline to file the motion snuck up on me and I didn’t have time to search for all the receipts.

Besides, I didn’t want to get jinx the whole thing by asking for money that I may have paid as a result of my conviction but that was not necessarily a cost that went into my appeal.

Last week, I received notice that my motion was granted, meaning I should be receiving a check for $2,528.40 any day now.

Maybe I can finally purchase the Canon 5d Mark II.

That, of course, is only a fraction of the more than $10,000 I have spent in fighting the charges. Hopefully, I can recover the rest in my planned civil suit.

Below are copies of my motion and the Appellant Court’s decision to grant the motion.

Motion Granted

Carlos Miller’s Motion To Recover Costs

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By Carlos Miller
The ignorant statement came not just from the New Jersey Transit security guard, but from his supervisor. That the parking lot of the Liberty State Park Light Rail Station- which they acknowledged was owned by the state – was private property.

And that is why we were not allowed to take photos.

It was last Friday and I had been in town less than 24 hours.

I took the photos anyway.

All they could do was try to scare me by threatening to call Transit Police.

I was hungry, cold and wanting to get into Manhattan, so I left it at that.

But I did record an audio clip of the incident.

It all started because my friend Peter whom I was visiting and lives in the building right next to the parking lot, used my iPhone to take the following picture of me in the snow.



Being from Miami, snow is a novelty for me, so we thought it would be funny to get a picture of me standing in it. He is a writer, not a photographer, which is why his finger came out in the photo.

Once the guard started barking at us, I took the iPhone from Peter and started recording audio.

The guard told me I couldn’t take pictures, then called his supervisor, who offered to call the cops.

I told them we needed to go into town to grab a slice, so we could deal with that later. We walked off with the supervisor following behind us in his SUV. I took more photos.

Below are the photos where the supervisor pulls up, then follows us as we walked out.

Supervisor also tells me that the state-owned parking lot is "private property"

The supervisor then followed us out of the parking lot

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But it is self-evident.

More info.

http://www.sdsmke.com/

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By Carlos Miller
The war against the paparazzi is now affecting photographers who are not even in the business.

A real estate agent said he was sitting in his car outside the home of former Spice Girl Melanie Brown when her bodyguard reached into his car and snatched his camera.

Amado Aguirre said he was only taking pictures of houses in her Los Angeles neighborhood to help him come up with an appraisal of a neighboring house.

But Brown, who was walking her dog with her husband, Stephan Belafonte, thought he was photographing her, so she notified her bodyguard who accosted Aguirre.

A scuffle ensued and Aguirre said he suffered bodily damage.

He is now suing, according to Star Pulse.

Even if he was a celebrity photographer, he would have a strong case against Brown. But the fact that he wasn’t will make him even more sympathetic to a jury if it reaches that level.

P.S. Now I am off to New York. Send me an email if you want to meet up.

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Photo by Vanessa Montes

By Carlos Miller
After a long and feisty blog battle, Photography is Not a Crime was named Best Overall Blog in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Best of Blogs Award Contest.

But the idiots at The Phinsider still think the joke is on me.

They can laugh all they want, but they are the ones who fizzled out in the final round of this contest. Just like the Miami Dolphins do in their regular seasons.

This is what Matty of Phinsider had to say about the Sun-Sentinel’s official results (he wasn’t at the award ceremony):

Unfortunately, we did not win the “best overall blog” category. We were in it until the end but ended up in the top three. The winner was Photography is Not a Crime. His blog personally isn’t my cup of tea. After all, the whole idea of his site was to highlight his court battle when he was arrested for taking photos of police offers just for the hell of it. The cops, obviously, were not very happy. From there, his blog morphed into some first amendment blog defending photographers across the world.

For the record, the blogger obviously didn’t learn his lesson the first time. He got arrested a second time for the same thing – taking photos of the police against their wishes. Can you get more self-righteous than that?

[On a personal note, if some dude was taking pictures of me for no apparent reason, I'd be pissed, too. And if I asked the guy to stop and he continued, you better believe there would be issues. Who the hell wants strangers taking pictures of them? Me thinks this guy has too much time on his hands.]

The blogger also asks for donations on his page to fund his legal defense – which is rather ridiculous if you ask me. But I won’t get into that. His arrogance and self-righteousness is evident all over his site – especially in this post where he mocks our community and our team a little bit more.

But the joke is on him. As you can see below based on these stats provided by an impartial web traffic site, we have more readers here in one week than he does in a year (and that’s a modest estimate, too). And I’ll take our very active and wide-reaching community over his 12 comments per day (and that’s on the high side) any day of the week.

Matty never names nor links to the “impartial web traffic site,” but provides some type of screen capture that states PINAC receives an average of 478 readers in a month.

I can assure Matty that I get many more times that amount in a single day.

Otherwise, how else would PINAC have earned more votes than his blog?

But trash-talking aside, I was truly surprised when they named PINAC as best overall during the awards ceremony Wednesday night.

I thought Worst Pizza was going to walk away with the award. He ended up winning Best Food Blog. And Phinsider won Best Sports Blog.

And Miami Beach 411, where I am a senior editor, won Best News Blog.

But now Lapp of Worst Pizza wants me to eat my words about this being a popularity contest.

I’d rather eat a slice of pizza. Perhaps at one of my local pizza joints where I plan to take him soon.

Or maybe in New York City where I will be this weekend.

But yes, it was a popularity contest. Aren’t all voting contests?

Despite Phinsider’s high amount of readers, they still had to turn to other sports blogs to help them with votes, attempting to use my allegiance to the Oakland Raiders as a way to motivate fans from the Kansas City Chiefs, San Diego Chargers and Denver Broncos blogs to vote against me (Phinsider is one of 200 blogs that make up the Sports Blog Nation).

And I turned to my peeps at Democratic Underground for votes, who’ve been supportive of me from the day I was first arrested for photographing cops against their wishes. Without DU, I would never have won.

I am leaving for New York on Thursday and returning on Sunday, so blogging will be minimal. Join me on Facebook to keep up with my updates in NYC.

Thanks to everybody who voted. It’s well-appreciated.

Now it’s time to get back to business.

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Take the latest case from Atlantic City where hundreds of cops packed into a meeting to show support for five officers who are being laid off.

According to the Press of Atlantic City, a pair of journalists were ordered to leave by Mayor John McMenamin for reasons that are not clear.

Emotions ran high at Tuesday’s meeting and at one point, McMenamin told a Press of Atlantic City reporter and photographer to leave the meeting, while allowing another newspaper photographer to stay. The Press staff refused, citing their right to be at a public meeting.

Police Chief Thomas Conroy asked McMenamin if he wanted to sign a criminal complaint against them. McMenamin declined to sign.

As chief of police, Conroy should have defended the journalists’ right to be at the public meeting rather than offer to sign a criminal complaint against them.

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