Putting a leash on the paparazzi - Keep the kids out of it

To date, Vivienne and Knox Jolie-Pitt have each earned about $7 million. Considering they’re less than a month old and have already made more than most people will earn in their entire lives, I’d say that’s pretty good. It’s below average in the Jolie-Pitt clan, however, since their older sister made over $7.5 million by the time she was their age (if Jan Brady thought she had it tough, imagine what it’s going to be like growing up in the shadow of Shiloh). Of course, all they had to do was sit still for the camera – an easy gig for a newborn – and they were independently wealthy before they’ve been weaned off their mother’s internationally recognized teat.

This is the new reality in the celebrity economy; images ranging from the iconic to the idiotic are captured, bartered, and splashed on screens all over the world. A good percentage of these images originate in L.A.’s “thirty-mile zone” where you can’t swing a dead cat in a sidewalk café on Robertson Boulevard without hitting someone who considers themselves a celebrity. It’s time our police department recognized the risks involved in getting those photos and did something about people who will hit a five-year-old in the face with a camera in order to get a shot of Reese Witherspoon at California Adventure.

I give credit to former LAPD officer and current City Councilman, Dennis Zine, whose proposed city ordinance creating “personal safety zones” between photographers and their subjects might help. “This is out of control with the paparazzi that violate all the rules and thinking the law doesn’t apply to them,” he has said, “and someone’s going to get hurt.” Last Thursday, Zine held a hearing at City Hall to discuss the problem. In attendance were musician John Mayer as well as actors Eric Roberts and Milo Ventimiglia who said he’d “lost confidence in the laws” after being followed by carloads of paps (who would jump out at red lights and surround his car while snapping photos) to the Sheriff’s station and being told there was nothing they could do to help him.

Unlike Zine who is a native Angeleno, our Chief of Police, Bill Bratton, is a carpetbagger who has only lived here for about six years. Zine grew here and Bratton flew here. If either of them has a better sense of the unique personality of our fair city, it’s the Councilman and not the Chief. That’s not going to stop Bratton from appearing in front of a KNBC camera, sweaty from exercise in a sleeveless t-shirt with a gym towel around his neck, to patronize all of us with his infinite wisdom.

“I figured I’d come over and straighten it out,” the Chief said. “We have no intention of participating in today’s hearing, a total waste of time. We have sufficient laws on the books that we enforce to deal with this issue. If you notice since Britney started wearing clothes and behaving, Paris is out of town not bothering anybody any more (thank God), and evidently Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, you don’t seem to have much of an issue. If the ones that attract the paparazzi behave in the first place (like we expect of anybody), that solves about 90% of the problem. The rest of it we can deal with so as far as all this grandstanding and foolishness, waste of city time on this issue, and the fact that I felt aggravated enough about it to interrupt a workout to come over and set the record straight – LAPD has no intention of participating in this farce.” God forbid the Chief of Police should be “aggravated” by a risk to public safety.

Never mind that L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca was in attendance, along with representatives from the celebrity-laden enclaves of Beverly Hills, Malibu, and Calabassas; and forget about the fact that Chief Bratton lives in Los Feliz where the only paparazzi are following Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale. Boston Bill says there is no problem. He handed reporters a list of over 40 laws dealing with aggressive photographers, but I guess he never gave it to the rank-and-file in his department.

I’ve watched my Britney being trailed by a caravan of about a dozen vehicles full of photographers and I’ve seen six or seven cars run a red light while chasing her. This cat-and-mouse game has been going on for almost a year and only once – once – has Bratton’s LAPD seen fit to enforce the “sufficient” laws we’ve got. So maybe it’s time for some new laws. As John Mayer put it, “you can either name the law after what it prevents, or you can name it after the first person who is killed.” Got that, Chief?