Journalists expect to be able to do their job without being harassed and censored by a police. It’s guaranteed by the US Constitution –you know, that thing cops take an oath to uphold.

“The NYPD Patrol Guide, code 116-53, clearly affirms the First Amendment of the Constitution as it states:
‘Members of the service will not interfere with the video taping or photographing of incidents in public places. Intentional interference such as blocking or obstructing cameras or harassing the photographer constitutes censorship. Working Press Cards clearly state, the bearer “is entitled to cross police and fire lines.” This right will be honored and access will not be denied. However, this does not include access to interior crime scenes or areas frozen for security reasons.”

Maybe the APD should adopt such a policy… Hey, if it’s good enough for NY, it surely should be good enough for Albuquerque.

I actually use to read the AJ on a daily basis when I lived in Deming and worked as a reporter for the Las-Cruces Sun-News.

I always found the AJ to be an excellent paper, the best in the state at the time.

Of course, that was in the late 1990s and most newspapers have gone downhill since then, so I don’t know how they are now.

That would be an interesting study to see if the paper actually maximized Hispanic crimes while minimizing others.

I covered crime throughout most of my newspaper career, including California and Arizona, and there was never a policy to maximize Hispanic crimes.

The truth is, there was a higher rate of crimes from the Hispanic population in the areas I covered, mostly due to economic circumstances, but also due to the fact that there was human and drug smuggling from Mexico.

As far this topic, the cop walked over to the reporter to tell him where to go, not because the reporter had been interfering.

I am very interested to hear what happened before the video was rolling because the reporter seemed to be pretty pissed at the cop about something.

And the fact that he can be heard later in video saying that he thought the cop was going to hit him tells me that perhaps the cop had threatened him earlier.

Why else would the reporter ask for his name and badge number?

I’ve covered hundreds of late night incidents like that and have been confronted by rude cops, but I never felt it got so bad to the point where I needed to ask for their name and badge number (my arrest being an exception, of course).

As far as your first question goes, should reporters antagonize cops? Of course not, but that doesn’t mean reporters don’t have the right to stand up for their rights as citizens.

That doesn’t mean reporters don’t have the right to ask for a cop’s badge number if they felt the cop has been abusive towards them.

In this case, we can clearly see the cop is unable to control his temper, so who knows how he acted beforehand.

Have you checked that rate a cop site?

When it comes to matters of police, the media only sees one color – blue.

I think the main factor in the cop’s behavior is his youth and inexperience rather than his ethnicity.

Perhaps the cameraman was goading him, but we don’t know what took place beforehand to prompt him to act that way.

Besides, police have to be able to handle people who goad them because it happens all the time.

They have to maintain their professionalism regardless if they are dealing with someone who is trying to antagonize him.

In this instance, the cop pounced on the videographer without warning.

The female cop can be heard telling him that he is “interfering with an investigation” but it was the cops who came up to the reporter, not the other way around.