Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly should take a hard look at how officers ignored the department’s guidelines for dealing with the news media, which prohibit interfering with news-gathering activity. In a letter on Monday to Paul Browne, the deputy police commissioner, The New York Times and 12 other news organizations said the police was “more hostile to the press” covering these protests than at “any other event in recent memory.”
Before clearing tents and other structures from Zuccotti Park, for example, a police representative asked journalists in the area for press credentials. Reporters and photographers do not need credentials to be in a public area. The passes are supposed to give them better access, but those who admitted having passes were instead herded to a penned area blocks away from the police action.
At another spot closer to the park, police were carrying a protester covered with blood when a photographer raised his camera. When two police officers spotted the camera, they shoved a barricade into the photographer, screaming that he was not permitted to take pictures even though he was on the sidewalk.
The letter from the news media says extra training “may have helped avoid the numerous inappropriate, if not unconstitutional actions” by officers. A place to start would be a review of the 1999 reforms and policy statement issued by Police Commissioner Howard Safir that year.
That policy stated clearly that unless there are “exceptional circumstances,” those with press credentials will not be restricted to press areas, and that, “under no circumstances should the press be provided less access than that afforded the general public.” It is time that Commissioner Kelly made a serious effort to enforce the department’s own code.