Comments on: Unlawful arrest for subway photography costs city $30K

By: Photography: Is it a Crime? | LegalFish: The Daily Tackle

Photography: Is it a Crime? | LegalFish: The Daily Tackle — Tue, 04 May 2010 20:25:29 +0000

[...] money to people falsely arrested for videotaping police officers harassing them. They even had to compensate someone for their arrest while taking pictures in the subway, clearly an illegal arrest as [...]

By: Photographer wins $30k from City of New York over arrest « The Railfan Window Blog

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:34:17 +0000

[...] Second Ave. Sagas: Unlawful arrest for subway photography costs city $30K [...]

By: Adam

Adam — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:01:39 +0000

Cops love to flex their muscle just to show they have power and privileges. Just ask Guiliani, Joe Arpaio in Phoenix, or any one of the NYPD cops who drive over medians to make U-Turns (as I saw one day). Why don’t they do their job going after murderers and thieves and people doing unsafe things instead of harassing ordinary citizens and putting on security theater?

By: don anon

don anon — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:52:46 +0000

Good luck with that. The Giuliani administration adopted something close to your “no settlement” rule. It led to a pile of cases the city wasted scarce resources defending. One of Bloomberg’s first initiatives as mayor was to clear up the logjam of unresolved cases by acting rationally and settling when the city was going to lose.

By: Agent_C

Agent_C — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:14:02 +0000

On what basis do you assume that a jury would award more than $30,000? If I were on that jury, I’d award far less, as this guy was little more than inconvenienced.

On a related note, I think the City of New York should adopt a policy of not settling cases like this AT ALL. Which means if you sue the City, your case will have to be decided on the merits. I promise you, the caseload would drop dramatically if you actually had to have a case in order to collect taxpayer money! Many of these ‘slip-on-the-sidewalk-sue-the city” type cases would simply never be brought if the lawyers knew they’d have to go before a jury of New Yorkers. A_C

By: boblothrope

boblothrope — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:29:09 +0000

Here’s the MBTA’s photo policy:
http://transitpolice.us/Photo%.....cy%201.pdf

It says that amateur photography is legal, but that T employees are supposed to stop all photographers, ask them for ID, write down their ID details, and call the MBTA police to report it.

By: boblothrope

boblothrope — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:26:01 +0000

Well, even if it was illegal, IMO it was not an offense worthy of an arrest. They could have given him a summons.

By: Benjamin Kabak

Benjamin Kabak — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:55:16 +0000

Disagree. Let’s work with an assumption here.

1. The City wasn’t going to win the lawsuit because, clearly, Palmer was wrongfully arrested.

So with that in mind, the city could have not settled and put itself at the whim of a jury. The jury award would have far exceeded $30,000, and the city would have had to pay Palmer’s costs as well. Then, the city could appeal and hope for a reduction in the jury award but would still have to pay legal costs. By then, taxpayers would be footing a bill far greater than $30,000. It makes far more sense to settle.

Getting slapped in handcuffs and wrongly charged is hardly a minor incident.

By: Agent_C

Agent_C — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:59:21 +0000

The real travesty here is not that this gentlemen was wrongfully cited for taking pictures, but that the city is so gutless when it comes to fighting lawsuits. $30k seems like *way* too much of a settlement for a minor incident like this.

Your tax dollars at work!

A_C

By: Sara

Sara — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:10:29 +0000

I am glad this guy stood up for himself.