Freedom Of The Press Doesn't Trump Law and Order

I've heard the words 'media' and 'the press' spoken of many times throughout my experience in the Muskego Police Citizen's Academy, and it's usually not in glowing terms.

Being a member of that group, I knew coming into this job I'd have to work against that stereotype.  My goal here is to inform and not intrude, and to help rather than hinder. 

One of the latest incidents that pitted press v. police was on Wednesday, when police were called to control a crowd of students near UW-Milwaukee  in another version of the 'Occupy' movement.  The main goal was to remove protestors from the street and a busy intersection, because frankly, that's where cars and buses like to travel.

One of the people arrested was a woman photographer, Kristyna Wentz-Graff from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and its Senior VP Marty Kaiser was soon on TV complaining that she was clearly identified as a member of the press.  Even Mayor Tom Barrett came forward to throw the department under the bus. Milwaukee Police maintain she did not identify herself as such.

If she was standing in the middle of an intersection, I don't care if she had a tiara with the word "Press" in blinking lights.  She was a hazard.  She needed to move out of the way at the first request. That point seems to be lost in this story.

If there is one thing I've realized during the course of citizen's academy is that the job police do is the most armchair quarterbacked on the planet. Any situation they encounter the goal is to remove threat.  In this case, protestors wandering in a street not only disrupt traffic, they can be harmed by it. Requests to move won't be repeated often by police, because they aren't there to explain themselves - there isn't time.

How journalists determine they are the experts in the way police should handle crowd control, or any other threat, is beyond me.  For this photographer, I have no sympathy, and I'd like to offer a suggestion on covering the next event involving police: let them do their job and use your zoom lens so you can still do yours.