"ACTING STRANGELY" WHILE FILMING

From the Daily Comet in Thibodaux:

One of the state’s leading civil-liberties advocates sent letters Monday to nine law-enforcement agencies in areas affected by the oil spill, including Lafourche and Terrebonne, urging them not to block individuals or the media from shooting video or taking photos on beaches being cleaned by BP or other public areas.

Marjorie Esman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, said she has received “numerous reports of interference with the right to photograph and record on public beaches” by police acting on the orders of BP or working off-duty security details for the oil-and-gas company, which has taken responsibility for the worst oil spill in the nation’s history.

“Public beaches remain open to the public, whether or not BP officials want them to be,” Esman wrote. “BP may not want the public to know the full effects of the oil spill, but that is precisely why public access is so important. BP doesn’t have the right to censor what people learn about the problem that it caused and that it must solve.”
....

Courier and Daily Comet reporters and photographers have at times been denied access to oil-soaked areas and had attempts to interview spill cleanup workers blocked by BP contractors and others. Other media outlets, including the New York Daily News and CBS news, have reported obstruction by local police and the Coast Guard, who reportedly said they were acting under BP’s orders.

Michael Oreskes, an Associated Press senior managing editor, wrote to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs earlier this month, citing instances of photographers and reporters threatened with arrest for attempting to gain access to public areas and other harassment by law enforcement and BP contractors.
....

She [Esman] also referred to an alleged incident in which an unnamed Terrebonne sheriff’s deputy working an off-duty detail for BP told a person to stop filming the outside the BP building in Houma, even though he was filming from a private field across the street. The deputy admitted the man broke no laws but tried to intimidate him into leaving anyway, Esman wrote.

Terrebonne Sheriff Vernon Bourgeois said the person filming was acting strangely and likely “testing the deputy.” But regardless, the deputy had no right to stop the person from filming, the sheriff conceded.

Ah, my friends, if "acting strangely" while filming is cause for action by law enforcement officers, a good many of us are in trouble. I'll add that Grandpère was a bit uneasy while I was taking photos on Grand Isle and Port Fourchon, but I was not.

I knew that we had the right to cross the barricade on the beach at Grand Isle, but I did not want to tussle with the authorities, and GP would have been quite upset with me if I had put my rights to the test.