Craziness in Louisiana part 1

As if the Big Mess were not enough… harassment and restriction of journalist and film makers is also on going.

Intimidation occurs in several forms.

First is direct confrontation. On my second day, I was standing on the side of Hwy heading toward Grand Isle when two large vehicles with flashing red and blue lights came charging up to me. At that moment, I was filming a pickup that had been submerged in the tidal marshes to the north of the road. I was standing on a fairly broad shoulder and was not overly close to traffic or any other harm. My vehicle was on the other side of the road, facing east. One police SUV drove directly to my car and the other came straight at me. This officer jumped out of his SUV and walked directly to me speaking loudly and holding his right hand to his weapon.

I have a camera. Television - standard size with a rather large lens, since I normally do bird filming. This lens of course is a zoom, and can go quite wide too. Moments before I had filmed a Snowy and Great Egrets at a culvert going under a road entering a fenced off but very open building. I have no idea what it is or was.

There was one other thing I found very relevant- a large squarish dome of foam swirling above an inlet submerged after rain. I found the motion to be totally intriguing.

The officer demanded "What are you doing here and do you have identification?"

"I need to see some identification now. You are in a high risk security zone and have a camera. After 9/11 you can not film here."

I bristled at first showing him what I was filming.

This was confusing and almost disorientating to me. I had been filming the day before well down the road in the same port area, where I stood less than 100 feet from an officer, looked like the same guy almost, and had my camera out as well as another crew with 4 members fully operating nearby. On that day I had been directly talking with these guys when asking about beach access. What was the difference?

In the end I provided drivers license and my business card to them. They wrote things down and then left.

But every time a cop then pulls in behind you- you are wondering what is going on? … and a little scared when you are doing nothing wrong.

Intimidation.

There are hundreds of officers doing what they are told and thinking they are doing the right thing for us. But who is in charge?

I was "guided" by other sheriff's deputies to do this, then… that and before long you have spoken to 5 people driven 25 miles and accomplished close to nothing. The light is now bad and the heat is intense. Louisiana is experiencing record heat this June. But a big company like CNN have one person -associate producers who do this thing all day long. They sort through this stuff. I am a one man band, certainly much more efficient but also in a situation like that which is a rarity in my life- less effective than the big boys.

The whole thing is either Chaos or total disorganization. Now we see the mixed up stupidity of state vs local vs federal vs corporate. ONe central authority please. One place for journalists to check in and get daily briefings, one place for press passes, one place for volunteers. They don't all have to be the Same place - just one centralized location.

I'll finish more on this in the next week and the entry will be called Final Straw.