Wal-Mart Security Threatens to Arrest Photographer (Outtakes Opinion)

We weren’t really surprised to hear that a Wal-Mart security officer threatened to have a photographer arrested outside a Maryland store, but it flies in the face of the kinder, gentler Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott is trying to pitch to the public.

Duane Roy, a computer network administrator and freelance photographer, saw a naked man walking in the Wal-Mart parking lot and began taking pictures, according to a story in The Herald-Mail of Hagerstown, Md.

The security officer ordered Roy to surrender the camera, but he refused. The security officer then demanded the film, but Roy was using a digital camera.

“He said if I didn’t turn the camera over to him, he would have me arrested,” Roy told The Herald-Mail, which published a distant shot of the nude man after Wal-Mart employees had covered him with a blanket.

Christi Gallagher, a Wal-Mart spokesperson, told The Herald-Mail that photographers must request permission to shoot inside or outside Wal-Mart stores, even if it’s a breaking news story. She said there’s a 24-hour corporate “hotline” for such telephone calls.

But Katherine Shurlds, a lawyer and instructor of media law at the University of Arkansas, said that doesn’t jibe with the law.

“You’re allowed to enter private property and take pictures until you’re told to leave,” she said, “unless there’s a sign there saying you can’t take pictures.”

Shurlds said a police officer can confiscate a photographer’s film only if he continues to take pictures after being told to leave the property.

“The guy had absolutely no right to take the camera,” she said.

What’s really confusing to us is Wal-Mart’s idea that any media coverage that it doesn’t control will be bad media coverage. Does the world’s largest company not realize that a photo of compassionate Wal-Mart employees covering a deranged man in a blanket is good PR?