Trius said:
Bill: You miss my point. The OP calls on citizens of the entire range of knowledge, intelligence, judgment, etc., to call in what they consider suspicious behaviour.
Correct. Calling in what any person considers suspicious behavior is a citizen's duty. The police will sort out whether it is or not.
I admit to not being a legal expert. So you are ... big whoop.
I am not an attorney, and what legal knowledge I have is admittedly dated and subject to error.
That leaves gazillions of people of who will get jacked up on their new-found calling to call me in when I simply walk around with a camera and make a stupid bokeh test shot of a fence around some building THEY think is high security.
And I contend that there is nothing wrong with them doing that. What might be wrong is what happens after they do that, depending upon how the police handle it.
And chances are some cop of far less training and intelligence and expertise than you will attend to the situation.
I've been complaining about that very thing for years, if you recall. It absolutely galls me that some police officers believe they have the right to make up laws as they go along, and we're seeing quite a lot of that lately. You and I are on the same side of this fence.
The issue here is not whether one should report suspicious behaviour. It's the silly-damn-effing POSTER, and the fear-climate that accompanies such campaigns.
It comes down, in my opinion, to a citizens's duty to report suspicious (yes, by their own terms, whatever those might be) behavior and circumstances to the police, who should be better trained to deal with people like photographers, who are behaving in a legal manner.
When I was in law enforcement, we had an old lady, a typical snoopy old busybody, who called every day. People were doing things she didn't like or approve of, and she was constantly bothering us about this or that. However, we were not permitted to blow her off - her call might not be the highest priority, but we always responded - we'd have been sued if we had not. One day, she called in a burglary in progress of her neighbors next door who were on vacation. We rolled one unit, just to check it out and let her see the cruiser and know we were listening to her complaints - it was real. We got the guys.
Like it or not, when I was in law enforcement, we urged people to call us if they saw or heard anything they felt needed to be investigated by the police. If there was nothing to it, then there was nothing to it. We caught more than one guy breaking into his own house after getting locked out by the missus, or who came home drunk and lost his keys in the bushes and busted out a window. Sure, we could not arrest them, they had done nothing wrong (except DUI, but past the fact, we could not arrest them). However, it might have been a real burglary, so thanks to the neighbors who called because they heard glass break at 2 a.m.
We don't ask citizens to be legal experts or diviners of what is and is not worthy of investigating. We ask them to be our eyes and ears and to let us know when they think we should become involved. So if I am taking photos in a public place and someone reports me to a police officer, I don't have a problem with that. I'll happily provide my ID, explain why I'm there and what I'm doing. Once I've done that, I don't expect to be further detained, hassled, or forbidden - because I am breaking no law. As long as our encounter stops there, I feel the police are doing their job and good on them. No harm, no foul.
When they step over the line and try to make me stop doing something that is completely legal because they feel they have the power to do that - then we have a problem.
