No matter what you believe, or how much you hate the press, or your dislike for people taking video or pictures of you or anything else at emergency scenes or shooting video outside your fire station, you have no legal right as firefighters, EMTs, paramedics or others in public safety to interfere with what they are doing. Even when you believe the people with the cameras are acting like jerks, if they are in a public space, shooting something that’s in public view, it is their right to do so. That has pretty much always been the case in our country and in recent years, with more and more cameras and way too many confrontations, a number of judges at various levels have reaffirmed it’s the law.
So, how come some people in public safety never get the message and end up making themselves and their organization look bad when a confrontation is captured on video? Such is the case in the video above involving a fire chief in Florida and the one below involving a detective with a prosecutor’s office in New Jersey.
In the fire chief’s case he happened to run into someone who works for the group PINAC or Photography Is Not a Crime. PINAC will “audit” or exercise the right to take pictures or video to see how a jurisdiction handles the situation. I would say in this case, not too good when he tried to take the man’s camera. Make sure you are better prepared when PINAC comes to your neighborhood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pAqmGCu0NY
In the New Jersey incident (above) at a crash scene, the videographer was arrested, but the Ocean County prosecutor would not press charges and admitted this shouldn’t have happened. You can read more here. By the way the video below is what the detective was after and the videographer even offered to let him look at while still at the scene (the detective still insisted on taking the camera).
Consider these videos public service announcements in an effort to keep you out of trouble. For more on these issues, please check out Curt Varone’s Fire Law Blog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtupYEDS-mo
