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`Paprazzi protest' sees wide use of film against both cops and protestors

The digital cameras and video recorders popped up whenever there was a commotion at the Republican convention -- and even when there was not.

With flashguns blazing, protesters photographed police. Police filmed protesters. Filming both sides were journalists, legal observers and the occasional tourist.

Call it the paparazzi protest, where demonstrators and police stalk each other with cameras in hopes of catching their prey in positions of misbehavior or abuse.

The footage has turned up on television, and it could find its way into court.

"There's virtually nothing that's not recorded by somebody," said former 1960s radical Tom Hayden, best known for his defiance at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.

Street protests during this week's convention at Madison Square Garden were teeming with amateur and freelance videographers -- some with crude, homemade press passes and low-end camcorders.

On public-access television, the Manhattan Neighborhood Network broadcast nightly reports based on protester video of demonstrations and the police response.

"We're our own media," said Soling Schwalbe, 48, of Los Angeles, as she taped interviews with fellow protesters at one event.

Police just tried to grin and bear it for the photo ops as protest groups descended on Manhattan this week.

Though arrests approached 2,000, there were few signs of violence.

Still, the National Lawyers Guild claims its observers, armed with cameras, captured footage that documents illegal arrests.

A guild official, Bruce Bentley, said the group has tape proving that police failed to give protesters proper warning before making scores of arrests Tuesday at a demonstration in lower Manhattan.

The footage could help get disorderly conduct cases thrown out, or become evidence in a civil lawsuit against the city alleging civil rights abuses, he said.

A special NYPD technical unit has deployed its officers to wade into demonstrations and record any confrontations with police.

Officials say they use the tapes for training, to identify suspects and to protect the department from lawsuits by showing that officers acted legally.

Video shot by both police and protesters at an anti-war protest in Manhattan earlier this year was presented as evidence in a federal lawsuit challenging the NYPD's use of searches, mounted patrols and metal barrier pens to control crowds.

A judge issued an order limiting the searches and putting restrictions on barrier pens.

Police insist the videotaping is well within legal guidelines for monitoring political activity. They also deny allegations that they use crowd shots to compile databases of protesters.

But Bentley claims the cameras are stifling to protesters.

"When people are trying to exercise their First Amendment rights, it has an intimidating effect," Bentley said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly counters that protesters' cameras -- which vastly outnumber those of police on the street -- have been used to try to provoke rage.

At one recent protest, a legal observer aimed a camera "about five inches from an officer's face," Kelly said. "She was continually taking his picture and, as I see it, harassing him."

Despite Kelly's complaints, police benefited from the work of an independent videographer this week after he filmed a demonstrator beating and stomping a plainclothes officer.

The footage was turned over to investigators, who used it to produce a wanted poster of the missing assailant.

The 19-year-old suspect was spotted at a Union Square demonstration the next day and arrested on assault charges.
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