‘INNOCENT UNTIL PHOTOGRAPHED’: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT PERP WALKS
-PICTURE HISTORY OF PERP WALKS IN NEW YORK CITY
-JOURNALISTS’ GUIDE TO COVERING PERP WALKS
Sex-workers under arrest for prostitution led into the Manhattan Detention Center, a/k/a The Tombs, for their arraignment, 2009. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
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I learned a lot about perp walks during my career as a reporter and news photographer covering crime in New York City. Here's my history and user's guide.
WHAT'S A 'PERP WALK' AND WHY ARE THEY IMPORTANT?
Simply stated, a perp walk is any time police parade someone accused of crime in front of a camera. They're extremely important to both police and defendants, for different reasons.
Federal police staged outside FBI headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza for a major mafia perp walk in 2008. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
From the police perspective, perp walks publicize their successful crime-fighting efforts. They reassure citizens that Government is working to combat crime. They also short-circuit vigilante justice. As one federal appeals court recognized, the
image of the accused being led away to contend with the justice system powerfully communicates government efforts to thwart the criminal element, and it may deter others from attempting similar crimes.
From a defendant's perspective, perp walks can be a "rite of passage," "ritual degradation" or a visual opening statement in a public relations war against the prosecution. Courts recognize that "a suspect in handcuffs being led into a station house is a powerful image of guilt." On the other hand, perp walks also afford protection to defendants from excessive police force or, in some places in the world, extra-judicial executions like one-way death plane rides.
The camera, after all, is not just pointed at the accused. Its also pointed at the cops surrounding them.
Unnamed perp under arrest by the NYPD’s elite Emergency Services Unit, Brooklyn, 2007. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
Perp walks are even more important in the Digital Age. The new norm is “innocent until photographed,“ as one observer noted.
Before the Internet, unless you were a notorious criminal or committed an especially notorious crime, jurors tended not to notice the average perp walk or to forget it by the time the trial rolled around if they did. Now jurors can google or search social media for a defendant's name and find their perp walk. Jurors are not supposed to, judges tell them not to, but they do it.
HISTORY OF PERP WALKS
Perp walks started with police, newspaper reporters and news photographers in the early 20th Century. The NYPD allowed them into the old NYPD headquarters on Centre Street if they had an NYPD-issued press credential. Inside, they were free to photograph and even question suspects.
Journalists with NYPD-issued press credentials were also allowed to photograph and question suspects inside NYPD police precincts.
Famously, the NYPD's swaggering first, last and only Jewish Chief of Detectives (who was at the time only a captain) Albert A. Seedman triggered an official complaint from the American Civil Liberties Union in 1962 because he posed an accused cop-killer for the press inside a Brooklyn precinct: by grabbing his throat and forcing his head up. Seedman was reprimanded. An expected promotion was delayed. He rose to Chief-of-Ds anyway.
The alleged perp, Tony Dellurnia, was acquitted. That photograph may have been among the reasons why.
The TV Age made allowing press inside police precincts on an even, unbiased basis a practical challenge, according to former NYPD spokesman, Counter-Terrorism chief and ABC7 television reporter John Miller.
"You could let the newspaper reporters hang around in the station house, but you couldn't fit in four camera crews, each with four people," Miller told the New York Times.
Stripped of access to arrestees inside NYPD precincts and headquarters, journalists were limited to working the street and the City's courthouses. Judges, cops, newspaper editors and TV executives formulated voluntary standards for perp walks at the New York Fair Trial, Free Press Conference in 1969.
"Law enforcement and court personnel should not prevent the photographing of defendants when they are in public places outside the courtroom," the guidelines read. "They should neither encourage nor discourage pictures or televising, but they should not pose the accused."
Former Daily News photographer and New York Press Photographer Association historian Marc Hermann outside Manhattan Federal Court waiting for Bernard Madoff, 2009. An NYPD-issued press credential is stuck into the band of Hermann’s hat, like press photographers working at the start of the profession in the early 20th Century did. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
LEGAL GUIDELINES
The informal guidelines didn't stop the NYPD from making an Upper East Side doorman who was already under arrest inside a police precinct walk back outside the precinct in handcuffs into a waiting car. Cops drove him around the block and made the handcuffed doorman walk back inside the precinct. The guidelines also didn't stop FOX 5 News from photographing the doorman, both times.
The doorman, John Lauro, sued the NYPD. His lawsuit led the federal appeals court with jurisdiction over New York to examine the legality of perp walks under the Constitution. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals held that perp walks in general do not violate the Constitution. Both the public and press have a "far from negligible" interest in witnessing perp walks, the Court explained in its decision.
However, staged, fake "perp walks"-like Lauro's-do violate the Constitution, the Court held. What FOX 5 News' filmed wasn't "the actual event of Lauro being brought to the police station." It was "a staged recreation of that event." It was "an inherently fictional dramatization of an event that transpired hours earlier." The public interest "is not well served" by fake news.
While Lauro's rights were violated, the Court still dismissed his lawsuit because police were protected by qualified immunity.
THE CLASSIC PERP WALK
The classic or traditional perp walk occurs after someone is formally charged by police and taken to their arraignment in criminal court. Not only do perp walks allow photographers to capture images of the accused, they also allow reporters to shout questions at them.
Here's video of a classic nighttime perp walk. It stars Julio Acevedo. He killed a young Hasidic couple riding in a cab on their way to the hospital to give birth in a hit-and-run crash in Brooklyn in 2013. He was captured five days later.
MECHANICS OF A PERP WALK
In New York City, once a person under arrest is formally charged, the NYPD sends out a press release to news organizations on a pre-approved list. The release is called "the sheet." Sheets include the defendant's name, crime(s) charged, time of arrest and place of arrest.
Typically, place of arrest includes the precinct where the defendant is being held. Release of the sheet, in effect, informs press that the perp walk is imminent. Perps are rarely walked before a sheet is released. This allows journalists to get to the precinct, jail or courthouse and get set up outside for the perp walk.
Below, journalists wait for Dominique Straus Kahn to exit Manhattan Criminal Court in 2011. Note their formation. To military tacticians, that’s a L-shaped ambush.
Journalists lined up outside Manhattan Criminal Court waiting for the release of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in 2011. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
Cops also control the distance of the perp walk.
This can make journalists’ jobs easier if the distance is lengthened, or it can make journalists’ jobs harder if the distance is shortened. For example, perp walks out of the NYPD’s Manhattan headquarters for the Special Victims Unit are notoriously long. The presence of leg shackles, like those worn by the rapist in the photograph below, can further humiliate a defendant and give the press even longer to photograph and shout questions.
William Roberts being perp walked in shackles out of the NYPD’s Manhattan Special Victims’ Unit headquarters, Apr. 20, 2007. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
SECRET PERP WALKS
While police typically cooperate with the press on perp walks, that's not always the case. For example, so-called Manhattan Madam Kristen Davis. Davis ran a high-end prostitution business that earned millions. She claimed she provided prostitutes to New York's former governor Elliot Spitzer. Before her Mar. 25, 2008 arrest for promoting prostitution, prosecutors said they believed she was tipped off that she'd been secretly indicted. The NYPD tried to sneak her out a side door of the Seventh Precinct. I wasn’t fooled.
Manhattan Madam Kirsten Davis, 2008. Photo Credit: JB NIcholas.
Relatedly, don’t expect police to always used a marked police vehicle for perp walks. Detectives routinely use unmarked police vehicles to transport prisoners. Like this cab.
Perp walk with a undercover police vehicle, in the case a Crown Victoria yellow cab, 2011. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
HOSPITAL PERP WALKS
A special kind of perp walk involves arrestees who require medical treatment. Sometimes an ambulance will appear outside a police precinct and that will be a sign that an arrestee is headed to the hospital. Sometimes they'll be taken to the hospital before the precinct. If a defendant isn't at the precinct, the closest hospital is the best place to start looking.
Such was the case with LaGuerre Payen. Payen was convicted with three others of plotting to blow up a Bronx synagogue and shoot down military planes with handheld Stinger surface-to-air missiles. They were arrested in the Bronx after planting what they believed were live explosives in 2009. Payen's associates were perp-walked early the next morning but Payen was missing.
I found him after the sun rose at the closest hospital-with a band aid covering the boo-boo on his head.
Laguerre Payen, convicted of with three others of plotting to blow up a Bronx synagogue and shoot down military planes with handheld Stinger surface-to-air missiles, leaving the hospital after his arrest in 2009. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
COMMUNITY SERVICE
Another specialized perp walk are community service appearances. For example, when Supermodel Naomi Campbell pleaded guilty to assault for throwing a phone at a servant over a pair of missing jeans she was sentenced to five days' community service in 2007. Her community service was working at a Sanitation Department pier.
Naomi Campbell reporting for community service in New York City, 2007. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
Officials could have allowed her to be driven onto City property, but they made her walk to the pier. The distance from where officials made her get out of her SUV to the pier was about 200 feet. It was like one long runway. Photographers could photograph her the entire way. Gamely, Campbell didn't try to run or hide. She treated it like any other runway fashion show. She got dressed up and walked it, head held high.
That's a good example of a perp walk done right, from the perp's perspective.
An example of a community service perp walk gone wrong is Lindsay Lohan. Sentenced to community service for reckless driving in 2012, she tried to hide from the press by wearing an oversized Arab scarf known as a keffiyeh.
Lindsay Lohan wearing a keffiyeh at community service, 2015. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
COPS DON'T DO PERPWALKS
Generally speaking, cops don’t do perp walks.
For example, when NYPD officer Peter Liang was charged with manslaughter for shooting Akai Gurley to death in 2014 he was never paraded in front of the press. He wasn’t even handcuffed, as my photographs show, and he was released immediately on bail. A jury convicted Liang of manslaughter, but a judge reduced it to criminally negligent homicide and sentenced Liang to probation and community service.
Liang never spent not even a second in a jail cell.
PRESIDENTIAL NIECES DON'T DO PERP WALKS EITHER
Joe Biden’s niece Caroline Biden allegedly hit an NYPD officer following a dispute with her roommate over months of unpaid rent for a luxury apartment they shared in Manhattan’s tony Tribeca neighborhood. She was charged with assault on police, obstructing police and harassment.
Instead of being handcuffed, perp-walked and put into a police car, she was wheeled out of the precinct on a wheelchair, with a sheet over her head, and put into an ambulance. Instead of being taken by police to The Tombs, paramedics took her to Beth Israel hospital. Instead of serving time in jail, she went to rehab and anger management. The case was dismissed.
Joe Biden’s niece Caroline Biden being wheeled by paramedics out of the NYPD’s First Precinct after being arrested for assaulting a police officer. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
BE GOOD AT SHOOTING THROUGH GLASS
There will be times when the only chance you're going to have to photograph a defendant is through the glass windows of a vehicle. Know how to shoot through glass and practice until you can do it every time, at will. Only then will you be able to do it under pressure, running alongside a moving vehicle.
Bernard Madoff riding home after a court appearance, 2008. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
Sometimes the windows will be tinted, sometimes they won't be. Tinted windows require special equipment.
I rigged my camera with a flash bracket and a very short, very wide-angle lens. The flash was even with the front of the lens. That way, when I put it up against a window, both were flat up against the glass. That prevents the flash from bouncing off the tint and makes sure it punches through the window. For heavily tinted windows, power your flash up two or three stops.
Here’s one where my camera lens is not quite completely set flush with the glass. That allowed a reflection of the main Manhattan Criminal Court building to be captured in the photograph, reflecting off the closed glass window of an SUV containing a celebrity defendant charged with illegal gun possession who had just left the courthouse.
New York football Giants’ star wide-receiver Plaxico Burress his wife leaving in their SUV after Burress appeared in Manhattan Criminal Court where he was charged with illegally possessing a handgun. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
WORKING IN A CROWD
Most perp walks are like trees falling in a forest: no one's around when they happen. Sometimes, however, perp walks turn into international incidents. Such was the case when actor Amanda Bynes got busted for pot possession and throwing her bong out her hi-rise midtown apartment window in 2013.
Study how I and the other photographers physically position ourselves in this video. Who has the best positions?
What you should see is that working in a crowd means carefully choosing your shots. A common mistake is to get greedy and try to shoot everything. That's not usually going to work, unless you’re an expert. That’s because, unless you have a lot of practice, you'll likely end up chasing your subject from behind, instead of being in front of it.
Working in a crowd also means working chokepoints. There's only so much real estate between the cop car door and the door of the courthouse or jail. Position yourself where you can shoot the whole thing with a long lens, preferably from an elevated position without having to move. Standing next to the door they’re headed to, especially on a stool, is usually the best.
DON’T STOP
Be relentless when you have to be. Bynes used a wig to hide her face from photographers at the courthouse. She was released and her court-appointed lawyer put her in a yellow cab. As Bynes rode home to her mid-town apartment she finally relaxed and let her guard down. She put the rear window of the cab she was riding in down to feel the air on her face.
That’s when I rode up alongside the cab and finally got her.
Amanda Bynes leaving court after her arrest and arraignment, 2013. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
Another example of what not not giving up means is Wojciech Braszczok.
Braszczok was an undercover NYPD officer who infiltrated a motorcycle gang. He was riding with the gang when a Range Rover-driving couple ran over one of the gang. He was part of a small number of riders who chased down the SUV and beat its driver. Braszczok was identified, arrested, tried and convicted. He became known as the “Biker Cop.”
The Biker Cop managed to conceal his appearance for months until I followed him one day after court. I had my camera in a bike messenger bag. I actually got into the same elevator with him and rode with him down to the street. I followed him outside, at a distance. He sat down on a fence in a park and started texting with his mobile phone.
I shot him a few times but he didn’t look up. I got close enough where I figured he’d hear the shutter of my DSLR camera clicking open-and-closed for sure. He looked up after the four or fifth click, directly into my lens. The Daily Mail published the photograph. He hadn’t even been convicted yet. Every news photographer in New York City wanted that photograph. I got it.
DON'T FORGOT THE BIG PICTURE
Expert news photographers think ahead: how's this going to end? Sometimes they think of things others didn't. Other pieces of the big picture puzzle.
When the then-president of the World Bank Dominique Straus Kahn was arrested for allegedly raping a black maid in a Manhattan hotel I was working for myself so I avoided the precinct and the army of journalists encircling it with cameras. To make money as a freelancer, I needed a photograph no one else had. I didn’t need the same image 100 other photographers had.
I worked the courthouse instead. While everyone else was doing what everyone else was doing, I was standing by myself, watching, waiting. I caught DSK's wife and daughter trying to sneak in a side door for his arraignment. It was a valuable exclusive. It earned me the highest prize in visual journalism, then and now: the frontpage of Paris Match magazine.
Paris Match magazine, with my photograph of Anne Sinclair and daughter Camille entering the Manhattan Criminal courthouse for the arraignment of Dominique Straus-Khan. May 16, 2011.
IF YOU'RE A PERP, CHILL OUT
The last thing you want to do, if you're a perp, is look or, worse, act, crazy. Approach it like a job interview. Wear your best suit. Smile a lot. Be zen.
Take a lesson from John "Jackie the Nose" D'Amico, alleged street boss for the Gambino family in New York in the Aughts. I photographed him being perp walked in 2008 and it looked like he was on a date. Him and the female FBI agent escorting him were so involved in a conversation they barely looked at the cameras. It doesn’t look like the FBI even handcuffed him. Look how his left wrist hangs, seemingly free.
John "Jackie the Nose" D'Amico being perpwalked by the FBI, 2008. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
DEALING WITH AGGRESSION
As stupid and counterproductive as it is, aggression should be expected from perps, whether they're in handcuffs or not.
For example, even the elderly Bernard Madoff tried to push his way through a scrum of journalists outside his Manhattan apartment before a news photographer pushed him back in 2008. Ziming Shen scammed schoolkids out of federal lunch money funds before cops caught him in 2011. Released on $2.5 million bond, Shen went ballistic on news photographers outside Brooklyn federal court and actually tried to snatch a camera away from one.
Shen was rearrested.
Experience with these and other aggressive perps leads to these general rules or guidelines. Never get within kicking range of a perp. Also be alert for, and be prepared to dodge, spit.
The middle of a perp walk is not the time to be adjusting your camera, known as "chimping." All kinds of bad things can happen while you're chimping. Don’t be chimping, especially during a perp walk. Stay focused, alert and aware of what's going on around you.
Aggression can come not just from perps, but from their families and friends too. For example, when four women were convicted of beating and stabbing a man who cat-called one of them in Greenwich Village, one of their supporters threw a water bottle at photographers outside the courthouse.
In that situation, I just keep shooting photographs.
Aggression can also come not just from a perp and the perp’s supporters, it can come from enemies of the perp.
Jack Ruby proved this forever when he shot Lee Harvey Oswald to death during his perp walk for assassinating President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
Generally speaking, do not respond to aggression. That should go without saying. That’s doesn’t mean ignore threats. Do not ignore threats, just do not respond to them. Keep shooting photographs for as long as you can, safely. Walk away if it's too dangerous to take a photograph, for you or anyone else. Don't be afraid to run, especially if someone has a weapon.
PERPS ARE PEOPLE TOO
None have been convicted yet. They’re only accused. Some of them are innocent. Some might’ve done things that shouldn’t even be a crime. In short, perps have their own stories to tell. Telling their stories is just an important as telling the official, police version. If you can, talk to them. If they want to talk, hear them out. You may be surprised what they tell you. You might hear a lot of lies, but if you listen long enough you’ll hear some hard-won truth too.
You might even learn something, about yourself and life.
Niki outside Manhattan Criminal Courts, June 2011.
DON’T FORGET TO HAVE FUN
With so much tragedy and grim sadness going on at the courthouse, its easy to drown in darkness if you forget to have fun. Don’t forget to have fun.
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