Every few weeks a story come out about a police officer getting in a fight with a photographer. Generally the altercation begins when the photographer tries to capture a shot that the officer deems unfit. The resulting aggression seems to stem from a basic misunderstanding of the law: what a photographer is or is not allowed to photograph and how much authority a police officer has over such actions. As a filmmaker, I’ve encountered my share of police officers while out shooting, but most of my encounters have been humorous ones.
In high school I was stopped by a cop for shooting a video in a park. Not because I was shooting a video but because my young friends were running around with brightly colored squirt guns, which he thought looked dangerous. We handed the officer one of the toy guns and he stood next to his cruiser for a long time, examining it. Then he told us to just shoot farther away from the road. He was actually pretty nice about it, allowing us to continue shooting rather than sending us home.
Another time my friends and I were out on a shoot when we saw a toilet on the side of the road. Of course we had to pull over and get footage. I parked and set up a tripod. Shortly after, as one of my friends was approaching the toilet and I had the camera rolling, a cop pulled up behind us. He walked over and asked “is that your commode?” I said no, and that we were just filming it. He thought a minute and then said, “okay” and drove off.
I snapped the photo featured above without either officer noticing me. I was walking around Greenville, South Carolina when I happened upon the scene. I assume the cruiser ran into the other car, but I don’t know how it happened. I also don’t know what the officers would have done if they had seen me taking the picture. I assume they wouldn’t have cared much. Most people around there were pretty laid back.
My weirdest encounter with the police happened a year ago. My friend Jeremy was out shooting video in a park while I did some intern work in an office a few blocks away. We were making a film over the weekend and Jeremy had decided that he might as well get some B-roll while I was at my internship. Three officers surrounded him, told him they could arrest him right on the spot for what he was doing, and then escorted him back to where I was working. They never explained why what he was doing was arrest worthy. He was just shooting video of the park lake and some trees, and he showed them all the footage he had captured. Apparently there was a little league baseball game going on at the other end of the park, and some parents had called to complain. A cruiser sat outside the office till we left, and it followed my friend when he walked over to the gas station to buy some coffee. It was a quiet Saturday in October and we assumed they were just bored.