Yaatri

Because some police officers are very brave!. Always ready to do more than their job.

jcwoman

Oh how I wish I happened to be the guy taking pictures of the photographer being arrested in Penn Station! I would SO win that contest.

ralfp

With malicious intent, as is to be expected.

Edit: has a police officer in the US ever been charged criminally, or even disciplined, for this kind of thing?

Ari

With handcuffing backwards, I don't know. For other intentional handcuffing mishaps, I imagine in many cases, when a large jury verdict comes down against a department for excessive force, the officers involved are disciplined. There are several such cases.

LoganTSO

All railroads usually have a police force, the freight carriers have them. So it's nothing new. Railroad police have been around since the 1800s during the days of train robberies.

That being I said, in my off time, I'm a bit of transportation geek, I like planes... but I have a bigger thing for trains. Of course, I love to take photos, so back in December, I decided to head into downtown Boston to fill up my CharlieCard and of course get some photos of trains.

Of course, I've many a problem involving South Station and the MBTA and Amtrak and their over zealousness for photography equating it with terrorism.

Personally, most of my co-workers and me don't mind phototaking, the skycaps tend to whine that it's illegal. There's nothing we can do to you for taking photos... but if you walked straight up to an X-ray and snapped a photo... I'd take that as a bit weird.

Now... I want to enter that contest!

SNA_Flyer

I hope he takes them to the bank. This is despicable.

Wally Bird

When it comes to "security", pretty much all the laws are made up on the spot. It Keeps Us Safe.

sbm12

FWIW, I believe that Amtrak is the owner - and almost certainly the primary operator - of NYP station. That may be sufficient to have the platforms considered Amtrak Property with respect to the scope of the laws.

That doesn't excuse the actions of the Amtrak cop, but at least they are in their jurisdiction enforcing a law that doesn't really exist.

ralfp

Assuming that the guy's story is true, it's pretty clear that the cop knew that it was legal to take photos. If he thought it wasn't, he would have cited the guy for failure to obey a lawful order.

Boghopper

Freight companies have "railroad police" who have many of the same powers as government law enforcement personnel. It's a weird little corner of the world, perhaps left over from when railroads ran through lots of places that had no law enforcement to speak of. If Amtrak has the same railroad police, they can definitely arrest people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police

There's this rail crossing near my BART station in the SF area that every couple of months has the railroad police staking it out. They then pull over lots of cars and issue tickets, I don't know for what. I noticed because one railroad police vehicle had followed a car to the BART parking lot and was issuing the citation there.

Just think, a private corporation with police powers. Fabulous.

ralfp

It's almost as bad as "off-duty" cops working as rent-a-cops while in uniform, i.e. police officers taking bribes to selectively protect certain people. Talk about a potential conflict of interest.

If a rent-a-cop cop's employer assaults a customer, does the rented cop arrest the employer (and get fired), or the arrest the victim (and thus violate his/her duty as a law-enforcement officer)?

harpodamann

What did the Circus have to do with this? I love the Circus and the Clowns, they make me . Leave the clowns & circus out of your crazy comments, if you must attack the Amtrak Police, do so, but again leave the clowns out of this

Superguy

Hey, it's just another example of Homey D. Clown being held down by the Man!

harpodamann

Thx 4 da good laugh

fairviewroad

Stephen Colbert devoted an entire segment last night to this incident. It's the second segment of the episode...I don't know how to link to the second segment specifically, but once the episode starts, you can click on the progress bar to the second segment...about 8:50 into the episode.

It's worth the watch as a high profile show skewers Amtrak's hypocrisy:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/55853/the-...009#s-p1-sr-i0