Grocott’s Mail photojournalist Stephen Penney has won his case for wrongful arrest against the Minister of Safety and Security. Magistrate Judith Roberson awarded Penney R20 000 in damages and costs for his wrongful arrest while taking photographs at the scene of a road accident on 14 November 2007.
Grocott’s Mail photojournalist Stephen Penney has won his case for wrongful arrest against the Minister of Safety and Security. Magistrate Judith Roberson awarded Penney R20 000 in damages and costs for his wrongful arrest while taking photographs at the scene of a road accident on 14 November 2007.
Roberson described Penney’s arrest as “a frightening and distressing one and the seriousness of a deprivation of liberty cannot be understated”.
During the court proceedings, Grahamstown police captain Tommie Jafta testified that he had seen Penney inside the cordoned-off area and that the police had been distracted by his presence. Jafta said that he arrested Penney for obstructing the police in the performance of their duties.
Penney said he had never been inside the cordoned off area and he had not in any way obstructed the police in their investigation. On the other hand, Roberson said there were significant discrepancies between police testimonies and Penney’s account of the events that led up to his arrest. She described the police allegations of obstruction as “vague and imprecise” while Penney’s evidence was “clear, precise and detailed”.
“Jafta’s attempts at formulating an obstruction were transparently contrived and most probably an afterthought. It is significant that in his opinion the plaintiff caused an obstruction merely by his presence,” she said. In her judgement the magistrate said the police were not able to explain exactly what Penney had done to distract them. She said, “In fact, nothing that they said the plaintiff [Penney] did came anywhere near to an obstruction of the police in the performance of their duties”.
It is significant that in the light of a number of recent incidents police have been instructing photographers not to take pictures. As Roberson says, “What does emerge clearly from police evidence and their statements is that they thought that taking photographs at the scene was not allowed and that this was the offending conduct of the plaintiff ”.
Jonathan Ancer, Grocott’s Mail editor at the time of Penney’s wrongful arrest, described the incident “as completely outrageous” and that “police need to understand that we have a job to do”. Ancer said that following the incident in November 2007 he had extensive communications with the local police spokesperson, Milanda Coetzer and he tried to transform the situation into an opportunity to repair relations with the SAPS.
Ancer did his best to cooperate with the police because he knows how important it is to maintain a constructive relationship between the media and the police.
He aimed to find a common ground between the functions and duties of the police force and those of the newspaper. Ancer said that Grahamstown is a small enough town that if a problem arose it could easily be dealt with by an effective liaison person before it escalated as it did in November 2007. He said it appears that generally the police force presume that reporters are “up to no good” suggesting that this is the reason why police officers are so hostile towards the media. He also said that it appears that many policemen donot understand the rules of what is allowed to happen at a crime scene.
In a Mail & Guardian column published a few months after Penney was arrested, Prof Guy Berger, head of Rhodes University’s School of Journalism and Media Studies, wrote, “It’s not just the unpleasantness for the journo that is the problem when such things happen, but also the denial of the public’s right to know. The story becomes at best what happened to the press, not what the journalist was trying to report.”
