Quite obviously, i love photography.  Not quite so obvious, I just to be a cop.  Rather odd combination as some would see it, yet I feel it offers me a very unique perspective on photography, especially the legality of what and where photographers are allowed to be.  I caught a recent Flickr post which sparked my interest and replied.  I received a few emails thanking me for the information.  Since it seemed helpful, I thought I would share it here.

The original Flickr post on the Atlanta Photographer’s Guild form, was not a bad post at all.  I thought it was well composed, thought out, and not at all as negative as I have seen some get when speaking of the police.

Here is the post that caught my eye:

got there around 6:30 and started taking photos of whatever looked interesting, but regularjoe was right, it wasn’t all that picturesque. I walked around a bit but eventually wound up on the corner of Marietta Rd. NW and Thomas St NW. I stayed there for a while – maybe an hour – but still wasn’t seeing much. I decided to stick with that angle for a while to see how the city would look under the setting sun.

However… a man in a blue SUV drove by me, saw my camera and tripod and, after passing me, reversed to ask me what I was doing. I explained that I was taking photos of the city and he mentioned it was a sensitive security area. I said I realized but I was focusing on the city. He drove about 20 feet away and waited. I realized he was probably calling security/police but I didn’t anticipate an issue since I was on the border between the road and some old, closed truck stop. After about 10 minutes of waiting, I moved onto the roadway bridge over the tracks themselves. The man in the blue SUV stayed at his perch… until the Atlanta Police Department arrived.

An APD cruiser made a few passes by me and then drove down a private road to meet up with the man in the blue SUV. They were behind a set of trees but I can only assume they talked for a little while. After another 5 minutes or so, the cruiser made another pass and left the area. But 15 minutes after that, it came back… with a vengeance (:P). This time it stopped directly in front of me and turned its flashers on. I looked around to see why the officer felt it necessary to turn the lights on when it was clear I was the only one around in any direction. I approached the officer and asked what the problem was. He asked me why I was taking photos and I told him I was taking shots of the city. He asked for my ID. I asked him if I was required to give it to him and he said yes (while simultaneously giving me the dirtiest look ever). He wrote down everything on it and proceeded to run my name through whatever database he has access to. After roughly five minutes, he handed my ID back, said thank you and drove away. I was fairly confident I was in the clear….

But after another 10 minutes of taking photos on the sidewalk of the bridge, a white Chevrolet Tahoe approached me… and turned police lights on. A plainclothed man got out and said he was a CSX Special Agent and mumbled (speaking purposely too quickly for me to digest) some association with the U.S. Marshal Service. He asked what I was doing and I again explained that I was taking photos of the city. He asked for my ID and I again asked if I was obligated to give it to him. He said I was and, again, wrote down all of my info, this time with my dorm address as well. I told him I was just taking photos from the sidewalk which is public property. He said that because of special homeland security concerns photos of the yard are prohibited. He said the yard handles military technology (he specifically mentioned guns) and that it is off limits. In addition, he said that while the road is public, the bridge is owned by CSX. After asking for his title again, just to clarify what kind of stop this was exactly, he repeated the term “CSX Special Agent” but did not mention the Marshal Service again. He told me that I was being given a Criminal Trespassing Citation warning, being entered into a database, and that if I’m ever on that property again, I will be charged. He gave me no documentation and I didn’t see a badge of any sort – all I have is his name.

Having gotten no decent photos and unwilling to go any further for one night, I packed up and left.

I leave you with this: I suggest not taking photos anywhere near Tilford or Inman until the public/private land issue has been sorted out. I’m still not sure if the “CSX Special Agent” was a government official but a cursory Google search reveals that he was probably “railway police” and likely is deputized to some degree in Georgia. Georgia does have a “stop and identify” law (O.C.G.A. § 16-11-36) so, it seems that you are required to give ID when requested [I am obviously not a lawyer and this anything *but* from legal advice]. But overall, the shots aren’t even worth it. I have all of the names of people involved, the times and locations, but I’m still deciding what to do…

So yea… fun night this has been!

~ Brett

I thought that was a good post.  Very informative.  I have seen people get much more upset over much less than this.  So I applaud Brett for keeping his cool when he could have easily turned this post into a complaint and anti-law enforcement session.  Here is my response, for those interested and still following along:

I just caught this through another post and wanted to offer a different perspective. First, I am in a unique and often times awkward position as I used to be a police officer working the south west metro Atlanta area (not APD). I started policing after 9/11 and stopped last year after my daughter was born (long story, but she was well worth the career change). I often see a lot of posts (not solely on Flickr) regarding law enforcement and the abuse of photographers. In many ways, it is saddening. Having been a cop I do not like hearing stories of misuse of the authority and being a photographer, I certainly do not like anything that limits such a wonderful creative outlet.

One word of caution that I would offer is with regard to reading materials published about rights and what one can and cannot do as a photographer. While we all have rights, laws will vary from state to state and the environment you are in will dictate much of the police response and activity. An encounter with APD will surely be different than that of an officer in Hampton. So while we are all guaranteed certain rights, I would just caution you on going by material prepared by someone in Oregon, as they might have slightly different laws.

Having said that, a police officer here in Georgia does not need any reason at all to come speak to you. If they did, you would need the same to talk to a random person on the street. There are 3 types of police-citizen encounters being taught at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth, which include the random encounter, reasonable suspicion, and probable cause. If the officer believes, by reasonable suspicion, that criminal activity is afoot, you can be detained, asked questions, etc. Probable cause will provide reason for arrest.

The gray area is the asking for ID, logging it into the computer, etc. If there is reasonable suspicion or probable cause, then you can ask for the ID. If the officer had no reason to believe criminal activity was afoot, then why ask for the ID? I believe this is a personal choice. I was lied to more times than not, and unfortunately as a police officer, you learn to distrust more than trust, so being highly skeptical is a way of life. My wife still says that I react to certain situations much differently because I was a cop. It shapes your opinions no matter how you look at it. Could you probably refused to show your ID? Sure. You could also asked for their supervisor and dealt with their supervisor, who “should” know more than the regular officer.

As for your information, your name was most likely run through GCIC/NCIC, which checked your information against the Georgia database and national database for criminal warrants. It would have also returned any restraining orders, FBI hits, probation, or gang intelligence, and possibly more, however, those were just some of the responses I typically received from the computer.

Documenting criminal trespass warnings (CT) for our department was critical. Many times we dealt with vagrants who would frequent the same areas and bother business owners and patrons. They would steal and beg for money to purchase drugs. The only way for us to really combat them was to issue CT warnings and document that in the computer. Without that documentation, you couldn’t officially say that they had been given an official warning. I knew there were cops that would issue CT warnings and never document it. The vagrant would lie and say they were never warned and without any documentation in the local system to prove otherwise, we let them go and enter the information ourselves. The next time they were on the property they were arrested and charged with criminal trespass. No documentation was ever presented to the person who was actually issued the warning. If I was at a gas station and issued a CT warning, I liked to give the store owner my business card and the person’s name on the back with the CT warning. That way if they had future problems and another officer handled the call, they would have some better information.

Also to that end, toward the end of my time as a cop, our shift reported statistics to the Captain over the Patrol Division. We were never required to have a certain number of anything because they never enforced quotas on us, but they wanted to see that we were actually doing something instead of hiding somewhere and sleeping. One way to track that was by the information we entered into our local system, which included field contacts, the same method used to document CT warnings. So when your name was run on our computer, it checked GCIC, NCIC, and our local system for information.

Lastly, with regards to the documentation, our computer system allowed us to enter notes into each call. If no police incident report was done, the procedure was to enter something by way of notes so that if that call was ever questioned, the actions taken could be reviewed. I always entered detailed notes, which saved my rear end more than once. If a supervisor wanted to know what happened on the call, and why you did what you did, they could also look at the notes of the call which served as an internal record of the event.

So what would I have done?

As tough as it was, and I never succeeded 100% of the time, I always tried to be a mirror of the person I was talking to. If they were polite, I had no reason to give them attitude in return. If they were rude without provocation, that was a different story. So if I had encountered a photographer who was being polite, I might not have gone through all of that. I have gone a long way for people who were honest and polite. There were plenty of really bad criminals out there and I never felt the need to absolutely cornhole every person I came across. I wouldn’t want someone doing that to me now that I am no longer a cop. I never had the issue come up about identifying myself. 99% of the time I was in uniform. However, on the rare occasions we worked a special plain clothes detail, I made sure that when it was time to encounter someone and take some type of action, my badge was out and other police insignia so that there was no confusion.

Who really knows what started the incident? Someone from the yard could have called the police and waited for them to do something when they could have asked you. If you were in an area where they could not have asked you to leave, then it was wrong of them to do so. As someone said, you have to weigh the risk and reward with any such location as you will surely get stopped, which many view as harassment. In our case, we could easily have had a supervisor ask what happened with that call and been reprimanded if not handled correctly.

Where I worked, we were near the airport. People liked to stop and photograph the planes and/or just watch. I remember getting calls about cars stopped on the side of the road taking photos. I have to say my first thought was “and why did someone call the police?” Usually when we got there, we never saw anyone on the road or taking photos. However, I would document that so that if I were even called into the office and asked why the hell I didn’t do anything, I would at least have some account of what happened to back me up.

I am not defending the officer’s actions, so please do not make that assumption. I am merely trying to offer another point of view that people rarely get to see. Yea, I am more than sure that there are rude officers who have not taken the time to understand the laws about this type of thing and for them, it is easier to run the problem off. I honestly believe it takes knowledge, by both parties, in order to truly resolve the issue. I don’t know if the long ramble above is even truly helpful. I have always been hesitant about posting such information in fear of it turning into a giant debate and argument.

I support the right of people to freely take photographers where they are allowed to do so. I think it is extremely sad that our society has become so paranoid that what used to be free is now freely questioned. So be careful out there.

Hopefully that might help shed some light on the situation.  Feel free to hit me up with questions.