Picture of Luca Aquilanti
Recently, the paparazzi have become a big problem in Los Angeles, the celebrity town.
They threaten the security of the city and while costing the community an excessive amount of money.
In February of 2008, Dennis Phillip Zine (a Los Angeles city Councilman) proposed an anti-paparazzi “Personal Safety Law” for Los Angeles to ensure a safety zone for celebrities against photographers. The measure was in direct response to several incidents in which celebrities were hindered from entering medical facilities or caught in pursuits with the paparazzi.
At the end of January, Britney Spears, the Queen of the Celebrity kingdom, was rushed to the hospital for a mental-health evaluation.
“It costed $25,000 dollars to take an ambulance with Britney Spears to the hospital,” Councilman Dennis Zine told Access Hollywood, “Tax payers paid for that.”
The final straw for Zine was the mayhem surrounding Britney’s first ambulance trip when her entrance to the hospital was jeopardized by paparazzi in January of this year.
It was her second trip that cost the county $25,000 for motorcycle, helicopter and patrol car escorts. So now, a new law is on the horizon — if Zine has anything to say about it.
“It is not going to be called the ‘Britney Spears Law,’ I am not going to give her credit for that because it is not about Britney Spears, it’s about the paparazzi violating everybody’s rights, freedoms and privileges,” Zine explained.
It’s about civilians that happen to encounter “Hurricane Britney” at any given moment on the roadway, as Zine described it.
“What the paparazzi have done is developed a lawless society where the rules don’t apply — on the wrong side of the street, jumping out of cars at the red lights, swarming the car, you don’t do that,” Zine said.
Zine is proposing a “personal safety bubble” law to keep what he calls the “opportunists” away from celebrities and the general public on the streets.
“If we think back a few years, Princess Diana was driving down the road, paparazzi chasing,” Zine recalls. “A crash occurred, Princess Diana died. I don’t want to see that happen here in Los Angeles.”
A year after Diana’s death and then again in 2005, civil laws were passed in Los Angeles to deter aggressive paparazzi, but no criminal law is yet in place.
Los Angeles Police Department chief, William Bradon disagrees with Zine’s proposal saying:
“What we need is Britney Spears to stay home instead of traipsing all over town. That would solve the problem. We don’t need additional laws…. I’ve got laws coming out my ears to deal with”.
In the meantime, the scoop hunters are growing in Los Angeles: fifteen years ago there were no more than twenty five pap agencies whilst now are more than four hundred.
400 pap agencies??!
Wow, You would lose your mind if you had that many chasing you!!!
