First the Eldery Woman, then the "Ninja" and now the Photographer.

In the order I read them this week.

1. Eighty-two (82) year old woman ticketed because she is too slow- judge cool with it.

Elderly Woman's Jaywalking Ticket Draws Outrage

(AP) LOS ANGELES Mayvis Coyle got more than just a $114 jaywalking ticket for taking too long to cross a busy street.

With the 82-year-old woman's fine has come international celebrity -- she has camera crews showing up at her home, invitations to appear on television and support from around the world.

"I didn't want all this publicity," Coyle said Thursday. "But I'm not objecting to being used if it gets the lights changed and gets respect for the elderly."

Los Angeles police officials say Coyle entered a busy San Fernando Valley intersection on Feb. 15 after the red "Don't Walk" sign began blinking. They say the department is cracking down on wayward pedestrians because an increasing number of them are being killed by cars.

Coyle says she began shuffling across the intersection with her cane in one hand and groceries in the other on a white "Walk" signal. The great-great-grandmother plans to fight the ticket.

2. Teen Ninja Taken DOWN by F-Troop
(Text from original article I read and embedded in image)

This photo, taken by a student?s camera phone, shows ATF officials pinning down Jeremiah Ransom in front of Snelling dining hall. He was coming from a pirate vs. ninja event at the Wesley Foundation and was not arrested. (Kathleen Ruark The Red & Black)

"Seeing someone with something across the face, from a federal standpoint- that's not right," McLemore said, explaining why agents believed something to be amiss.

3. Two from adovcay group detained for taking pictures of NYPD ignoring parking laws.

Watching the Detectives
The NYPD wants to take your picture?but beware of turning your lens on the cops

by Sarah Ferguson
April 10th, 2006 5:30 PM

Since 2003, the NYPD has been filming protesters at political demonstrations, regardless of whether anything illegal's going on. City lawyers were in court last month defending the practice, arguing that what happens in public view is fair game.

But police evidently aren't so keen on surveillance when the cameras are turned on them?particularly when those cameras show them abusing free-street-parking privileges.

On March 27, two volunteers from the advocacy group Transportation Alternatives were detained for taking pictures of police officers' private cars, which were parked on the sidewalk outside the Fifth Precinct in Chinatown. The volunteers say they were held and questioned at the precinct for about 20 minutes and instructed to erase the pictures.

"It was intimidating. I was afraid they were going to arrest me," says Brian Hoberman, 37, who works as a researcher for the city's Rent Guidelines Board.

Hoberman and a college student had been dispatched by Transportation Alternatives to document the scourge of sidewalk parking around City Hall and Chinatown. "We were told to photograph all the cars on the sidewalk with their license plates, and if they had any parking permits in the windows," Hoberman explains.

They started outside the Fifth Precinct on Elizabeth Street between Canal and Bayard streets, a narrow block where it's customary to find police and others parking with two wheels on the curb. Hoberman says he snapped a shot of an SUV straddling the sidewalk, and was quickly confronted by its owner, a cop in plain clothes.

"He said, 'Do you know this is my car? What are you doing?' " Hoberman recalls. "I told him we weren't targeting police or any particular people's cars, and that it was just a general survey, but he kept haranguing me, so I walked away." Hoberman says he resumed taking pictures, then turned back when he noticed his fellow volunteer being held up by a different officer.

They were asked to come inside the precinct, Hoberman says, where they were grilled by at least three officers. "They asked if we had anything to do with Critical Mass?twice," he says. "They took our driver's licenses and asked us if we had any outstanding warrants."

Hoberman says the officers listed several reasons they could not photograph cops' personal vehicles?including concerns that if the license plate numbers were published online, gang members could track police to their homes. "One officer asked if we were familiar with the gang situation in Chinatown," Hoberman recalls. "He said his tires had been slashed outside the precinct. He said, 'This is not the West Village.' And he mentioned the Patriot Act.

Gotta love that Patriot ACT and the STASSI mentallity that is now so out in the open...

--WP