I assume its legal to take pictures of a car accident? My girlfriend said she tried to take a picture of a car accident and a cop said if your not involved in the accident you cant take any pictures. I disagree but i am not certain. Any comments?
It all depends on where she was shooting from. If you are in the accident scene, well yes it is illegal because you are interfering with the investigation. They are conducting an investigation of what occurred because amazingly enough, people some times tend to exaggerate the facts and we want the truth. Debris, skid marks, etc. provide those facts. We do not want them disturbed.
If she is outside of the scene, then unless she is blocking vehicular traffic or other pedestrians she is fine. Just keep in mind that what we consider the scene may be bigger than what you consider the scene. If a car strikes a light pole then the light pole and the ground around it is in the scene. Don't lean on the light pole. If she is where other pedestrians are walking etc, and they are not being shooed off, she is fine.
I once had the beginning of a run in with an ambulance chasing lawyer. He heard the accident from his office and ran out to talk to the victims in one of the vehicles. Not to see if they were injured but to drum up business for a law suite. (
They were not injured by the way, That was the first question we asked) He was hindering the investigation, there was paperwork to be filled out by all the people involved and statements to get. I instructed him to leave my scene. He advised that he was there to speak to his clients. First off they were not his clients, not yet at that point at least.
I asked him if his
"clients" were the suspects of a criminal activity and when he advised me no they were not, I concurred with his statement and again told him to get out of my scene now or he would go to jail for obstruction. I then reminded him that he had no constitutional right to speak to them at that time as the were not suspects of any criminal act. They were not in legal jeopardy.
I then advised him I was going to list him as a witness if he continued to speak to them. He realized at that point that as a witness he and his firm could not represent them as it would be a conflict of interest. He left, we finished the accident investigation, the other guy got his tickets,
(yep he deserved tickets in the plural for this one) everyone went on their way and that was the end of it.
The news media showed up and took photos, no problem. They stayed out of the scene. I did politely remind the news paper photographer,
(a friend of mine) that if he took a photo of me from the back side I had 620
FRIENDS that all had ticket books and they would all be waiting for him between where he was and his office.
It was a wonderful profile shot in the paper the next day. :lmao:
.... the cop can and will make for a very unpleasant experience. They can and will do everything in their power to maintain control of the situation.. using whatever means necessary. right/wrong is determined in court not on the streets.
Wow....
