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Rhode Island news
8.8.2000
Press rights, police duty collide over photographs
By G. WAYNE MILLER
Journal Staff Writer
Providence Journal staff photographer Rachel Ritchie had modest expectations for her shift Sunday afternoon. Assigned to cover a Puerto Rican street fair in South Providence, she planned to capture summer fun.
A man with a gun changed that.
He shot four people, leaving one critically injured -- and Ritchie photographed him with his weapon in hand, seconds after he'd pulled the trigger. In one stunning image, the man is fleeing; in another, he's being chased, and in a third, he's being wrestled to the ground. A fourth shows him fleeing again.
Two of Ritchie's color photos were published on the front page of yesterday's Journal, and several more appeared inside.
The remarkable pictures placed Ritchie at the center of a conflict between press rights and police duties -- a conflict that yesterday involved explanations, eyewitness accounts and the possibility of legal proceedings by the newspaper against the Providence police.
This is not what Ritchie, a 21-year veteran of The Journal, imagined the day would bring when she began her shift early Sunday afternoon.
The assignment sheet read: "Borinquen St. Festival . . . block party event of the Puerto Rico festival . . . kiosks w/ vendor, games for children, salsa band . . ." The photos were slated to appear in the newspaper's B section, Rhode Island, in yesterday's editions.
Ritchie parked near Borinquen and Culver Streets, where the fair was being held, and plunged into the crowd with her Nikon and Contax cameras and several rolls of 35mm color film.
"There were these great pictures I was seeing," Ritchie said yesterday. "People hanging out of car windows, flags, little kids all dressed up in flags -- it just looked like a great thing to shoot."
For part of the afternoon, Ritchie followed three people dressed as devils. Then her eye caught a group of break dancers.
"Everybody was really happy," said Ritchie. "Nobody minded having their picture taken."
Suddenly, "I hear this pop-pop-pop-pop."
Although she no longer does, Ritchie for 10 years lived in South Providence. She knows city sounds; she thought she'd heard firecrackers.
People began running.
People hit the ground.
People probably screamed, but Ritchie wasn't tuned in to sounds anymore. She said she has dreamed of finding herself in a situation like this, and some sort of instinct took over.
"I went into a zone. I never saw a person coming at me with a gun and running past me. I was just shooting people going past. And people down on the ground . . . I turned and I saw a guy with a gun in his right hand and I was seeing it from the back.
"It was like I saw the gun silhouetted against the white pavement so I started following him and taking pictures. And then I thought about running around and getting in front of him, getting his face and I made a conscious decision not to do that. I remember: that was really stupid."
RITCHIE PHOTOGRAPHED one of the gunman's victims, and then she saw Patrolman Peter Flynn, one of several officers who had rushed to the scene. She recognized Flynn and told him that she may have photographed the gunman, although she didn't think she'd caught his face, only his back, running.
"I said, 'What do you want to do, go to The Journal with me?' " said Ritchie. Her understanding was the patrolman would accompany her back to the paper, where he'd be allowed to see her photos.
It was about 5 p.m. on Sunday.
As she followed Flynn's cruiser, Ritchie telephoned Babette Augustin, page-one picture editor, for guidance. Augustin called Executive Editor and Vice President Joel P. Rawson at home. Rawson agreed The Journal would share Ritchie's photographs, which were intended for publication, anyway.
"The negatives are ours," Rawson said yesterday, "but if there's something we can cooperate with, we'll give them a print . . .. Not everybody in the trade agrees with me on this, but I figure if you witness a crime, you're like any other citizen: you've got to cooperate."
Patrolman Flynn, meanwhile, radioed his own superiors -- and got his own directive.
Said Maj. Martin F. Hames, top deputy to Chief Urbano Prignano Jr., in an interview yesterday at police headquarters: "Somebody from maybe up here in Detectives got wind -- not knowing that it was a Journal photographer to begin with -- and said, 'Hey we need to seize the film or whatever.' "
Flynn delivered that message to Ritchie as she started through the front door of The Providence Journal's offices at 75 Fountain St.
Ritchie refused to hand anything over. She tried to enter the front door -- and Flynn, she said, restrained her by grabbing her shoulder.
"You're not getting the film!" Ritchie screamed at Flynn.
But Flynn was following orders, and didn't let Ritchie go.
LISTENING TO the police monitor in The Journal newsroom, Augustin and reporter Karen Davis overheard the order to seize Ritchie's film. Davis saw the flashing lights of Flynn's cruiser and went to the door, where Flynn was restraining Ritchie. She watched as he grabbed her by both shoulders and forced her to the side of the door.
Davis said she was trying to calm both Flynn and Ritchie.
"We can resolve this," she remembers saying. "We can work something out."
The day city editor, Hilary Horton, also went out -- and Augustin got back on the phone to Rawson, who started into Providence from his home in Burrillville.
Flynn called headquarters on his radio, which features a shoulder-mounted microphone; according to Major Hames, he called to ask a superior officer to come to help sort things out. That didn't happen.
"From what I understand," said Hames, "one of the dispatchers thought maybe [Flynn] was in trouble and he sent cars down there."
"A misinterpretation," the major called it.
Police headquarters is only a few hundred yards from The Journal, and soon a multitude of cruisers -- including some from the state police, said Horton and Davis -- were at 75 Fountain St. Hames did not know the exact number, but said at least half a dozen cars arrived. Officers rushed to the door. Some began shouting, said Horton and Davis.
"Somebody bent my arm behind my back and forced me down on the ground," said Ritchie, an account corroborated by Davis.
"I think they were still trying to figure out what to do," Ritchie said. "They walked me over to the cruiser -- they didn't drag me, I got up. I was standing against the cruisers, they didn't push me against it or anything. They took the cameras off my shoulders and they took the fanny pack [with film] . . .. At this point, I wasn't resisting because I knew it was over."
Ritchie was taken to police headquarters, where, said Hames: "Somebody up here made the decision -- said, 'hey, wait a minute. It's The Journal.' We knew they were going to cooperate."
Uninjured, Ritchie, with her cameras back in her possession, was returned to The Journal, where Sgt. Robert Boehm accompanied the photographer to the darkroom. Concerned about preserving the chain of custody for evidence that could be critical in prosecuting Fontanez, Boehm watched politely as the negatives were developed and prints were made. By this time, Rawson had arrived and the police left with the pictures they wanted.
A few hours later, at 11:30 p.m. on Sunday, David Fontanez, 38, of Roslindale, Mass., was arrested and charged with several offenses after surrendering himself in Boston.
HAMES YESTERDAY said that the police will review Sunday's incident, and consider instructing street-level officers on media relations.
"I'm sure in the future we're going to look to resolve it in much easier ways," he said. "I think emotions were running high because of the fact of what happened there" at the South Providence shooting. "Those pictures were very crucial to us."
Rawson said Journal executives and lawyers are discussing what, if any, legal action to take. "It's not acceptable to take our property," he said. "It's not permissible to touch us."
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the paper probably would prevail in a federal action against the police. Based on what she knows of the incident, Dalglish said the police violated the Privacy Protection Act of 1980.
But she noted that seizures of cameras and film and arrests of photographers and reporters seem to be on the rise in America.
"I've never seen anything like it," she said. "This is happening all over the place."
Why?
"I think some of it is anti-media hostility," she said. "Some of it is cops feeling the public is very law and order right now -- they feel they can act with impunity."
Press rights, police duty collide over photographs
By G. WAYNE MILLER
Journal Staff Writer
Providence Journal staff photographer Rachel Ritchie had modest expectations for her shift Sunday afternoon. Assigned to cover a Puerto Rican street fair in South Providence, she planned to capture summer fun.
A man with a gun changed that.
He shot four people, leaving one critically injured -- and Ritchie photographed him with his weapon in hand, seconds after he'd pulled the trigger. In one stunning image, the man is fleeing; in another, he's being chased, and in a third, he's being wrestled to the ground. A fourth shows him fleeing again.
Two of Ritchie's color photos were published on the front page of yesterday's Journal, and several more appeared inside.
The remarkable pictures placed Ritchie at the center of a conflict between press rights and police duties -- a conflict that yesterday involved explanations, eyewitness accounts and the possibility of legal proceedings by the newspaper against the Providence police.
This is not what Ritchie, a 21-year veteran of The Journal, imagined the day would bring when she began her shift early Sunday afternoon.
The assignment sheet read: "Borinquen St. Festival . . . block party event of the Puerto Rico festival . . . kiosks w/ vendor, games for children, salsa band . . ." The photos were slated to appear in the newspaper's B section, Rhode Island, in yesterday's editions.
Ritchie parked near Borinquen and Culver Streets, where the fair was being held, and plunged into the crowd with her Nikon and Contax cameras and several rolls of 35mm color film.
"There were these great pictures I was seeing," Ritchie said yesterday. "People hanging out of car windows, flags, little kids all dressed up in flags -- it just looked like a great thing to shoot."
For part of the afternoon, Ritchie followed three people dressed as devils. Then her eye caught a group of break dancers.
"Everybody was really happy," said Ritchie. "Nobody minded having their picture taken."
Suddenly, "I hear this pop-pop-pop-pop."
Although she no longer does, Ritchie for 10 years lived in South Providence. She knows city sounds; she thought she'd heard firecrackers.
People began running.
People hit the ground.
People probably screamed, but Ritchie wasn't tuned in to sounds anymore. She said she has dreamed of finding herself in a situation like this, and some sort of instinct took over.
"I went into a zone. I never saw a person coming at me with a gun and running past me. I was just shooting people going past. And people down on the ground . . . I turned and I saw a guy with a gun in his right hand and I was seeing it from the back.
"It was like I saw the gun silhouetted against the white pavement so I started following him and taking pictures. And then I thought about running around and getting in front of him, getting his face and I made a conscious decision not to do that. I remember: that was really stupid."
RITCHIE PHOTOGRAPHED one of the gunman's victims, and then she saw Patrolman Peter Flynn, one of several officers who had rushed to the scene. She recognized Flynn and told him that she may have photographed the gunman, although she didn't think she'd caught his face, only his back, running.
"I said, 'What do you want to do, go to The Journal with me?' " said Ritchie. Her understanding was the patrolman would accompany her back to the paper, where he'd be allowed to see her photos.
It was about 5 p.m. on Sunday.
As she followed Flynn's cruiser, Ritchie telephoned Babette Augustin, page-one picture editor, for guidance. Augustin called Executive Editor and Vice President Joel P. Rawson at home. Rawson agreed The Journal would share Ritchie's photographs, which were intended for publication, anyway.
"The negatives are ours," Rawson said yesterday, "but if there's something we can cooperate with, we'll give them a print . . .. Not everybody in the trade agrees with me on this, but I figure if you witness a crime, you're like any other citizen: you've got to cooperate."
Patrolman Flynn, meanwhile, radioed his own superiors -- and got his own directive.
Said Maj. Martin F. Hames, top deputy to Chief Urbano Prignano Jr., in an interview yesterday at police headquarters: "Somebody from maybe up here in Detectives got wind -- not knowing that it was a Journal photographer to begin with -- and said, 'Hey we need to seize the film or whatever.' "
Flynn delivered that message to Ritchie as she started through the front door of The Providence Journal's offices at 75 Fountain St.
Ritchie refused to hand anything over. She tried to enter the front door -- and Flynn, she said, restrained her by grabbing her shoulder.
"You're not getting the film!" Ritchie screamed at Flynn.
But Flynn was following orders, and didn't let Ritchie go.
LISTENING TO the police monitor in The Journal newsroom, Augustin and reporter Karen Davis overheard the order to seize Ritchie's film. Davis saw the flashing lights of Flynn's cruiser and went to the door, where Flynn was restraining Ritchie. She watched as he grabbed her by both shoulders and forced her to the side of the door.
Davis said she was trying to calm both Flynn and Ritchie.
"We can resolve this," she remembers saying. "We can work something out."
The day city editor, Hilary Horton, also went out -- and Augustin got back on the phone to Rawson, who started into Providence from his home in Burrillville.
Flynn called headquarters on his radio, which features a shoulder-mounted microphone; according to Major Hames, he called to ask a superior officer to come to help sort things out. That didn't happen.
"From what I understand," said Hames, "one of the dispatchers thought maybe [Flynn] was in trouble and he sent cars down there."
"A misinterpretation," the major called it.
Police headquarters is only a few hundred yards from The Journal, and soon a multitude of cruisers -- including some from the state police, said Horton and Davis -- were at 75 Fountain St. Hames did not know the exact number, but said at least half a dozen cars arrived. Officers rushed to the door. Some began shouting, said Horton and Davis.
"Somebody bent my arm behind my back and forced me down on the ground," said Ritchie, an account corroborated by Davis.
"I think they were still trying to figure out what to do," Ritchie said. "They walked me over to the cruiser -- they didn't drag me, I got up. I was standing against the cruisers, they didn't push me against it or anything. They took the cameras off my shoulders and they took the fanny pack [with film] . . .. At this point, I wasn't resisting because I knew it was over."
Ritchie was taken to police headquarters, where, said Hames: "Somebody up here made the decision -- said, 'hey, wait a minute. It's The Journal.' We knew they were going to cooperate."
Uninjured, Ritchie, with her cameras back in her possession, was returned to The Journal, where Sgt. Robert Boehm accompanied the photographer to the darkroom. Concerned about preserving the chain of custody for evidence that could be critical in prosecuting Fontanez, Boehm watched politely as the negatives were developed and prints were made. By this time, Rawson had arrived and the police left with the pictures they wanted.
A few hours later, at 11:30 p.m. on Sunday, David Fontanez, 38, of Roslindale, Mass., was arrested and charged with several offenses after surrendering himself in Boston.
HAMES YESTERDAY said that the police will review Sunday's incident, and consider instructing street-level officers on media relations.
"I'm sure in the future we're going to look to resolve it in much easier ways," he said. "I think emotions were running high because of the fact of what happened there" at the South Providence shooting. "Those pictures were very crucial to us."
Rawson said Journal executives and lawyers are discussing what, if any, legal action to take. "It's not acceptable to take our property," he said. "It's not permissible to touch us."
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the paper probably would prevail in a federal action against the police. Based on what she knows of the incident, Dalglish said the police violated the Privacy Protection Act of 1980.
But she noted that seizures of cameras and film and arrests of photographers and reporters seem to be on the rise in America.
"I've never seen anything like it," she said. "This is happening all over the place."
Why?
"I think some of it is anti-media hostility," she said. "Some of it is cops feeling the public is very law and order right now -- they feel they can act with impunity."
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