NFTA K-9 Officer Suspended For Threatening Buffalo Photographer

 

BUFFALO, NY (June 17, 2011) – A Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA) K-9 police officer captured on video as he approached and profanely threatened a photographer with physical injury has been suspended and assigned to remedial training, NPPA learned this week.

The details were revealed during a conversation between NPPA's lawyer and the NFTA's director of public affairs in Buffalo.

NFTA public affairs director C. Douglas Hartmayer told NPPA's general counsel Mickey H. Osterreicher that the officer seen in a video posted on YouTube has been “suspended for two days by the chief for his actions and is going through some remedial training."

In the video the officer clearly states, “If you take my picture again, I'm going to [expletive] break your face. That's not as a police officer, that's as a person.”

After viewing the video, which was posted on YouTube on May 28, 2011, NPPA's lawyer sent a letter to the NFTA expressing concern “that the officer did not know that public photography is a protected First Amendment activity, and that whether as an officer or private citizen he had no reasonable expectation of privacy while out in public.”

Adding to the confusion was the fact that the video, which purportedly took place on June 2, 2011, is believed to actually have been shot some time last year.

The suspended officers name is not being released, a police official said, because its being treated as an internal matter. The officer has apologized to his chief and to his fellow officers for the incident, a Buffalo television newscast reported.

NFTA was able to take action against the officer because whether it was actually shot this year or last year, they were able to determine (based on other officers in the background of the video) that the incident happened within the last 12 months, and therefore they could still take a disciplinary action against the officer. If the incident was more than a year gone by, they might not have been able to enforce the suspension and training demand.

In response to NPPA’s offer to work with the law enforcement agencies to help develop reasonable and workable policies and practices, NFTA police chief George W. Gast contacted Osterreicher, who lives in Buffalo. They met at police headquarters along with supervisory staff in an effort to establish a photography policy similar to the one Osterreicher helped draft for Amtrak in 2009. Officers also discussed First and Fourth Amendment issues with the NPPA attorney, as well as reviewing other recent incidents around the country involving the TSA and other transit systems.

"I commend Chief Gast for acting quickly and decisively in this matter and for his willingness to improve how his officers deal with these issues," Osterreicher said.

Osterreicher said that he and Gast plan to stay in touch on these and other matters.

 

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