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Thread: Your Tally of Severe Law Enforcement Encounters

  1. #16
    Senior Member lijk604's Avatar
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    Ben...this happened during the LAX meetup?

  2. #17
    Senior Member gonzalu's Avatar
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    Ouch Ben, Sergio. WTF? I have spent HOURS on top of the garages at LAX from early evening to middle of the night (3:00am) and sometimes in plain view of officers down below on departures level. Tripods and all, long timed exposures. Lots of pax around with some coming over and hanging out... never an issue. Same with Imperial Hill and In-n-Out.

    Even during AF-1 inbound on 24L, officers came over to us on the bridge over Sepulveda and politely asked us to go down to street level and that was it.

    Wow, I am shocked. Makes it sound like EWR or ISP not LAX
    Manny Gonzalez
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  3. #18
    Administrator Landing Lights's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by lijk604 View Post
    Ben...this happened during the LAX meetup?
    Yes, that Saturday night sometime between 9:00 and 9:30.


    Quote Originally Posted by gonzalu View Post
    Ouch Ben, Sergio. WTF? I have spent HOURS on top of the garages at LAX from early evening to middle of the night (3:00am) and sometimes in plain view of officers down below on departures level. Tripods and all, long timed exposures. Lots of pax around with some coming over and hanging out... never an issue. Same with Imperial Hill and In-n-Out.

    Even during AF-1 inbound on 24L, officers came over to us on the bridge over Sepulveda and politely asked us to go down to street level and that was it.

    Wow, I am shocked. Makes it sound like EWR or ISP not LAX
    I was stunned, Manny, given LAX's reputation as a spotter friendly airport. We had parked at the TBIT end and then walked across to shoot the alley between T2 and T3. When I looked back towards my car, I noticed a cop car with its lights on over there, but figured it was a passenger with a dead battery or something. In all we were probably detained for about 20 minutes. No question about it, Sergio was the one they were interested in. In addition to his full body massage, they took a real good look at his photos. Only after several minutes did they decide that they should look at mine too and it was a brief look. Once they left us alone, we both decided we were pretty much done for the night, but we did run into a few local spotters who had set up near our car, who said the police had not said a word to them.

    I was going to reach out to LAX about it, but after the shooting I decided not to bother.
    Ben Granucci, Wappingers Falls, NY
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  4. #19
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    Me:

    @ Bayswater Park

    4 days later a I was approached by Nassau PD @ Costco parking lot, but these were very friendly and they knew about this hobby, I was even very surprised...
    [URL="http://www.airport-data.com/photographers/gbmax:5834/"]My Aircraft Photos[/URL]

  5. #20
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    Well, they didn't bother the other Mexican (the other spotters you mentioned were Sean Moran and myself). We did see the large police presence but we thought there was a broken car, abandoned bag, jumper or something along those lines.

    My worst one was at PHX last December, I was taking night shots and had a legitimate reason to be there (parents taking a late night IAH-PHX), rent-a-cop came yelling at me that taking pictures was against the law (I thought that she was going to yell at me for taking 3 of the 900 available spots on that floor), I politely told her that we were authorized by PD and OPS, she got very agitated and she demanded to see "the papers", (a phrase that didn't go too well with me), and I said that we didn't have any, just verbal authorization (I wasn't going to explain Airport Watch, and why my badge was 120 miles away after a last minute truck swap, figured I *could* explain that to PHX PD if they were summoned), after a while she said "well, I'll just call in and say everything is good". A few minutes later she was parked next to one of the ACE parking trucks and then 2 PHX officers showed up as I was putting my tripod away. They asked what I was doing, and said that they had to investigate because a call came in, and when I said that the rentacop had said it was against the law, they said "yeah, she doesn't know the law".

    Another guy from PHX Spotters had a run in with the same lady maybe 3 days after that, and after an unrelated run-in that same day, involving a foreign spotter and another rentacop, Ops said they were going to have a meeting to make it clear that it wasn't illegal to take photos.
    Last edited by felipegcmh; 2013-12-07 at 10:05 PM.

  6. #21
    Senior Member Delta777LR's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mldoc View Post
    Yes, that Saturday night sometime between 9:00 and 9:30.




    I was stunned, Manny, given LAX's reputation as a spotter friendly airport. We had parked at the TBIT end and then walked across to shoot the alley between T2 and T3. When I looked back towards my car, I noticed a cop car with its lights on over there, but figured it was a passenger with a dead battery or something. In all we were probably detained for about 20 minutes. No question about it, Sergio was the one they were interested in. In addition to his full body massage, they took a real good look at his photos. Only after several minutes did they decide that they should look at mine too and it was a brief look. Once they left us alone, we both decided we were pretty much done for the night, but we did run into a few local spotters who had set up near our car, who said the police had not said a word to them.

    I was going to reach out to LAX about it, but after the shooting I decided not to bother.
    That was one of the biggest mess right there. I mean out of all, i never understood why they just before hand frisked me like they did, i mean i showed no suspicion what so ever, but again, racism seem to be the issue, I mean BS like that, not in my books. I mean seriously we are all human being and we have nothing to hide, yes they seemed satisfied when I showed those officers the photos, one of them was a little more polite however, i saw as one of the other officers which i believed he was asian if im not mistaking trying to ask his partner like what about us if we need to leave and the other says we were fine and convinced that we are just taking pictures of the planes, he had a nasty atitude that i really didnt like. But Ben and I still had a great night shooting!!
    Sergio has been a huge Delta Air Lines fan since 1992!!

    Sergio Cardona

    http://www.jetphotos.net/showphotos....e=1&display=15

  7. #22
    Member CO777ER's Avatar
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    Somehow I'm still at zero. I've been all over the US and luckily haven't had any bad run-in's with LEO's. Worst was at DFW when a DFWPD cop asked me to move from the "Graveyard Spotting Location" which is a State of Texas historic landmark. I kindly reminded him that it's public property and unless he was forcing me out I was going to stay put... he drove off

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