At Gunpoint, Miami Beach Police Threaten Videographer At Fatal Shooting
By Donald R. Winslow
© 2011 News Photographer magazine
MIAMI BEACH, FL (June 7, 2011) – A video that shows Miami Beach police pointing a gun at a man who had just recorded them on video as they shot and killed a suspect on Memorial Day has now been posted on YouTube.
The video shows police shooting and killing Raymond Herisse, 22, as he sat in a stopped automobile on Collins Ave. In the aftermath, police then pointed a gun at the man who shot the incident on cell phone video, Narces Benoit.
"The police told me to get the 'F' away from here, get back in your car," Benoit told CNN this morning.
"So I walked back to my car with my hands up." Benoit can be heard on the video as he walked, "I don't have a weapon."
From the view inside the car, then an officer wearing what appears to be a bicycle helmet approaches Benoit with a handgun pointed directly at the camera, which would be at Benoit's eye level.
Benoit, who was with his girlfriend, Ericka Davis, said police pulled him out of the car, put him face down on the pavement, guns pointed at the couples' heads, handcuffed him, and smashed his cell phone. Then they put the smashed phone in his back pocket as he lay on the ground.
But Benoit had saved the video to his phone's SIM card and hid the card in his mouth before the phone was smashed.
He was taken to a mobile command center, photographed, and questioned. Then police took him to headquarters and questioned him again, demanding the video. Benoit says he told police, "The phone's broken." He was later released.
"They wanted the video, that's all they were concerned with," Davis told CNN.
CNN has purchased the video, and have shown it on air along with Benoit's interview.
The couple, who have hired a lawyer because, they say, they "want the right thing to be done," said they saw police taking other people's cell phones at the scene and smashing them as well, destroying evidence and intimidating witnesses.
Several Miami news organizations are also reporting that police confiscated a news camera from a Local 10 photographer at the shooting scene.
NPPA's general legal counsel, Mickey H. Osterreicher, sent a letter today to Miami Beach Police Chief Carlos Noriega objecting to the police officers' behavior after the shooting, and citing their actions as illegal search and seizure as well as interference with public photography, which are First and Fourth Amendment protected rights.
"While it may be understandable that your officers had a heightened sense of tension after the shooting of Herisse, that is still no excuse for them to allegedly harass, intimidate, threaten or attack those taking photographs/video on a public street," Osterreicher told the police chief.
"Recently in Egypt, Syria and Libya citizens and photojournalists have risked, and in some cases given, their lives to provide visual proof of repressive governmental activities. It is truly a shame that what is viewed abroad as heroic is considered as suspect at home," Osterreicher said.
"Law enforcement agencies are established to uphold and enforce existing laws not to act in a
lawless manner," NPPA's lawyer wrote. "Public photography is a free speech/free press right protected by the First Amendment. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures. Photography may not be restricted in a public place by officers wishing to avoid the documentation of their actions. The seizure and/or destruction of cameras to accomplish that same end is also unlawful."
Four bystanders and three police officers were reportedly injured during the shoot-out, which rained a hail of gunfire across the intersection of Collins Ave. and 13th Street.
The victim killed by police, Herisse, had tried to use his car "as a weapon" against a police officer earlier in the day during a traffic stop, the Miami Beach chief of police told reporters at a press conference. Herisse had been the subject of a manhunt all day. At the time of the shooting police said the victim was armed, but a gun wasn't found inside his shot-up Hyundai until two-and-a-half days later.
It's been a difficult week for photography and the First Amendment in south Florida, where in Fort Lauderdale police have been "rewriting the law" to protect actors on a movie set and harass photographers.
On the payroll for the movie "Rock of Ages," off-duty Fort Lauderdale police providing security on location have been "harassing, intimidating, and threatening photojournalists who are tying to photograph actors in public," Carlos Miller reports on www.pixiq.com.
NPPA's lawyer Osterreicher today also sent a letter of objection to Fort Lauderdale's police chief and the city's mayor, John P. Seiler, regarding his officer's actions.
"Law enforcement agencies are established to uphold and enforce existing laws not to create new ones or act in a lawless manner," Osterreicher wrote to police chief Franklin Adderley.
"Public photography is a free speech/free press right protected by the First Amendment. Photography may not be restricted in a public place to accommodate the whims of Hollywood or the desire by your officers to please their 'second-job' employers."
Osterreicher also said, "It is one thing for law enforcement to act under color of law; it is quite another to abuse that discretion in order to create a climate that chills free speech. It is our position that your officers have done just that."
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