What's the big deal about taking pictures of a police officer? It may ruin their undercover career, but other than that, I don't see a real reason for police to react so aggressively toward photographers.

And what is your point?

I'm sure you know there is no law against photographing a cop in public.

The cop may have not liked it, but it doesn't justify his reaction.

I'm frankly appalled that someone of your caliber would even refer to this as "a difficult situation".

My choice of words are probably not perfect. Do not get me wrong. The actions of the Arkansas State Trooper appear unwarranted. Dealing with officious emergency personnel always makes for a difficult situation.

In discussing this instance I am trying to be very even handed. Lawson did not deserve to be arrested in anyway. But I do know, from previous personal experience, when a photographer photographs the person giving them a hard time, especially at close range, it can cause the reactionary aggression mentioned.

Lawson did not describe taking this photograph in the first story mentioned within the post. Thus, some of his story raises questions. This is the same journalistic reasoning I would apply to any story of this type; someone wrongly arrested for their actions. It appears as if this one and only photograph, innocent or not, set off the final chain events.

That does not excuse the arrest. I am just trying to understand the events leading to and surrounding this unfortunate happening.

From the photograph I saw (and posted on my blog), the cop is directly in the photographer's face.

We've all been in situations where we're trying to photograph the actual scene, only for a cop to yell at us to stop.

Many photographers, including me, will probably continue shooting, pretending they don't even hear the cop because we know we are not breaking the law and we want to ensure we get the shot.

Some cops might get so mad that they end up charging the photographing and getting in his face, only to have their photo snapped.

The one thing that struck me about this story is how the photographer felt he had to explain that he had no control over several shots being taken instead of one. Obviously he had his camera set on the multi-shot function.

I really don't see why he needed to explain that because he is entitled to take as many photos as he wants.

I usually keep my camera on the multi-shot function and fire away because this increases my chance of getting a better shot as well as a non-blurry shot.

I didn't do that in my film days, of course, but digital cameras have given us endless shot counts.

The photographer does mention later in his account that he took the cop's photo as we can read from the following excerpt.

I was stunned. From the moment he told me to turn around because I was under arrest for taking his photo, I attempted to follow his every command for fear of what he might do. I was handcuffed and defenseless. Not that I'd have tried to resist; I have too much respect for law enforcement officers to do that, even when I know I didn't do anything wrong.

As I was handcuffed, he tried to tell me that I'd stuck the camera "up in my face, inches from my nose, snapping it over and over attempting to blind me." I tried to explain that the camera had been set on motor drive in order to capture the firefighters in action and that I had actually only snapped it once. He wanted to argue and said that I held it down for 10 seconds or longer, telling me that he knew all about cameras.