A professional photographer from Charlottetown, P.E.I., has been fined $230 for “loitering” while he was taking pictures of Quebec City’s iconic Château Frontenac hotel.
John Morris says he was standing on a sidewalk opposite the U.S. consulate near the famed hotel around noon on Tuesday, waiting for some clouds to arrive to get the perfect shot, when police officers approached him and told him to leave.
He said the officers only explained that he was loitering and issued the fine for it after he was put in the back of a police cruiser.
She said when the police officers arrived, they determined that the individual was breaking a municipal bylaw and asked him to provide his identity, but he refused, so they arrested him.
Quebec City’s municipal bylaw says that is “prohibited for a person, without a reasonable motive … to loiter, wander or sleep in a street or a public space.”
Florence Boucher Cossette, a criminal defence lawyer who has worked on loitering cases before, says the legal definition of the offence is unclear and is used arbitrarily by law enforcement.
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If you don’t know that P.E.I. is Prince Edward Island and feel compelled to share your brilliant discovery, you probably don’t belong in a discussion group about Canada on a Canadian-hosted Lemmy server.
She said when the police officers arrived, they determined that the individual was breaking a municipal bylaw and asked him to provide his identity, but he refused, so they arrested him.
Dion confirmed the person was fined but declined to confirm his name or what bylaw he broke.
Then he didn’t break a by-law. If you can’t immediately tell someone what crime they committed then they didn’t commit a fucking crime.
When asked under what circumstances Quebec City police will arrest or fine someone for loitering, Dion said “it’s on a case-by-case basis,” and "it’s up to police officers’ discretion.
Nope. This is nonsensical. If there is ANYTHING that has been demonstrated over the past few years it is that police simply are not capable of holding themselves to any accountability. Giving them a blanket reason they can arrest/fine anyone is flagrantly unacceptable.
John Morris says he was standing on a sidewalk opposite the U.S. consulate near the famed hotel around noon on Tuesday, waiting for some clouds to arrive to get the perfect shot…
He then goes on to say that officers told him that he can’t be standing there for a half hour, and was fined for loitering.
To be honest, if he was, by his own admittance, standing on a public sidewalk for 30 minutes with his gear, then he earned that loitering fine. This was also explained to him and it written on his ticket, so he’s contradicting himself by saying they never explained what law was broken.
Being a professional photographer doesn’t give someone the right to take ownership of the public space.
He could snap a photo and move on, but he decided to block a public sidewalk for as long as he wanted to get a shot… if they didn’t stop him after 30 minutes, he could have been there for hours. Who knows? Either way, he’s acting entitled.
What an asshole, how dare he stand on a public sidewalk like he fucking owns the place. Entitled piece of shit taking ownership of that sidewalk by exisiting on it.
Do you know the area he was blocking, as described in the article? I do, and if he was blocking any section of that sidewalk, it would be very inconvenient for other users of that sidewalk to get around him, especially since that particular sidewalk also has fire hydrants and light poles.
There’s a literal wall/railing on one side, and a street on the other.
How he could feel ok blocking it for over a half hour SCREAMS entitlement “because he’s a professional photographer.”
I think the police were right to say he was loitering, but a warning would have been good enough. Unless he was really being a prick about it, and maybe he was playing dumb, which ultimately prompted the ticket.
FYI, he wasn’t taking photos, he was standing idly and was blocking a public sidewalk with his equipment while he waited for a good shot. He claimed that he was out of the way, but that particular sidewalk doesn’t allow for any room to be “out of the way” because it has a street on one side and a wall on the other.
Granted, he had a massive tripod and a pro camera right outside the US consulate building for at least a half hour, which is why the police were called. He had been asked to move along, and he just argued, so he got a ticket.
A pro photographer, with intention to shoot commercial photography in a public place, might have applied for a permit first. Especially if the shoot required blocking public walkways for such a long time.
He can certainly challenge this in court, but to what end? He seemed to be clearly in the wrong.
What’s the matter ? You can’t read too many word ??
He is explaining his opinion dude. Relax. If this gets to court we will see what the outcome is. Both opinion are validm blocking the sidewalk is bad but I can see why someone would want to take time to take a good shot of chateau Frontenac.
He wasn’t simply “in a public place”, he was blocking the sidewalk with gear for over a half hour, just standing there waiting for the clouds to be right for his photo…
I get that not everyone will agree with him being ticketed, but he really needed to use more common sense.
So a photo staged after the event for the news report is your evidence he was blocking the sidewalk before the newsworthy event was happening.
You’re an idjit. Go crawl back under the bridge you call home.
(For those of you who are not this idjit: when a photographer is waiting for proper lighting, they generally don’t sit there with all their equipment out, tripod legs spread, etc., precisely because they don’t know when—or even if—the lighting will go their way. They just stand to one side, using a minimal footprint, waiting for the right conditions before they snap out the equipment to take their shot. This guy is talking out of his asshole. By which I mean out of himself.)
So a photo staged after the event for the news report is your evidence he was blocking the sidewalk before the newsworthy event was happening.
No.
The photo shows the gear he blocked the sidewalk with. I’ll note that it’s not a typical tripod, but a much larger one that has a considerable footprint.
The report itself, going by the testimony of the accused, is the evidence. The ticket with the admitted infraction further bolsters this evidence.
What more do you want? What exactly are you in denial about?
You’re right. If he wanted to impede foot traffic, he should have been a property developer. They get to block off public spaces for years at a time, and it’s ok because in the end they’re generating profit. /s
To be honest, if he was, by his own admittance, standing on a public sidewalk for 30 minutes with his gear, then he earned that loitering fine.
According to this very article, with emphasis added,
Quebec City’s municipal bylaw says that is “prohibited for a person, without a reasonable motive … to loiter, wander or sleep in a street or a public space.”
[Criminal defence lawyer Florence Boucher Cossette] said Morris likely has a good shot at winning his case, as people accused of loitering when they were sunbathing or drinking coffee on a bench were acquitted in previous cases.
Those two examples are quite a bit different than “waiting for clouds” while blocking a sidewalk with camera gear for over a half hour.
Here’s how I personally look at bylaws and when they are appropriate: if 100 or 500 more people were doing what he did, would that acceptable?
I would hope most people see that blocking a public walkway for an inordinate amount of time without a reasonable motive (i.e. an eldery person catching their breath, or a mother tying her child’s shoelace), would need loitering bylaws to be enforced for the benefit of everyone else.
To be honest, if he was, by his own admittance, standing on a public sidewalk for 30 minutes with his gear, then he earned that loitering fine.
When asked under what circumstances Quebec City police will arrest or fine someone for loitering, Dion said “it’s on a case-by-case basis,” and "it’s up to police officers’ discretion.
So he didn’t earn anything other than a cop randomly choosing that he was loitering. There is no written definition circumstances in which someone can be classified as loitering. There are tons of people who do the same, if not worse, and are not subjected to this undignified arrest and fine. If a different cop were to show up and have a different opinion, he’d have never gotten the fine. If you cannot concretely say that “This is what you have broken” and “This is why it is wrong” then there should not be a punishment for it.
This was also explained to him and it written on his ticket, so he’s contradicting himself by saying they never explained what law was broken.
He is not contradicting himself. The person who refused to say what bylaw was broken was a completely different person with a different name. I’d suggest reading the article in future so you don’t make such mistakes.
Being a professional photographer doesn’t give someone the right to take ownership of the public space.
He never claimed ownership of the public space.
if they didn’t stop him after 30 minutes, he could have been there for hours.
He said that the sun came out while he was in the cruiser and he missed the shot. So if anything, the police kept him at this place even longer.
Either way, he’s acting entitled.
For wanting to use a public space and expecting fair/impartial application of the rules? And clear rules to begin with? Lolno
If they have enough police (not by-law officers) to be patrolling the area for loiterers, then they have too many police. Someone obviously called this in. So who was it, and why were they so uncomfortable with a photographer’s presence? (My bet is, US consulate intelligence attaché acting paranoid.)
From the article, someone called 911. Presumably personnel from the US consulate, but they should have used their discretion when a professional photographer explained they were waiting for the correct lighting for their photo. That’s perfectly reasonable.
He wasn’t taking pictures in the windows of the consulate or loitering, which explicitly requires there to be “no purpose” to being there, which he clearly demonstrated.
I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t believe the police have the right to demand ID when you’re not suspected of breaking any laws, either.
How about the cops focus on the thousands of cars being stolen instead of some guy with a camera. Oh, wait, that’s hard work and they wouldn’t get to harass anybody.
Our most common technique is to remove the headlight and connect to the computer through that because people stopped keeping their Bluetooth fobs at the door and people have doorbell cameras
Cheap cars aren’t really worth sending over to Africa
The head light thing is because manufactures use the same CAN bus (network) to control security features and lighting. So by saving 50 feet of wire they expose unprotected access to the car’s computers.
Car theft is not something that police can go after? If it is up to me to just make my property less steal-able then why the fuck do we have police at all?
I think some of us USAers should go to there and take some pictures of the USA consulate. Still waiting on my passport to come in plus I’m lazy and probably won’t do it. But some of you should. 😘
Ugh, also it’s a 9 hour drive one way for me.
U.S. Consulate General Quebec City
Foreign consulate in Quebec City, Quebec
Address: 2 Pl. Terr. Dufferin, Québec, QC G1R 4T9, Canada
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !canada@lemmy.ca
deleted by creator
Show me on the doll where Quebec touched you.
If you search for most beautiful city in the world, québec will appear. I’m not sure why you think it’s xenophobic.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A professional photographer from Charlottetown, P.E.I., has been fined $230 for “loitering” while he was taking pictures of Quebec City’s iconic Château Frontenac hotel.
John Morris says he was standing on a sidewalk opposite the U.S. consulate near the famed hotel around noon on Tuesday, waiting for some clouds to arrive to get the perfect shot, when police officers approached him and told him to leave.
He said the officers only explained that he was loitering and issued the fine for it after he was put in the back of a police cruiser.
She said when the police officers arrived, they determined that the individual was breaking a municipal bylaw and asked him to provide his identity, but he refused, so they arrested him.
Quebec City’s municipal bylaw says that is “prohibited for a person, without a reasonable motive … to loiter, wander or sleep in a street or a public space.”
Florence Boucher Cossette, a criminal defence lawyer who has worked on loitering cases before, says the legal definition of the offence is unclear and is used arbitrarily by law enforcement.
The original article contains 699 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Oh my god
Yes I had to look it up too. It’s Prince Edward Island
If you don’t know that P.E.I. is Prince Edward Island and feel compelled to share your brilliant discovery, you probably don’t belong in a discussion group about Canada on a Canadian-hosted Lemmy server.
Pardon me for wanting to learn about other places, and assisting those like me that had this thread appear on their feed yesterday
Canadians, polite? Only compared to the yanks maybe 😅
I found your comment helpful
Good to hear, I have some more somewhere if you’d like
Easy to be mean on the internet, and islanders are sensitive about being forgotten (because it happens so much).
Come to PEI though, the people there are really nice.
They are indeed. Some of my fondest memories as a tourist come from PEI.
Aye and the islanders have fond memories of when you went home mate 😜
Then he didn’t break a by-law. If you can’t immediately tell someone what crime they committed then they didn’t commit a fucking crime.
Nope. This is nonsensical. If there is ANYTHING that has been demonstrated over the past few years it is that police simply are not capable of holding themselves to any accountability. Giving them a blanket reason they can arrest/fine anyone is flagrantly unacceptable.
How do you fine somebody without telling them what they’re being fined for‽
He then goes on to say that officers told him that he can’t be standing there for a half hour, and was fined for loitering.
To be honest, if he was, by his own admittance, standing on a public sidewalk for 30 minutes with his gear, then he earned that loitering fine. This was also explained to him and it written on his ticket, so he’s contradicting himself by saying they never explained what law was broken.
Being a professional photographer doesn’t give someone the right to take ownership of the public space.
He could snap a photo and move on, but he decided to block a public sidewalk for as long as he wanted to get a shot… if they didn’t stop him after 30 minutes, he could have been there for hours. Who knows? Either way, he’s acting entitled.
What an asshole, how dare he stand on a public sidewalk like he fucking owns the place. Entitled piece of shit taking ownership of that sidewalk by exisiting on it.
Do you know the area he was blocking, as described in the article? I do, and if he was blocking any section of that sidewalk, it would be very inconvenient for other users of that sidewalk to get around him, especially since that particular sidewalk also has fire hydrants and light poles.
There’s a literal wall/railing on one side, and a street on the other.
How he could feel ok blocking it for over a half hour SCREAMS entitlement “because he’s a professional photographer.”
I think the police were right to say he was loitering, but a warning would have been good enough. Unless he was really being a prick about it, and maybe he was playing dumb, which ultimately prompted the ticket.
Say “I didn’t read the article’s actual words” without using those words.
deleted by creator
FYI, he wasn’t taking photos, he was standing idly and was blocking a public sidewalk with his equipment while he waited for a good shot. He claimed that he was out of the way, but that particular sidewalk doesn’t allow for any room to be “out of the way” because it has a street on one side and a wall on the other.
Granted, he had a massive tripod and a pro camera right outside the US consulate building for at least a half hour, which is why the police were called. He had been asked to move along, and he just argued, so he got a ticket.
A pro photographer, with intention to shoot commercial photography in a public place, might have applied for a permit first. Especially if the shoot required blocking public walkways for such a long time.
He can certainly challenge this in court, but to what end? He seemed to be clearly in the wrong.
deleted by creator
What’s the matter ? You can’t read too many word ?? He is explaining his opinion dude. Relax. If this gets to court we will see what the outcome is. Both opinion are validm blocking the sidewalk is bad but I can see why someone would want to take time to take a good shot of chateau Frontenac.
I agree that putting him in handcuffs and ticketing him seems extreme, as a warning could have been enough.
He is still in the wrong, regardless.
In your ideal world, what is the maximum time one is allowed to spend in public?
He wasn’t simply “in a public place”, he was blocking the sidewalk with gear for over a half hour, just standing there waiting for the clouds to be right for his photo…
I get that not everyone will agree with him being ticketed, but he really needed to use more common sense.
Your evidence that he was blocking the sidewalk with gear is what, precisely.
Provide details. Show your work.
Did you read the article? It’s all there, including a photo of the gear he was using.
So a photo staged after the event for the news report is your evidence he was blocking the sidewalk before the newsworthy event was happening.
You’re an idjit. Go crawl back under the bridge you call home.
(For those of you who are not this idjit: when a photographer is waiting for proper lighting, they generally don’t sit there with all their equipment out, tripod legs spread, etc., precisely because they don’t know when—or even if—the lighting will go their way. They just stand to one side, using a minimal footprint, waiting for the right conditions before they snap out the equipment to take their shot. This guy is talking out of his asshole. By which I mean out of himself.)
No.
The photo shows the gear he blocked the sidewalk with. I’ll note that it’s not a typical tripod, but a much larger one that has a considerable footprint.
The report itself, going by the testimony of the accused, is the evidence. The ticket with the admitted infraction further bolsters this evidence.
What more do you want? What exactly are you in denial about?
You’re right. If he wanted to impede foot traffic, he should have been a property developer. They get to block off public spaces for years at a time, and it’s ok because in the end they’re generating profit. /s
According to this very article, with emphasis added,
Those two examples are quite a bit different than “waiting for clouds” while blocking a sidewalk with camera gear for over a half hour.
Here’s how I personally look at bylaws and when they are appropriate: if 100 or 500 more people were doing what he did, would that acceptable?
I would hope most people see that blocking a public walkway for an inordinate amount of time without a reasonable motive (i.e. an eldery person catching their breath, or a mother tying her child’s shoelace), would need loitering bylaws to be enforced for the benefit of everyone else.
So he didn’t earn anything other than a cop randomly choosing that he was loitering. There is no written definition circumstances in which someone can be classified as loitering. There are tons of people who do the same, if not worse, and are not subjected to this undignified arrest and fine. If a different cop were to show up and have a different opinion, he’d have never gotten the fine. If you cannot concretely say that “This is what you have broken” and “This is why it is wrong” then there should not be a punishment for it.
He is not contradicting himself. The person who refused to say what bylaw was broken was a completely different person with a different name. I’d suggest reading the article in future so you don’t make such mistakes.
He never claimed ownership of the public space.
He said that the sun came out while he was in the cruiser and he missed the shot. So if anything, the police kept him at this place even longer.
For wanting to use a public space and expecting fair/impartial application of the rules? And clear rules to begin with? Lolno
Yeah, that’s the polite version of being arrested for resisting arrest.
If they have enough police (not by-law officers) to be patrolling the area for loiterers, then they have too many police. Someone obviously called this in. So who was it, and why were they so uncomfortable with a photographer’s presence? (My bet is, US consulate intelligence attaché acting paranoid.)
From the article, someone called 911. Presumably personnel from the US consulate, but they should have used their discretion when a professional photographer explained they were waiting for the correct lighting for their photo. That’s perfectly reasonable.
He wasn’t taking pictures in the windows of the consulate or loitering, which explicitly requires there to be “no purpose” to being there, which he clearly demonstrated.
I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t believe the police have the right to demand ID when you’re not suspected of breaking any laws, either.
They were not patrolling, they were called to the scene.
It’s still stupid though.
How about the cops focus on the thousands of cars being stolen instead of some guy with a camera. Oh, wait, that’s hard work and they wouldn’t get to harass anybody.
How about the cops comes in when we call them ?? Oh wait, that’s what just happened.
That’s not something they can go after
Better anti-thief is what you are looking for; like removing the computer from cars
Ah yes, you can see how well having less computers works by how hard Kia and Hyundai’s are to steal in the US.
Kia removed the chip-in-key feature to save money, they essentially had no anti-theft measures at all.
Our most common technique is to remove the headlight and connect to the computer through that because people stopped keeping their Bluetooth fobs at the door and people have doorbell cameras
Cheap cars aren’t really worth sending over to Africa
The head light thing is because manufactures use the same CAN bus (network) to control security features and lighting. So by saving 50 feet of wire they expose unprotected access to the car’s computers.
Car theft is not something that police can go after? If it is up to me to just make my property less steal-able then why the fuck do we have police at all?
Having them check every shipping container leaving our country would destroy the economy and smugglers would just go cross border
Containers from not-janky, high volume, shippers gets them sealed with a tag before they go on the truck. Check the ones without tags.
They can re-register cars and you think they can’t get around tags?
You’ve never seen one of these tags.
Re-read what I said and try to explain how these tags are harder than that
Remembering that you are claiming that infiltrating Service Ontario is easier than infiltrating these companies
Here’s a thought: if the Americans feel so insecure they can fuck off back to the USA where they can be secure.
Here’s how it should have gone:
photographer waiting for good lighting
Embassy doesn’t feel nervous because they have at least one iota of experience observing humans
Another pretty good scenario:
photographer waiting for good lighting
Embassy: Hey why are you hanging around out there?
Photographer: oh I’m just writing for the light to good for this very common tourist photo opportunity
Embassy: okay, but please don’t take photos of us
Here’s another situation:
photographer waiting for good lighting
Police: Hey we got a call that you’re loitering here, and it’s making people nervous. What are you up to?
Photographer: I don’t think I need to explain myself, it’s pretty obvious I’m trying to get a good photo of the very common tourist photo opportunity.
Police: okay just make sure you’re not blocking the sidewalk.
I think some of us USAers should go to there and take some pictures of the USA consulate. Still waiting on my passport to come in plus I’m lazy and probably won’t do it. But some of you should. 😘
Ugh, also it’s a 9 hour drive one way for me.
U.S. Consulate General Quebec City
Foreign consulate in Quebec City, Quebec
Address: 2 Pl. Terr. Dufferin, Québec, QC G1R 4T9, Canada
Hours: Opens 9 AM (Eastern timezone)
Phone: +1 418-692-2095