Armed with his Canon 5D and his new Lensbaby lens, photographer Duane Kerzic set out to win Amtrak’s annual photo contest this week, hoping to win $1,000 in travel vouchers and have his photo published in Amtrak’s annual calendar. He ended up getting arrested by Amtrak police; handcuffed to a wall in a holding cell inside New York City’s Penn Station, accused of criminal trespass. Kerzic says he was hardly trespassing because he was taking photos from the train platform; the same one used by thousands of commuters everyday to step on and off the train.
“The only reason they arrested me was because I refused to delete my images,” Kerzic said in a phone interview with Photography is Not a Crime on Friday. “They never asked me to leave, they never mentioned anything about trespassing until after I was handcuffed in the holding cell.” In fact, he said, the only thing they told him before handcuffing him was that “it was illegal to take photos of the trains.” Obviously, there is a lack of communication between Amtrak’s marketing department, which promotes the annual contest, called Picture Our Trains, and its police department, which has a history of harassing photographers for photographing these same trains. Not much different than the JetBlue incident from earlier this year where JetBlue flight attendants had a woman arrested for refusing to delete a video she filmed in flight while the JetBlue marketing department hosted a contest encouraging passengers to take photos in flight.
We did the same thing at Abu Graib (sp–the Iraq Military Prison). Fall guys are so easy to manipulte==order them to do x,y,z, and then arrest them.
We stand for freedom.
Land of the free
this probably had nothing to do with law
and more to do with mandatory overtime and retroactive overtime laws in NYC…and if your arrested just prior to the arresting officer’s end of shift, he gets the next day off.. (there is more to it than that, but that’s the simplicity of it..
quite often the no charges (or vague ones) are mentioned at the time of arrest, then more are added once they have you at the station..mostly fictitious…
i know of *many* people experiencing this. -getting caught up in sweeps just prior to shift end.. often, if you take it to a jury trial, the charges will be dropped.
lastly..anyone *caught* photographing major infrastructures (like bridges and trains etc)
can be arrested at the officers discretion.. something to do with terrorist laws..
typically if graphed, these types of arrests
will show up at the end of the month (to
fulfill quotas) or in the last hour of a shift..
-s
Remember to always carry a copy of http://krages.com/phoright.htm with you when out photographing.
It probably won’t help with fanatics, but in most cases it can be a saver
[Note to readers: Drop the WWW from URLs because the latest version of WordPress screws it up with a WWW in it. – ed.]
Figures it happened in Penn Station. Noo Yawk Schitty Amtrak cops are dickheads. Had he taken the pics in Boston or New Haven or Newark or Philly or Wilmington or DC or anywhere else on that line, nobody would have given a shit.
This is getting ridiculous.
No taser? Gee.. the cops need some training here..
Where did my post go?
[Occasionally Spam Karma II takes a comment, bypasses the moderation queue and sticks it directly in the spam queue. We try to catch that but sometimes miss them. It doesn’t happen very often. – ed.]
This type of police thing really pisses me off!
As I have said before, “I hate cops”.
I’m of the same mind as hopper (#9). While this has always happened, in my doting old age I have less and less patience.
And another large lawsuit to add to Amtrack’s financial problems.
State paranoia. Looking more like North Korea each day.
can YOU say entrapment? Someone has a nice lawsuit
Has anyone mentioned this yet: The Terrorists Have Won.
He isn’t going to win the contest anyway. His pictures are blurry as heck.
http://photos.duanek.name/gallery/6924446_LwRhV
#15 – Kanjy
>>He isn’t going to win the contest anyway. His
>>pictures are blurry as heck.
Not only are they blurry as heck, but most of the trains in the pictures belong to NJ Transit, not Amtrak.
“Has anyone mentioned this yet: The Terrorists Have Won.”
You were the first but of course you are right. They have won.
Gee, I didn’t see a swatsticka in that shield. Did I miss it? Did one of the uniformed children turn him in? Gotta love those arm bands.
#20 – BytesU
>>I never did like pictures taken with a
>>Lensbaby.
Yeah, and $270 is kind of pricey for a so-so lens that doesn’t do anything but blur most of the picture. For about 1/3 the cost, you can get a Nikon 50mm lens, and (ir you must) blur it up in Photoshop.
Again, the American puppet courts will uphold all police action as legitimate.
All the police need is a good story for the courts to hide behind, and the police are trained and very inventive at giving the courts and the public what it want’s so badly to hear, scare tactics. Have you seen the 5 o’clock news, it all bad all the time, because that’s what people want to hear and watch.
Heaven forbid we should tear our minds away from the TV and be critical thinkers and give the cops the 3rd degree like they routinely give inmates, Opps!; I meant guilty until proved innocent American citizen who now have to pony and expense that is approaching an impossible expense.
When police and government starts their scare tactics, the public becomes their puppet too; hence, the unnecessary IRAQ war.
We reap what we have sowed with our uncritical, unpragmatic, unquestioning and dogmatic thinking. The police can do what they will and the public, the press will just accept unquestioningly their version!
It seems the scientific revolution that enabled a tide of critical thinking and thoughtful analysis by a majority in the public is receding rapidly.
We are now just part of one big American Cult lead by business globalism to evade laws and a government quest for absolute control and power over it’s citizenry.
Apparently the Cartmans, er, I mean “authorities” have gotten to the originating web site for this story. When I click on the link or even try to go to http://www.carlosmiller.com, all I get is:
Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /2008/12/27/amtrak-police-arrest-photographer-participating-in-amtrak-photo-contest/ on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.33 Server at carlosmiller.com Port 80
How long until it’s a crime to report on someone getting arrested for something that’s not a crime? Or until everything is a crime?
Has anyone mentioned that the site for the photo contest says.
“Contest ends July 11, 2008.”
The story says that he got busted last week.
Maybe he was getting ready for next years contest?
This is our police state mentality courtesy of or incompetent government. Now combine this with out of control schmuck cops on a power trip. Presto!
Would making photography legal again help lower the cost of law enforcement?
Goons will be goons.
#23, Uncle,
The site worked for me. Try clicking on this link. Apparently WordPress is being a little finicky.
The bottom line here is whether this person’s rights were violated, and if so, how much the remedie$ will be.
I had something simular happen on Thursday August 5th on the Amtrak platform at Spokane around 12:30am. I had what appeared to be either a BNSF or Amtrak employee who was servicng the Empire Builder cars, filling them with fresh water and uncoupling the cars that split off for Portland tell me that I could not take pictures or videotape him, the train undercarriages, the couplings or other workign parts of the trains and that it was a Homeland Security law. I pointed out that I was in a public space, was a ticket passenger, and that there was no law about pictures. He insisted again and then eventually walked away and went behind a door until we left.