Pretty incredible John Hammer column in this week’s Rhino describing the arrest of a 70-year-old couple for —gasp—taking a picture in Bicentennial Park.

I’m not sure what’s more striking here —the heavy-handedness of Greensboro police officers….

Another police officer arrives, and another, and another, and another. They subdue Bridget and handcuff her behind her back. Finally a sergeant arrives on the scene and realizes that Liam’s arms don’t go behind his back. So they handcuff him in front.

Both are charged with assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, interfering with a police officer in the line of duty, affray and taking photographs without a permit.

….Or city staff’s reasoning why it’s illegal to take pictures in a city park —-the “intention was to prevent professional photographers from taking pictures and then making money on them.”

I guess the fact that it took so many police officers to subdue a 70-year-old man for taking a picture in a city park is an indication that Gboro cops have relatively little to do —which in turn means that we live in a relatively safe city. I still believe that to be true, in spite of that I read the local paper of record and get press releases from GPD and am often surprised at what goes on in our fair city while I’m at home asleep.

The City Council obviously feels that crime is a problem, especially downtown, as evidenced by its constant tweeking of the proposed club security ordinance that will place a heavy burden on club owners. I recently saw a quote in the N&R where someone stated that the downtown violence that sparked the security ordinance was giving Greensboro a bad reputation.

Not that arresting a 70-year-old man for taking a picture in a park gives the city a good reputation. Hammer brought the incident to the attention to several council members, and to their credit ( I guess) they seemed surprised and hopefully will take steps to deal with this crazy law, ordinance, whatever.