A Photographer’s Right

The Incident
There is much misconception among the public about people’s right to photograph. This fact presented itself this weekend when two men from my neighborhood knocked on my door and asked if I was a photographer. When I answered yes, I was expecting an invitation to a neighborhood barbecue to take pictures. Instead I was barraged with accusations of illegally photographing one of the men through his bathroom window. “We seen you taking pictures from your window!” exclaimed one of the men. I explained that I take pictures of a lot of things from my window, but assured him that his bathroom window was not one of them. He then stated, “I don’t want you taking pictures of me, my house or my car!” He pointed to the gray apartment building across the parking lot in which he is a tenant. The owner of the building is an absentee landlord. I explained to him that I am free to take photos of anything I want, that I was not breaking any laws. He then became loud and starting shouting “Continue to take pictures and see what happens!” as he and his moral support starting walking back to the gray apartment building.

This man has not spoken two words to me in the two plus years that I have lived in my house. It is too bad that our first meeting was on bad terms. To prevent further escalation, I called the Amsterdam Police who sent a patrol car over to my house. The officer listened to my story and asked if I knew the men. All I knew was that they lived in the apartment house, didn’t even know their names. He stated there was nothing he could do, that the veiled threat was not enough to call for any charges. Then one of the two men stepped out of the apartment building and talked with the Officer while gesturing toward my house for about five minutes after which the Officer drove off.

Your Rights as a Photographer
You have the right to photograph anyone, adults or children, or anything as long as you are not violating anyone’s right to privacy. This right to privacy is defined as any area you would normally be free to remove your clothes or engage in intimate activities in a private area. In New York State, personal images are protected in part by NYS Civil Rights Law Article 5:

§ 50. Right of privacy. A person, firm or corporation that uses for advertising purposes, or for the purposes of trade, the name, portrait or picture of any living person without having first obtained the written consent of such person, or if a minor of his or her parent or guardian, is guilty of a misdemeanor.

So if you take photos of a kid playing baseball, you can’t sell or use the image as advertising without written consent from the parent or guardian. You can sell an image of the entire team playing, as long as exclusive rights have not been given to a specific photographer. You are free to use all these images for story telling or not for profit purposes.

And yes, you can shoot on private property if it is open to the public. That includes malls, retails stores, Starbucks, banks, and office-building lobbies. If you’re asked to stop and refuse, you run the risk of being charged with trespassing, but your pictures are yours. No one can legally take your camera or your memory card without a court order.

You can also shoot in subways and at airports.  Airport security is regulated by the Transportation Security Administration, and it’s quite clear: Photography is A-OK at any commercial airport in the United States as long as you’re in an area open to the public.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Here is a downloadable version of The Photographer’s Right.

Aftermath
I’m not going to stop taking pictures of my neighborhood. My street is dominated by rental units owned by absentee landlords. There are many code violations which I report on a regular basis using photographic evidence. There is also drug activity reported. The neighborhood can only improve with time as people become aware of what is acceptable behavior according to the standards set by State and Local Ordinance.

Example: 

Ordinance  232-1, 232-4 Maintenance or repair of motor vehicles in residential areas.

The Common Council of the City of Amsterdam hereby finds that the storage or presence of abandoned, junked or inoperative motor vehicles or the repair of motor vehicles on private property, except at a duly licensed repair shop or vehicle dealership, creates a public and private nuisance and is harmful to the public health, safety and welfare. Such vehicles present a source of serious injury, particularly to children, seriously harm the aesthetic qualities of the City and tend to depreciate the value of properties in the neighborhoods of the City. The Common Council finds that the problem can be diminished by permitting the storage and/or repair of such vehicles only within a garage or other enclosed structure and only under the restrictions as set forth in this chapter. 

It shall be unlawful for any person to perform automotive repair or maintenance on any motor vehicle in an area zoned for detached single-family or multifamily dwelling units in the City, except under the following condition: Any person may perform automobile maintenance or repair work on a currently licensed motor vehicle titled in his name or in the name of a member of his immediate family, provided that such work shall be done on the premises of his residence; and provided, further, that such work shall not be performed in violation of any other City ordinance.

Parking lot auto repair shop.

Multiple code violations and wheelchair taken from closed Park Hill Adult Home.

Amsterdam Celebrates Spring

Karin Hetrick and Debbie Baranello, organizers of Amsterdam’s Spring Fling event pose with NYS Assemblyman George Amedore on Saturday, May 21, 2011.

Amsterdam was filled with events on Saturday as the Western part of East Main Street closed to traffic to host Spring Fling, an event to reintroduce Amsterdam’s downtown. The Street was full of vendors as a band played popular music for the crowd of people who showed up for this event. Simultaneously, Historic Amsterdam League conducted tours of historic buildings and the Noteworthy Indian Museum. The Wrestling Hall of Fame also hosted events this weekend culminating with an induction ceremony tonight at the Best Value Inn downtown Amsterdam.  The weather partially cooperated as clouds gave way to periods of intermittent sun among the rain. It was an event truly worth attending and if you didn’t get downtown, here are some images from my experience.

Dan Szabo Jr. promoting the FulMont Tea Party

The New Rules

Charlie Kraebel was right. Running a blog is not as easy as I thought it would be and I have made mistakes by not fact checking who posts on this blog, resulting in a series of personal attacks that should never have been allowed.  I can’t un-ring that bell. What I can do is enforce a set of rules.

Rules

I defend freedom of speech but my blog is not a platform for freeform personal attacks.  Elected and public officials are fair game when the comments relate to their job performance.

• You must give your full name and some type of verification before posting on this blog.

• Keep the conversation on the posted topics.

• You may not agree with my opinions or content of my blog. If you find this is the case, do not attack the administrator. Get over it or go elsewhere.

• I will delete comments that I consider in violation of these rules.

Boozin’ Pigs

Phoebe Snow (1950-2011)

Singer, songwriter and guitarist Phoebe Snow died today of complications from a brain hemorrhage suffered in 2010. She was 60 years old.

Her 1975 hit song Poetry Man is indelibly etched in my brain as well as those of countless others who grew up in the 70’s. May she rest in peace.

The Legendary Bob Cudmore

The Historic Amsterdam League was honored to hear Bob Cudmore recant stories of the Rug City at their general meeting April 20, 2011.

A native Amsterdamian, Bob along with Steve Dunn produced a labor intensive WMHT documentary about Amsterdam’s rich history that led to a weekly column in the Schenectady Daly Gazette. Bob authored “You Can’t Go Wrong – Stories From Nero and other Tales” a lighthearted parody of Amsterdam. Cudmore is also a radio talk show host on WVTL 1570 AM 104.7 FM.

The Council Chamber was packed as Bob recalled stories of Amsterdam’s history.  He quizzed the audience, asking them to identify photos pertaining to the history of the City rewarding correct responses with copies of his book “You Can’t Go Wrong”.

Here is a brief excerpt from Bob’s presentation as he recalls another legendary figure from Amsterdam’s Polish heritage, Michael J.Wytrwal.

2010 New York State Census Data

Freedom of Speech

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Speaks at George Washington University on February 15, 2011

The internet has become the public space of the 21^st century – the world’s town square, classroom, marketplace, coffeehouse, and nightclub. We all shape and are shaped by what happens there, all 2 billion of us and counting. And that presents a challenge. To maintain an internet that delivers the greatest possible benefits to the world, we need to have a serious conversation about the principles that will guide us, what rules exist and should not exist and why, what behaviors should be encouraged or discouraged and how.

One year ago, I offered a starting point for that vision by calling for a global commitment to internet freedom, to protect human rights online as we do offline. The rights of individuals to express their views freely, petition their leaders, worship according to their beliefs – these rights are universal, whether they are exercised in a public square or on an individual blog. The freedoms to assemble and associate also apply in cyberspace. In our time, people are as likely to come together to pursue common interests online as in a church or a labor hall.

But of course, governments also have a duty to be transparent. We govern with the consent of the people, and that consent must be informed to be meaningful. So we must be judicious about when we close off our work to the public, and we must review our standards frequently to make sure they are rigorous. In the United States, we have laws designed to ensure that the government makes its work open to the people, and the Obama Administration has also launched an unprecedented initiative to put government data online, to encourage citizen participation, and to generally increase the openness of government.

Some take the view that, to encourage tolerance, some hateful ideas must be silenced by governments. We believe that efforts to curb the content of speech rarely succeed and often become an excuse to violate freedom of expression. Instead, as it has historically been proven time and time again, the better answer to offensive speech is more speech. People can and should speak out against intolerance and hatred. By exposing ideas to debate, those with merit tend to be strengthened, while weak and false ideas tend to fade away; perhaps not instantly, but eventually.

Now, this approach does not immediately discredit every hateful idea or convince every bigot to reverse his thinking. But we have determined as a society that it is far more effective than any other alternative approach. Deleting writing, blocking content, arresting speakers – these actions suppress words, but they do not touch the underlying ideas. They simply drive people with those ideas to the fringes, where their convictions can deepen, unchallenged.

But when it comes to online speech, the United States has chosen not to depart from our time-tested principles. We urge our people to speak with civility, to recognize the power and reach that their words can have online. We’ve seen in our own country tragic examples of how online bullying can have terrible consequences. Those of us in government should lead by example, in the tone we set and the ideas we champion. But leadership also means empowering people to make their own choices, rather than intervening and taking those choices away. We protect free speech with the force of law, and we appeal to the force of reason to win out over hate.

Charlie’s War

For those not familiar with Amsterdam politics, there is an ongoing feud between an Editor of the Recorder who also moderates The Venner Vox and the creators of The Show With No Name. Clicking on the links will explain the situation.

The Show With No Name

The Venner Vox

A New York State of Death

I took this photo of Old Sparky at Green Haven Correctional Facility in 1989 while giving a tour of the Death House to David A. Kaplan who was a senior writer for the National Law Journal. He was also a former Wall Street attorney who would also become an editor for Newsweek as well as an award winning author. I was a Correction Sergeant at the time and the Death Penalty was a political hot potato. Every time it came up for a legislative vote, we would get an onslaught of media wanting to do stories.

New York State was the first to use the electric chair as a more humane means of killing (the quintessential oxymoron).  In 1886 a three person commission was appointed one member, Dr. Alfred Southwick (dentist) recommended using electricity.  With Thomas Edison and Westinghouse battling over whether to use AC or DC current. Edison won his battle with a demonstration of the killing power of AC current on farm animals. In 1888 it became the official means of execution in New York. The first electric chair was installed in Auburn Correctional Facility and on August 6, 1890, the first inmate was executed by way of electrocution. Fifty-four more inmates would be executed in Auburn’s electric chair before it was destroyed by fire in 1929. Clinton Correctional Facility also utilized an electric chair from 1892 to 1913 to execute 26 men. The most deadly chair was installed at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 1891 killing six hundred and fourteen men and women, with the last execution conducted in 1963.

The Sing Sing electric chair (pictured above) was moved to Green Haven Correctional Facility in 1971 as the state tried to shut down Sing Sing. Green Haven’s Death Row was located above the hospital building and consisted of a row of 16 cells with a rooftop recreation yard. Directly across from the cells stood the execution chamber, witness area and the executioners booth equipped with one way glass. The booth contained a marble panel with a series of switches, gauges, and meters. In the center of the panel was the prominent main switch. There was the traditional locked phone box that would give the final order and a wooden storage box filled with leather straps, face masks and copper skull plates. As old as the equipment was, it was tested and fully functional but no one would see it put to use at Green Haven.

As the political climate switched, electrocution was no longer the humane killing method and New York switched to lethal injection. Amsterdam native and serial killer Lemuel Smith was the only inmate ever to occupy Green Haven Death Row after being convicted of the capital crime of murdering Correction Officer Donna Payant in 1981.  Payant was the first female C.O. to be killed in the line of duty in the United States. My career in NYS Department of Correctional Services started in 1982 at Sing Sing and then Green Haven when Smith was housed on Death Row. Lemuel Smith was never executed for his crimes as New York State removed the death penalty as the ultimate punishment. June 24, 2004 New York State’s highest court declared the death penalty unconstitutional.

I have to credit David A. Kaplan for the story The Hot Seat published in the National Law Journal April 26, 1989, information from which I used  in this blog. I am glad that he mailed me a copy of the article as I am quoted in it advocating for the death penalty.

“Most of the inmates are lifers,” says Sgt Jerry Skrocki who leads tours of the Death House. “and they have nothing to fear by killing again. The chair would stand between them and us.”  So then would he pull the switch? Skrocki pauses. “That,” he says, “is another question.”

I am much older and a little wiser now and have changed my views on capital punishment. I no longer condone the taking of another life as a means of punishment. It has not been proven to be a deterrent to crime. I do believe in the right to use deadly force to defend oneself or in defense of another, but not as a punishment.

It is our humanity that inherently stands between them and us.