Hasta La Ideas

Almost a month to the date, we were talking about the controversy sparked up by photographer Shawn Nee‘s hidden camera video as he had a run-in with the Los Angeles Police Department (and CNN‘s Rick Sanchez) over some photos taken in a subway station. Now there’s been another bit of photog vs. law enforcement controversy, but perhaps on a larger scale, in London. The Guardian reports that famous architecture photographer Grant Smith recently found himself surrounded, questioned, and searched by seven officers, including some who had come from a riot van, because he’d been taking photographs of a church. After not giving his name to a security guard who asked him what he was doing there, the police pounced in no time flat. Not only is it embarrassing due to Smith’s high profile, it also came following this:

His experience comes despite a warning last week to all police forces not to use section 44 measures unnecessarily against photographers. In a circular to fellow chief constables, Andy Trotter, of British Transport police, said: “Officers and community support officers are reminded that we should not be stopping and searching people for taking photos. Unnecessarily restricting photography, whether from the casual tourist or professional, is unacceptable.”

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