The Crime: Patriotic Photography

I’m loath to make a big deal of this before the customary five corrections that BoingBoing makes to any article—but, uh, what the hell?

NY photog held for hours by police over flag photo

From the ABC report

A local photographer is looking for an apology after he was held for hours by police. He was taken into custody for questioning because of what he decided to snap a couple of shots of.

Eyewitness News reporter Joe Torres is live in White Plains with the story.

As a freelance photographer, Ben Hider carries his camera with him just about everywhere, and so it was on Friday, as he was heading to the train station in White Plains he stopped to snap some beauty shots on the flags in front of the court house. That’s when his trouble began.

Ben Hider, Photographer: “Three police officers ran at me, immediately, telling me to stop where I was.”

The crime, photographing this picture (via his MySpace account)

I get the need to be vigilant, I do. But on the other hand this isn’t the first case where a photographer has been taken into custody, or otherwise harassed. I myself have been told I can’t take photos at places like Hoboken Terminal to which I happily obliged and put away the camera. At times I wonder if the climate has changed so much that I would have gotten harassed for taking these on 9/11.

Alternative post title: “Another Criminal Mind On MySpace”.