This Morning I learned on social media about local fired departments doing crash extrication and firefighting training, So I though great opportunity to give these people some exposure and get some practice in.
I was wrong. I pulled up near the area the training was being conducted outside the area they had blocked by cones for vehicular traffic and gathered my gear. I took my D810 and F4 with the longest lenses I have in order to stay far away from the training. No more then 30 seconds after I started walking around what could only be presumed as the perimeter of the property a local Police officer came to talk with me. He said “they” ( presuming a Fire Chief) wanted to know who I was and what I was doing and that “they” didn’t want pictures taken. I told the officer I am a local photographer here to photograph the training. The officer then reinstated that “they” didn’t pictures taken. I told the officer I though that was pretty odd and asked to confirm this was indeed public property, he said yes. I then asked if he knew then they could not prevent me from photographing the training. The officer then stated it to be a closed training event. Some cones in a drive way hardly constitutes a closed training event in my opinion.
I could have walked outside the vehicle barriers or to the park and there would have been nothing they could have done but to move the barrier out. At this point it was not worth the trouble, going out there today was more for them then myself, pressing the point would actually disrupt the training and that is not what I wanted. So I went to my car put my equipment away and left.
Not even having a opportunity to talk with the person who took issue with me being there is a little troubling. The fact that Public Servants think they can prevent Photo Journalist or any other person from photographing them in public is disturbing. I understand there are issues with “scene” control and liability. None of those existed today. There was no fire line or police line designating an exclusion area. Some how everywhere in sight became excluded. I don’t know what this person thinks is so secretive about about this training to keep people in the dark. The fact that this training was posted on social media is interesting considering its secretive nature.
This event has made me think about how to handle these situations in the future. This is the first time I had been confronted with issues of me photographing and I was not prepared as I should have been. Now I shall put together list of things to both put them at ease and to protect my rights. People may not think I can be press since I only have a blog and I am a Freelance Photographer not tied to and agency but you don’t have to be FOX or CNN to be press. You may wonder why I had not previously coordinated with the FD, I only knew about the training because of facebook as it was in progress so I could not coordinate prior. If this was a real situation there would not be prior coordination, you would arrive stay out of the way and do what you can to get the shot.
This rises some questions. Are Public servants trained on what the Press’s rights are and what they can actually prevent them from doing e.g. crossing fire lines, truly interfering with operations or how the press can help them? What could I have done better? I cloud have dug out a business card and tried to get the officer to understand my intentions better even though he was only out to get me to leave. I want to note he was polite the entire time. I should have asked them to state clear scene lines to keep behind. I cloud have and should have asked to talk directly to the “scene“ commander. I can in the future try and meet someone in the Department leadership and converse with them about future training.
Free Press 0, Government secrecy 1
Update 21DEC2019:
For a department official that didn’t want any photos taken more than 10 have been posted of that event. this only reinforces that their actions were bias and wrong.
Greg Parker Photography 