West Hollywood, California (Thursday, October 16, 2008) - A local agent for reality TV “celebs,” publicist Rick Rhodes, whose job is to get paparazzi to follow his clients, hauled off and sent a camera man to the hospital during an altercation on the 700 block of North Doheny Drive Saturday. 
Photo by WeHo News - West Hollywood’s ONLY Newspaper, ONLY ONLINE! |
According to the LA Times, video of the altercation showed Mr. Rhodes standing stunned outside his home while photographers shouted accusations of assault his way.
One of the photographers was bleeding from the head. He went to a nearby hospital for treatment.
Sheriff’s deputies were called in to quell the crowd, however, no charges were filed.
According to the report, Sgt. Scott Wolf of the Sheriff's Department's West Hollywood station told the Times, "Paparazzi never want to press charges because that takes time away from taking pictures.”
Mr. Rhodes’s client list includes Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag, a pair of reality TV-ers who had a knack for outrageous behavior for the benefit of the paparazzi, not to mention their own careers.
The lot next to Mr. Rhodes’s home is used seasonally during the Fall and Winter as a Pumpkin Patch/Christmas Tree lot.
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Being on the edge of WeHo facing across the street from Beverly Hills, the lot draws its fair share of celebrity clientele, so it also happens to be staked out by paparazzi on a regular basis.
The video shows Mr. Rhodes reminding the photographers of their past relationship after having allegedly struck one of them.
"I work with a lot of you guys all the time," he is quoted as saying.
Although that, apparently, will not be true until he acquires another client, according to the Times.
His main clients, Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag of the MTV show "The Hills," have gone their separate ways, he said.
The Times said that Mr. Rhodes went to the lot while the paps were trying to shoot Tobey McGuire, Tori Spelling and Marcia Cross as they chose a pumpkin with their children to complain about dangerous driving in the neighborhood the day before.
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The video, portions of which appeared on TMZ, showed Mr. Rhodes shoving a photographer, who pushes back.
The incident falls squarely during the Paparazzi Joint Task Force (organized by the cities of Los Angeles, Calabasas, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Malibu)’s efforts to study means by which the public safety dangers posed by paparazzi’s can be mitigated.
According to Lt. Dave Smith, lead community policing officer at West Hollywood Station, the Task Force is looking at ………… as a way of stopping the reckless, even dangerous, driving often involved in chasing celebrities through West Hollywood.
The camera-wielders not only enter into sometimes violent scrums over the best angles, even getting into fights with the celebs they shoot, but pedestrians are sometimes inconvenienced by having to cross the street to pass jammed sidewalks.
On occasion, passersby are themselves endangered by the pack, moving backward as one.
The Task Force convened on October 2 to investigate the affect on photographers’ civil rights, primarily their first amendment right to free speech.
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The city feels that they represent a danger. “It’s clear that they are a public safety danger,” said Jake Stevens, deputy to Mayor Jeff Prang, who has taken the lead role in representing West Hollywood at the meetings.
Lt. David Smith, Service Area Lieutenant for WeHo Station, told WeHo News the paparazzi were more a public nuisance and inconvenience than a danger.
“Mostly they follow the celebrities to the small side streets, because they like to use the out of the way salons,” he said.
The last time he went out on a paparazzi call, he said, “was last week when Britney Spears was [at her salon, BV2] on Nemo,” he said. “We have a pretty good relationship with them, and we rounded them up and advised them that we could arrest them for creating a public nuisance.
“We cite as many vehicle violations as we can find and sometimes issue citations for blocking the public right of way and that sort of thing,” he said.
“That’s what we usually do; some listen better than others,” said Lt. Smith.
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The traffic accidents, he said, are usually at slow speeds and take place “when someone cuts someone off or turns a corner in front of another car, so they are usually at slow speeds,” he said, and therefore, not life endangering.
“Really,” he said, “they’re more of an inconvenience.”
He mentioned that, “when we have the manpower, deputies will place their cars at strategic points to cover a celebrity’s departure from a restaurant or club.”
In that way, he said, “we can give them maybe two minutes’ head start.”
Mr. Stevens said that it became apparent to him that balancing rights with public safety would be difficult.
At the meetings since the first held in late July when the Task Force was created, Mr. Stevens said it became apparent that the central issue would be respecting freedom of speech while reducing the nuisance.
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“We have to respect the first amendment right to freedom of speech,” he told WeHo News, “as well as the legitimate working press.”
Therein, however, lay the rub; most paparazzi are freelancers, not working directly for legitimate press organizations on staff, but selling publications one or two photos at a time.
He said it was Sheriff Lee Baca who said, “You’re not going to arrest your way out of this.”
Credentialing freelance photographers, he said, posed a singular problem because there is no organizing structure around which paparazzi rally.
“Freelance can mean anyone holding a camera,” he pointed out. “We’re doing outreach to photographers, celebrities, publicists, law enforcement, to find out how to approach that.”
He shared with WeHo News the draft of a "Citizens' Guide To Paparazzi" that lists over three dozen infractions which people should take action after observing/experiencing.
The list of infractions that citizens should call law enforcement over includes traffic infractions to loitering to public nuisance and assault or battery.
A list of incidents after which an attroney should be consulted is also included, with assault, battery or harassment making it, along with others.
Meanwhile, nothing really changes in WeHo, except that now Mr. Rhodes must suffers the taunts of commentators and critics on TMZ who paint him as a lousy fighter.
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