President Barack Obama was in town yesterday, and a friend of mine got caught in traffic as the presidential motorcade went by. My friend was on a bike, so he was able to glide up close to the barricade where police were stopping traffic.
As the motorcade went by, he pulled out his cell phone to snap a picture. The policemen manning the barricades warned him to put it away, as it’s not kosher to take a picture of the motorcade.
My friend was steamed, but complied. Now, I agree with him: one should be able to take any picture one wants from a public street. Conversely, my wife thinks there could be a valid security reason for forbidding pictures of the motorcade.
i have several pictures of a Bush motorcade that passed by my work years ago in Cincinnati. Nobody said ‘boo’ to me and there were several uniformed police near me and a few guys in suits that looked distinctly out of place.
I don’t know about a Presidential motorcade, but in general anything public is subject to being legally photographed.
There was an article in the Washington Posta few days ago about how so many law enforcement officers are ignorant of the actual laws involved regarding photography, and get all Wyatt Earp on people who want to take pictures in situations where it is perfectly legal.
In an airport I was taking photos of my wife getting a secondary screening at security when a TSA official told me it was not allowed. The linked article mentions explicitly that TSA does not prohibit photography in screening area.
I have taken pictures of Bahraini and Romanian motorcades without trouble. The first was right outside Government house in Bahrain and the second was near Batumi, Republic of Georgia. I also have pictures of the Portuguese delegation at Ataturk’s tomb in Ankara.
I’ve never been to DC or anywhere close to a US President… when he came to Prague I stayed home in my apartment.
well there certainly were a lot of people photographing JFK’s motorcade. Is that somehow related to changes in security preventing it? But the photos and videos of that help the investigation. Is there so much media coverage now they don’t need/want normal people photographing the President?
In the photography message boards I used to frequent, this is pretty common occurrence. Not just with a motorcade. But taking pictures of federal buildings or really taking a picture of anyone or anything “official.” I think the justification is that if someone has a picture of someone or something they could potentially study it for vulnerabilities. The problem is, more often then no, what the photog is doing is totally legal and the officer either doesn’t know it, or doesn’t care. Now, I don’t think every cop can know every law there is, but this one comes up so often and it seems quite basic that I would think they should know it.
As Captain Barney Miller told Sgt Dietrich when he was arrested, “When a police officer tells you to do something, you don’t quote your rights, you do it.”
That’s good advice. If a cop asked me to not take a picture of something. The best thing to do would be to not take the picture, find the relevant laws and talk to the chief about it. Next time he’ll know. If you start spouting off laws at the officer I think you’re likely to find yourself under arrest. Sure, you’d get off (hopefully), but it’s a lot of inconvenience (getting arrested, having to go to court, possibly hiring a lawyer etc etc etc). You can stand up for yourself by being an activist and making a scene, or you can stand up for your rights by talking to the right people. If the chief doesn’t want to hear from you, go higher, if they won’t talk, go to the media. Hell, when if comes to photography in public places, the media is probably going to be far more help to you then a lawyer out of the phone book. I’d imagine their legal team deals with this on a fairly regular basis.
That’s what I’m saying. You could do that or…you could just not get yourself arrested to begin with. Do you really want to have to hire a lawyer and spend all that time and money in court and hope to win? Plus you’d have to go through the trouble of being arrested. When it might just be easier to put your camera down, go home, spend 10 minutes on the internet looking up the relevant laws and probably get the whole thing cleared up with a phone call.
I was just thinking in general, not this topic specifically. But, IME anywhere the motorcade goes, it’ll go through again a few hours later on it’s way back to the airport.
Unlikely. They would certainly vary the route. In any case, this is just an example. I can’t see the allure of having some personally taken snapshots of a bunch of black secret service SUV’s and the President’s limo. Plenty of pictures of these things are around. Not a very interesting subject, really. Of course it takes all kinds. When I am down in Hollywood and they are having a movie premiere, it never ceases to amaze me how many stupid tourists crowd around behind the barricades trying to get a crappy picture of some insipid movie star with their point and shoots, when much better pictures taken by professionals in the press will be up on the internet within hours, so I guess it takes all kinds.
It is the principle of the thing. Maybe if a few of these dumb coppers get their city sued for big bux for violating what is every person’s right, they will lay off this stupidity, and go bust some potheads or something. :rolleyes:
I was detained by the cops in Penn Station for taking pictures, but pretty much told them to lump it. I understand that New Yorkers wet their pants pretty easily these days, but if a terrorist wanted details of Penn Station, they could probably find freaking BLUEPRINTS if they looked through enough back issues of Model Railroader magazine. These dumbasses are trying to protect some of the most photographed buildings in the world! And from what? Something anyone could just walk by and take a gander at up close at any time?
The real purpose of all this is to remind us that we are subjects now, who are to be obedient and timid, not citizens with rights. Just like TSA.
Unlikey that they would take the same route back? I’ve seen Clinton, Obama and both Bush’s in Milwaukee many many many times. I guess I don’t know the route after they get closer to their destination, but I can tell you they always come back the same way they left (I work across from the airport, so I always see the motorcades come out of the airport from one of three exits* and travel a few miles to the freeway). With all the security that goes into moving the president around, I can’t see why they’d want to have to double it all up. They have cops blocking every side road that leads to the road the president will be on, cops on every overpass, they have people out ahead of time scouting out the route. They check all the sewers (I don’t know exactly what that means, but I heard it from someone who used to work with the SS when the motorcade was in Milwaukee and it jives with what I heard from someone else that they weld all the manholes and sewer grates down if he’s doing something outdoors). So, like I said, I see him leave the airport, and make his way to the freeway, I see him come back the same way, I can’t imagine the route from the freeway exit to the destination varies much more then it has to (obviously they aren’t going to have the whole motorcade do a Y turn and go back, and the on ramp will be in a different place then the off ramp)
Something else interesting is that I’ve seen the Obama motorcade I think twice now, it’s probably about a third the size of Bush the younger’s.
Mitchell International has (well, now it’s ‘had’) two Air Force bases. One has one exit, the other has two and the presidents, for obvious reasons, always land at one of them).
