Three months after a Milwaukee police sergeant roughed up the oldest photog he could find at a house fire, city officials have admitted Clint Fillinger did nothing wrong. That is to say they've dropped all charges against the Fox 4 photojournalist. Readers will remember Fillinger as the - ahem - seasoned lenslinger who responded to a house fire call only to be accosted by an oddly hostile cop. "All the way back!" the sergeant barked, as he and a fellow officer walked the accredited photographer away from the news scene. Fillinger protested as he backpedaled, until finally the cops put him on his ass. When they did, his camera took a hard bounce but it did capture the sixty eight year old community menace being unceremoniously cuffed and stuffed.
At the time we issued a stern Schmuck Alert, a move met with stiff indifference by all parties involved. We're cool with that, though one of the core tenets of The Lenslinger Institute is that clashes between The Fourth Estate and first responders would not occur so readily were certain people not so insistent on being absolute douche-bags. It's even written in our by-laws. So, you can imagine our delight at hearing the city of Milwaukee have reconsidered their position and expunged Mr. Fillinger's record of any and all cooked up charges. Hey, being publicly identified as a forty five year old veteran of television news is enough to live down. No one needs a rap sheet they didn't earn.
3 comments:
Personally, I think Mr. Fillinger needs to get himself a nice lawyer and go after that PD with a wrongful arrest suit.
What would be more helpful is to take the high road, with the ND writing to the police asking for help in identifying what went wrong so that police and legitimate news gathering organizations don't wind up with a similar problem down the road.
I.e. if the police officer was wrong, what have police been told about avoiding this problem?
The real worry is that this problem is getting worse...not better. The cops have been on a power trip since 9/11...and now they are spending BILLIONS to arm themselves with military grade gear. It's not the N. Koreans, the Iranians or the Chinese you need to worry about and prepare to defend against, it's our own police forces. Even with cases like this one that gets dropped, the other cops in this country dont learn. They keep on doing it because there is no punishment. They are accomplishing their goal by removing us from the scene, even using illegal tactics when necessary, knowing that the charges will get dropped or thrown out later...with no reprecussions. What's needed is many LARGE lawsuits that cost them millions to remind them who they work for and what piece of paper they swore to uphold and defend when they took the job.
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