Maroon

              MAROON LOYOLA UNIVERSITY NEW ORLEANS i SEPTEMBER 24 I VOL. LI 11 NO. 3 Reporter pleads not guilty By Peter Finney Jr A MAROON staff reporter, jailed bD New Orleans police on charges of "interfering with a police officer" while attempting to photograph a police car, Wednesday pleaded not guilty to those charges at his arraignment in Orleans Parish Municipal Court. Alan Citron, a freshman journalism major, will stand trial Jan. 19. Citron entered a plea of not guilty at his five-minute arraignment before ad hoc Judge Philip Montelepre. Citron was represented by Tom Rayer, a University attorney. Citron was arrested by Second District police officer Steve Kaufman when he tried to photograph a police car parked on the corner of Calhoun St. and Loyola Ave. while on MAROON assignment. The police were in the area ticketing and towing away cars illegally parked on the streets surrounding the campus. Citron was booked Tuesday at Central Lockup and released after the New Orleans chapter of Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists, posted a $25 bond. Citron spent 55 minutes in a temporary holding cell before being released. Citron said he asked permission of two police officers to take a photograph of them writing out tickets. According to Citron, one N.O.P.D. patrolrrian, Elwood Risey, asked Citron: "How much is that camera worth? If you take a picture, I'm going to throw it on the ground and bust it into a thousand pieces." Citron walked off and began to focus his camera for a shot of Hμ police car on the corner. "I was looking for anD thing to take a picture of," Citron explained. "I saw tho police car, and I figured I might as well shoot something while I was wasting my time. I focused the camera, but I never did snap the picture. "Then the other officer (Kaufman) asked me , 'What are you doing? You're going to jail." Kaufman Wednesday declined to comment on the matter. "It's in court, isn't it?" Kaufman asked. "I can't talk about it." Police Public Information Officer Tony Buonagura said until the case goes to court, he could not "make a public statement." Citron said he was frisked and put into the police car, but never read his constitutional rights. "He (Kaufman) frisked me," Citron said, "and I realise now that he didn't read me my rights. The only thing he asked me while I was in the car was what was the purpose of me trying to take pictures. I told him I was just doing an assignment for the school paper." Buonagura said he did not know whether Citron was read his constitutional rights. Loyola security officer, Sgt. Eddie Hasselbeck, said he saw the entire incident. "Alan was taking pictures and asked the policeman if he could take his picture," Hasselbeck said. "The policeman said, 'No, I don't want my picture taken.' So Alan took a picture of the car." "He (Citron) was sitting in thv back of the car saying (to me), 'Let me go. I'm going to have a nice big story." A Second District police spokesperson said the charges against Citron would only be looked into for their "appropriateness" if a formal complaint were filed against the police department. In a related action, the board of directors of the Press Club 01 New Orleans has mailed a letter to Police Superintendent Clarence Giarrusso with copies to Mayor Moon Landrieu and media organizations, calling on Giarrusso to "publicly drop the charge ol interfering with a police officer that was capriciously filed, and. . .to see that such idiocy is not repeated by this office! (Kaufman), or any other." "Perhaps the arresting officer was only suffering from a fit of bad humor," the letter continues, "or perhaps he was inclined to think his badge and uniform granted him dictatorial powers; but it is, by now, clear that he exceeded all boundaries of the good judgement a police officer must possess." Citron behind bars...retrieving his watch...emerging from his cell...and walking to freedom Cell-ing of a freshman:cops jail photographer By Alan Citron Somewhere, amidst the weird graffiti and various obscenities carved into the walls of Central Lock-up are the initials A.C. I didn't put them there personally, but as I sat in my cell for just less than an hour last Tuesday, I had to laugh to myself at the thought of seeing those familiar initials carved in such a strange location. Looking back on that hour in the cell, which seemed like a hell of a lot longer, I remember I kept experiencing a feeling of complete ineffectiveness as I sat with my head between my knees trying to figure out exactly what I had done. It hit me especially, as I looked around at the cartoon cast that accompanied me in my cell. Principal among these was a filthy, bearded man who kept hitting me on the shoulder as if we were the. best of friends as we sat together in the cell. 1 swear he looked like a shoo-in for the local Charles Manson look-alike contest. LucKily, I got out before he had a chance to show me just how good a friend he wanted to be. The strangest part of the entire episode was the way the event had come about. I won't harp on the details, as tluy must be pretty well known by now, but still, it was all so odd that I can't seem to get my mind off it. I was simply trying to carry out a photo assignment about students' cars being towed away by the New Orleans Police. This part of the job went along fine. The trouble started when I approached two policemen who arrived on the scene. As the two men started to write tickets on the remaining illegally parked cars, I figured their pictures would be a necessary element to the complete story. The first one I tried to photograph made it very clear that he didn't want his picture taken, so I approached the second officer. He told me if 1 even tried to raise the camera to his face, he would chrow it to the ground and smash it to bits. Although the two officers' attitudes seemed pretty odd, I didn't question them. I simply figured 1 would have to settle for a shot of one of their patrol cars parked on Calhoun Street as evidence of their arrival. I was obviously very surprised when tkv first officer I had talked to grubbjd me by the arm and told me I was under arrest. The official affidavit from the police stated that bD trying to take a picture of a parked police car, I was "interfering with a police officer." As I sat in the back of the patrol car on (Cont'd. on pg. 9)