aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Busted by Miami police for taking their picture

Thomas Hawk is following the story:

Carlos Miller is a Miami based journalist who was recently arrested after, according to Miller, he was told not to photograph the police who were investigating a “private matter” and asked to move along.

Rather than comply with the police, Miller instead continued taking photographs of them, a crime for which he asserts he was arrested.  In the end Miller spent 16 hours in a Miami Dade jail and now faces nine counts over the incident. You can read Miller’s take of what happened at this story here. The Miami Herald is also reporting on it here. [...]

I guess I’m just not buying the cop’s story here.  To me it seems like overkill to put Carlos through what he was put through.  It doesn’t all add up.  I can envision a scenario where what really happened was a photographer was taking photos of cops who didn’t want to be photographed.  They asked him not to photograph them and he continued, so they used their power to teach him a lesson.  The problem is that the cops should not be telling anyone not to photograph them.  If they want to be in a job where they won’t be photographed public service is probably not for them.  Also regardless of whether Carlos “identified” himself as a journalist or not, this is not relevant.  We are all citizen journalists and as an actual journalist Carlos holds no special rights over any of the rest of us.

I hope that this matter is investigated and that if Carlos indeed was unjustly arrested that the cops in question lose their jobs at a minimum.  I hope that his story gets the attention that it deserves and that police everywhere and photographers everywhere are better educated about our respective rights.

The above is excerpted from Hawk’s telling of the police side of the story, which includes the entire police report (with Carlos’ personal information redacted) page one.pdf, page two.pdf.