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Punk Planet photographer arrested at Connecticut governor's inaugural parade |
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Saturday, 17 February 2007 |
 Punk Planet writer/photographer and law student Ken Krayeske was recently arrested for "breach of peace and interfering with an officer", after only taking this photograph of Connecticut Gov. Jodi Rell at her inaugural parade.
According to this article, Krayeske was taking photographs when he was arrested for apparently attempting to interfere with the parade, though reports on both sides are conflicting. An interesting aspect to the story is that Connecticut has spent "homeland security" dollars sent since 9/11 to build photo databases of peace activists, which the report states was used to identify Krayeske prior to the parade. Krayeske was near the corner of Ford and Pearl Street photographing Rell’s inaugural parade when, according to the police report, he was identified as a “political activist” and a threat to the governor. Krayeske was arrested and charged with breach of peace and interfering with an officer. He also worked on Green Party candidate Cliff Thornton’s campaign for governor against Rell.
As of February 14th, Ken has recieved the support of the Society of Professional Journalists. The organization made this statement:
It’s not too late for Connecticut police to stop this fiasco and embarrassment to law enforcement. Police officers should not be faulted for stopping Mr. Krayeske and inquiring about his actions if they believed he may have been a threat to the governor. But it shouldn’t have taken almost 12 hours and a trip to a police station for officers to determine that a man who identified himself as a journalist and who was carrying a knapsack containing little more than his camera meant no harm to Gov. Rell.
Too much debate has focused on whether Krayeske, who has worked on political campaigns and urged political activism on his Web site, was acting as a journalist at the time of his detainment. Was he acting as a journalist? It doesn’t matter. Krayeske was acting as a citizen of the United States and exercising the First Amendment rights guaranteed to everyone in this country.
You can read a few articles here: New Haven Independent, The Courant and Punk Planet.
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