New Rules for NYC Photography

[E_Aiken]

I get hassled probably a little under half of the times I go shooting in the daytime. Two weeks ago, week and a half... I was shooting on a public street facing the water in Brooklyn, two older Polish men and one younger Hispanic guy were just sitting at the end of the street enjoying a nice evening talking. Cops show up, lights on, got there and called in for backup, who arrived with similar fanfare. We were all charged with something teh cops wouldn't really describe. I argued with them for 15 minutes or so about how they can't charge me and not describe what I'm being charged of and why; the three other guys didn't have enough control of English to really fight the cops. Ultimately it was told to us that it was criminal trespassing because there was a sign, in an adjacent lot which was completely fenced in, that said "no trespassing." Nevermind we weren't on that lot, we were on the public street adjacent to it. Finally they told me they were letting me off, but told me to pretend I'd been given a summons so the others didn't likewise realize the charge was BS. The other three were all charged and had to go to criminal court in Manhattan. Ridiculous - they let me off because I could speak English well enough to disprove the legitimacy of the charges they were putting on us, and expected me to pretend along with them?

Absolutely NO WAY this bill is not going to affect us if it's so vague as to be left to individual police interpretation. There are tons of great cops, but also enough jerkoffs like these dudes to ensure that photographers of all stripes are going to get bent over sooner or later by this law. I myself have been hassled with frequency enough (and I look about as white-bread American as they come, by the way) to think that this is a pretty bad thing for us should it go through.

[Greg Lockrey]

Why? A doctor should have laibility insurance. A photographer should be given some slack.

Oh No....getting your picture taken steals your soul.....you need insurance for the law suit as a consequence.

[tim atherton]

Per the article:


Note the two or more & five or more aspect.

not sure that will make a jot of difference. Show up on the street with a LF camera on a tripod and you will be told you need a permit and insurance

[eddie]

just go alone. it says two or more people. even if you have more than two people, if only one has a camera then it sounds like you can have alot of "assistants" as long as there is only one camera "in their hands"

eddie

[cyrus]

When I first got into the legal business, I remember a certain City Attorney's office that prosecuted the "crime" of loitering:

Prosecutor: what were you doing standing at the street corner.

Defendant: Nothing! Nothing at all! I was doing nothing, just standing there, minding my own business before I got arrested!

Prosecutor: I rest my case.

The "crime" of loitering was created in order to give the police the legal right to hassle people - particularly poor homeless people who had the temerity of blighting the view of the rich people out of the windows of their lovely multi-million dollar condos.

This law strikes me as yet another one of those intentionally ill-defined laws that are simply created to legally hassle people.

[David A. Goldfarb]

The motivation behind the law is probably Bloomberg's general campaign to reduce the city's potential liability from personal injury lawsuits.

It used to be that you could sue the city if the city knew about a flaw in the sidewalk and failed to repair it, resulting in a slip and fall injury. So several large personal injury firms sent people all over the city to inspect the sidewalks and printed a thick book annually listing all the cracks in the sidewalks and presented it as a "gift" to the city, knowing full well, of course, that they could never fix them all. Then a couple of years ago the city passed a law making landlords responsible for sidewalks adjacent to their properties.

I suppose that people might still sue the city though, if they were to trip over an errant tripod leg.

[paulr]

Another reason to not go to NY.

That's right! Stay out of NYC. Horrible place. Especially around the holidays. Big Brother wants to tax your cameras and us locals want to mug you and steal your children. Be warned!

[paulr]

Notice that it's a proposal, not an actual law, and that it already faces opposition from the ACLU.

And it covers groups of 2 or more, shooting in one place for over 30 minutes. Would that really apply to the way anyone here photographs?

But my warning to stay the hell away still stands

[Marko]

The best time to oppose overly vague and ill-worded, not to mention ill-conceived, law is precisely in the proposal phase, as the chances of success are the greatest. Once it becomes a full-fledged law, it is much harder to change it.

Success or failure, it quickly becomes a precedent for other cities, so better to squash it early on.

[E_Aiken]

"two people wishing to use a camera..." could this be construed as the photographer and subject, were it to be a portrait? And the time limit thing, who's judging that? I imagine a few others here have had cops come up to them to question and say they'd "gotten a call about half an hour ago about..." their "suspicious activities" (remember the one case where the tripod was called in as a "missile launcher?")

The liability thing, sure. If commercial crews are going to set up boomstands on a crowded street, that makes a good amount of sense to make sure they're covered in case one of those stands happens to go over in a gust and land on a li'l old lady. But the vagueness of terms, combined with the spectacular conspicuous nature of our cameras of choice, make this a bill we should be keeping our eyes on, and perhaps getting involved with.