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“He said the moment he captured was a tender, humane one.”

Dec 14, 06 | 12:02 am by John Lopez

That’s what one Justin Cook, credentialed photographer for the Durham Police Department’s SWAT team, had to say about this heartwarming photo. Radley Balko directly quotes the photographer like so:

There is not much for me to say other than that during a chaotic day, this one moment was an ironic sliver of compassion and humanity.

Of course there isn’t so much compassion and humanity present that it deserves to actually stay in public view, or anything. At this time, it appears that the links to the photo and to the original post aren’t working. “Caption witheld at request of photographer.” says yet another reference. In addition, Cook apparently accused Balko of libel(!) merely for publicizing the photo at all. It seems clear that the photographer is attempting to bury his own photograph.

Who attempts to bury a prize-winning photo that they judge captures a moment of compassion and humanity?

The photo captured a tender moment of compassion, it doesn’t exist anyway, and you’re libelous if you mention it besides. How much more clear do we need to be that there is absolutely nothing to see here, Citizen?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at Dec 14, 06 | 12:02 am and is filed under The Phantom Zone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

4 Responses to ““He said the moment he captured was a tender, humane one.””

  1. Neal Says:
    December 14th, 2006 at Dec 14, 06 | 10:59 am

    I hadn’t seen Cook’s blog post, and seeing as the link is down as you noted, I found the cached version:

    here

    Here’s the text of Cook’s post Life is Beautiful (seriously, that’s the title):

    hope and humanity within necessary madness. as his mom freaked out, the kid didnt even cry, he didnt flinch. he hugged and high-fived the officers. it was unlike any thing i have seen out here. he must be used to raids. how brave. how moving. how sad :(

    i gave him a high-five when i left.

    how will i ever stop working with the Durham Police? I don’t know the answer to that.

    I half-expected to see comments supportive of his statement regarding the “compassion and humanity” only to read more depressing examples of State entanglement. The kid was stoic and then euphoric at seeing these SWAT guys raiding his parents’ place. It’s as though the raid was reuniting him with his true parents.

    I’ve been soliciting captions on Cook’s Drug Raid photo here if anyone has a good one.

  2. Sunni Says:
    December 15th, 2006 at Dec 15, 06 | 1:24 pm

    It’s probably just a matter of time before Cook pulls this resource too. It apparently shows some of the beautifulness the kid was enjoying with his overlords.

  3. Matt Says:
    December 30th, 2006 at Dec 30, 06 | 1:52 pm

    The photo and original caption are still here:
    http://www.unc.edu/~jbcook/portfolio07/pages/jc_port_31.html

    It’s one of many others from here:
    http://www.unc.edu/~jbcook/portfolio07/

  4. John T. Kennedy Says:
    December 30th, 2006 at Dec 30, 06 | 10:16 pm

    I know, I was about to put them in the blog but realized that they were already widely available.

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