Police investigate run-in with videographer
by ADAM LYNN
The News Tribune, A1.
March 9th, 2007 06:44 AM (PST)
http://www.thenewstribune.com/links/story/6407053p-5712802c.html

      Internal affairs detectives are investigating an incident in which a 
      Tacoma police officer told a college student he couldn’t use his video 
      camera near the Port of Tacoma, the site of anti-war protests this week.
 
      Portions of the Tuesday interaction between University of Puget Sound 
      junior Joseph La Sac and the uniformed officer were captured on La Sac’s 
      Canon XL2 Digital Camcorder, and the student posted Wednesday an edited 
      version on the popular Web site YouTube.com.

      At one point during the clip titled “Film is not a Crime,” an officer off 
      screen is heard telling La Sac to “shut it off or you’re going to be 
      arrested.”

      Tacoma resident and online journalist John Hathaway notified an assistant 
      police chief about the YouTube clip Thursday morning, and the assistant 
      chief ordered the internal affairs office to launch an investigation, 
      police spokesman Mark Fulghum said.

      Later Thursday, someone complained about the incident using the city’s new 
      online complaint system, Fulghum said. He said police policy requires that 
      person’s name to remain secret.

      La Sac said during a series of brief telephone conversations Thursday he 
      had not yet filed a formal complaint about the interaction.
      Investigators were just beginning to gather information on the incident, 
      including which officers were there and what exactly transpired, Fulghum 
      said.

      Investigators are interested in what was edited from the video and what 
      took place before the camera was turned on as well as the action appearing 
      in the YouTube clip, Fulghum added.

      La Sac declined a request for a lengthy interview from The News Tribune on 
      Thursday afternoon, saying he promised to talk to a Seattle television 
      reporter first. That interview is scheduled for this morning.

      But the 22-year-old economics and philosophy major wrote in an e-mail to 
      the newspaper that he went to the port Tuesday about 6 p.m. to tape 
      footage of the protests for an independent news organization.

      “I was alone,” he said. “I wasn’t with any protesters.”

      Anti-war activists have been protesting the movement of Stryker brigade 
      vehicles out of the port to Iraq.

      La Sac complained in a summary accompanying his YouTube clip that he was 
      treated unfairly by officers.

      “Officers at the Port of Tacoma don’t understand the rights of 
      photographers or journalists,” La Sac wrote in the summary. “A group of 
      about eight officers (and a dozen more on the way, including a helicopter) 
      accosted me about filming the port of Tacoma for coverage of the Stryker 
      Brigade Protests.”

      The YouTube video opens with a shot of a Tacoma police officer with a 
      squad car in the background.
 
      A voice, presumably La Sac, asks: “So, you said I can stand over there, 
      right?”

      The officer responds: “On the other side of the barricades.”

      At that point, another officer approaches the camera and asks: “Why do you 
      want to stand there?”

      The cameraman replies: “I’m filming this for an independent news 
      organization.”

      The second officer responds: “OK. No, you’re not. If you’re going to do 
      that and you’re going to tell us that, you know where you’re going to sit? 
      On the other side of the light down there. How ’bout that?”

      The officer then points down a street.

      The video then cuts to a black screen with the white text saying, “Police 
      across the nation are suppressing photography.”

      Toward the end of the clip, the cameraman is heard asking the officers: 
      “Could we just talk about this? Can you not touch the camera?”

      Someone off screen, presumably a police officer, then tells him to turn 
      off the camera before saying: “OK, you’re done, dude.”

      The officer continues: “Tell me how to run it off. You don’t seem to 
      understand there, pal. You better show me before it gets broken.”

      The clip ends with more text: “Once they turned the camera off, they 
      searched me and detained me for an hour.

      More text declared the officers’ actions illegal.

      Fulghum said La Sac was not arrested.

      La Sac said in his e-mail to the newspaper that the incident occurred 
      across the street from where photographers from professional news 
      organizations had shot footage of the protests earlier in the week.

      “Since I hadn’t been to the port for the protests, I was unfamiliar with 
      where the protesters stood and where the police stood,” he said. 
      “Apparently, I was on the side of the road where the police stood, 
      although no clear barricades had been set up at that point, since it was 
      still too early.”

      The exact location of the incident – which is hard to determine from the 
      video – might become important during the internal investigation.

      La Sac may have been trespassing if he was on the west side of Milwaukee 
      Way, north of Lincoln Avenue. Fulghum said Thursday the land on the west 
      side of Milwaukee is port property and considered a no-trespassing zone. A 
      strip along the east side of Milwaukee is considered public land, and 
      police have not restricted journalists, protesters or the public from 
      using it, he said.

      By Thursday evening, more than 1,200 people had viewed La Sac’s YouTube 
      clip, and the video was the talk of the UPS campus, where La Sac serves as 
      a peer minister. 

      Originally published: March 9th, 2007 01:00 AM (PST)

                     
                        © Copyright 2007 Tacoma News, Inc. A subsidiary of The 
                        McClatchy Company