The Police and the Big Picture : News Photographers Tell of Harassment at Scenes of Disasters

SAN DIEGO —  On the evening of Sept. 3, KGTV (Channel 10) photographer Bob Riley drove to the Naval Training Center, responding to a rather mundane story by television standards, reports of sailors mysteriously being overcome by nausea. A few minutes after arriving, though, he was in the midst of a confrontation with fire and law enforcement officials.

Such confrontations are not unusual for San Diego news photographers, except this one led to Riley’s arrest.

Riley, in his 40s, a 20-year veteran with Channel 10, was already on the scene when a fire marshal drove up. According to the police report, he missed the entrance and attempted to back up. Riley, shut out of the training center, looking for any available footage, began to tape the fire marshal’s arrival, shining his video light in the back of the car.

The fire marshal got out of his car and reportedly let Riley know that he wanted the light turned off. Riley declined to be interviewed for this article, but his boss, Channel 10 news director Paul Sands, said Riley never heard any instructions to turn off the light.

What is known is that an altercation ensued. Riley said his camera was pushed away from his face. The fire marshal said he was shoved in the arm. Riley was handcuffed and taken away, at first charged with battery.

In a manner typical to these types of confrontations, it was unclear from the stories exactly who was to blame. The city attorney’s office refused to prosecute Riley. A police spokesman said Riley apologized to the fire marshal, a story Sands said he could not confirm. All involved parties appear to want to forget the incident. It was a heat-of-the-moment situation that got out of hand, the type of thing that happens all the time.

And it does happen all the time. It rarely gets to the point of an arrest, but confrontations between press photographers and law enforcement officials are not rare at all.

“I was threatened with arrest no less than four or five times” at the Sept. 12 crash of an F-14 Navy jet in El Cajon, said KFMB-TV (Channel 8) photographer Charles Landon, adding that the police “tolerate us at best, and it’s been that way for years.”

Photographers say things got better since a Channel 8 photographer, Steve Leiserson, sued a police officer and the city of San Diego after he was arrested at the North Park scene of the PSA jetliner crash in 1978. The arrest of Leiserson (charges were later dropped) and the detention of Union-Tribune photographer Barry Fitzsimmons at the PSA crash scene sparked the formation of the San Diego News Photographers Assn., which has staged meetings with law enforcement associations.

Yet, some photographers say, line officers are once again attempting to overly control press photographers.

“It’s headed back in a bad direction,” Fitzsimmons said.

Riley’s case was extreme. But confrontations happen on an almost daily basis.

Times photographer Don Bartletti was shoved to the ground, handcuffed and detained at a Jerry Falwell meeting at Golden Hall a few years ago, when he was working with the Union-Tribune.

“The guy with the camera becomes a secondary target” for police officers, Bartletti said. “They treat us as if we’re amateurs on the scene taking tourist pictures. Some cops have a propensity for overreacting.”

San Diego Police Department spokesman Bill Robinson acknowledged that confrontations between officers and photographers are a common problem, but disputed a suggestion that it is getting

worse.

“The same problems happen today that happened 13 years ago,” Robinson said. “Police officers and photographers are adversaries by the nature of their businesses.”

It is usually line officers, the cops on the beat, not veteran cops or media relations experts, who first confront photographers at the scene of incident. Often the photographers arrive at the same time as officers, if not earlier. Although the Penal Code allows credentialed members of the media access to areas roped off by police, an officer has the broad power to restrain members of the media from tromping through a crime scene.

Just about anything can be called a crime scene at first. A fire can be labeled a possible arson by a police officer on the scene; a car accident may be a murder attempt.

One of the key debates of Leiserson’s legal battle over his arrest at the Flight 182 scene centered on a rumor that California Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally was on the plane. Lawyers for the city argued that the rumor justified the officer ordering Leiserson away from the scene, even though other officers had permitted Leiserson access.

The state 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that Leiserson’s arrest was reasonable, but, in a precedent-setting move, confirmed the media’s right to have access to disaster sites.

“Press representatives must be given unrestricted access to disaster sites unless police personnel at the scene reasonably determine that such unrestricted access will interfere with emergency operations,” according to the appeal court’s written opinion. “This means that members of the press must be accommodated with whatever limited access to the site may be afforded without interference.”

The court openly questioned if the Dymally rumor were not a “post hoc justification for an exclusion order,” but it felt compelled to give the officer at the scene the benefit of the doubt.

At the scene of Sept. 12’s F-14 crash, Channel 8 photographer Landon found himself debating with sheriff deputies whether the accident was a crime scene or a disaster. The deputies said the plane may have been sabotaged, Landon said, so they kept him away.

“It’s up to the disposition of the officer on the scene,” Landon said. “And his immediate reaction is usually to close us out.”

Fitzsimmons said, “The basic beat cop always believes it is a crime scene, no matter what.”

It is an ambiguity that gives police officers at the scene wide latitude to handle the media.

“There is a certain point where (police officers) don’t know what they’ve got,” said Susan Heath of the city attorney’s criminal department. “If a horde of media goes tromping through, they may destroy evidence.”

Photographers counter that they are not amateurs unfamiliar with crime scenes. They become especially outraged when they see others permitted access to a scene when they are not. At the F-14 crash scene, Landon was upset because he saw a Fire Department team videotaping the scene.

“I think we should have the same access allowed to non-investigative personnel,” said Leiserson, now owner of his own video products company.

Last week a Union-Tribune photographer was trying to cover a small fire in La Jolla. A line officer refused to allow the photographer to drive into the scene, even though the photographer could clearly see a radio station’s station wagon in the scene. The photographer eventually complained to Robinson, who often serves as a liaison between the media and the Police Department. After an investigation, Robinson said the officer was acting on instructions from the Fire Department.

“The main thing is to treat people equally,” Robinson said.

A perception that confrontations between officers and photographers are increasing is simply because of an increase in the number of photographers and police officers, according to Robinson. “There are more and younger officers,” Robinson said.

Some photographers agree that it is often the younger officers who become involved in emotional conflicts with photographers.

“Oftentimes new and younger officers aren’t familiar with the city, the system and photographers,” Channel 39 news director Nancy Bauer said. “We have good photographers here.”

San Diego officers take a class in media relations while attending the Police Academy, and in-house videos and special courses keep them informed of methods in dealing with the media, Robinson said. During long operations, he said, a member of the department’s public affairs office is usually on hand to serve as a buffer between line officers and the media.

Problems always occur “in the heat of a breaking story,” he said. “If an operation is lasting two or three hours, then we never have problems.”

But problems do occur. And there is little doubt that some line officers have become more sensitive to the media, especially toward television photographers.

The San Diego Police Department in general has been on the defensive since the controversial Sagon Penn trials and several incidents involving minorities.

“The Police Department has been through a rough couple of years,” said Channel 10 news director Sands. “Their reaction is to kill the messenger. Some of what we’re seeing is a reaction to that.”

Some photographers say they have seen a change in the attitude of some officers since last December, when television cameras vividly captured the killing of an Escondido man, Robert Taschner, who earlier had killed a sheriff’s deputy. Taschner was gunned down by members of the sheriff’s Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit when he emerged from an apartment, guns blazing.

The videotape of the incident, shown over and over again by television stations, raised questions about the sheriff’s handling of the situation, especially footage that seemed to suggest that the man was shot while being held down by sheriff’s deputies. A few weeks later a Union-Tribune photographer was arrested at a similar SWAT operation in Escondido (charges were dropped).

It is precisely the type of embarrassing video shot in Escondido, photographers argue, that makes it essential for photographers to have complete access to the scene.

“The trend is to contain the press into regulated views, whether it is a presidential campaign or a traffic accident,” Leiserson said. “It’s just better to know there is an independent record of things at the scene of an investigation.”

Photographers are often the only press people at the scene of an incident, arriving long before reporters.

“People have a right to know” what is happening at the scene, Fitzsimmons said. “If we’re not there, (the police) are not going to tell us” what is going on.

Most photographers resent it when police officers attempt to restrict their access on the grounds that a scene is dangerous. The general policy of the San Diego Police Department is that photographers “have a right to get killed,” Robinson said.

At the El Cajon F-14 plane crash, Times photographer Vince Compagnone was among the photographers who arrived on the scene before police lines were established. He was forced back by authorities, who said he was in danger.

“It’s their obligation to warn you if your life is in jeopardy,” Compagnone said. “But, in the end, if you want to run into a fire, that’s your responsibility.”

When questions arise at the scene, each of the local television news operations instructs its photographers not to push it, to phone in and let officials deal with the situation.

“If they really have a problem, they should call in and we can do what we can from here,” Channel 8 news director Jim Holtzman said.

Robinson said an “ongoing relationship” between photographers and law enforcement officials is the best way to keep incidents to a minimum. The News Photographers Assn. has been regularly meeting with police, including a meeting two months ago with the city’s SWAT team, but some photographers grumble that it has done little real good, that they are still at the whim of the first officers at the scene.

“We really need to sit down again with the general police population,” said Fitzsimmons, who suggested having photographers actually talk to Police Academy students.

But all parties agree that there are always going to be conflicts between aggressive photographers and resentful law enforcement officers. “Our job is to get as close as we can without interfering,” Sands said. “It’s a basic, inherent conflict. Nine out of 10 times, everybody handles it fine, and things work out.”