It was a bad night for the Denton Police Department, but the good news is that the officer who was shot is out of surgery. I guess we will find out what happened to the bad guys by the time the evening news cycle rolls around.
This particular shooing happened perhaps a mile from my house, so my photojournalism hackles are up this morning, and still wondering … what ever happened to real photojournalism?
I was never a fan of ambulance chasing for the sake of chasing ambulances, fire trucks and cop cars, but news was news, and I have seen my share of dead bodies, and dying bodies for that matter.
In simpler times we programmed our handheld police scanners, and slept with them, like a techno-teddy-bear, turned down low, but just high enough to hear a fire call. I chased a lot more fires than officer involved anythings.
So I am looking to get back to reality in spite of the Generation-M’s who prefer pablum, and feel-goods where everyone gets a trophy. In this case, that means finding a police – fire scanner that works, and works and works.
M’s need to realize that there was a time when so many photographers were chasing news … we actually had to have credentials backed by our newspapers and issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Those credentials? They were like sacred text to us. You could lose just about anything, but DON’T LOSE that Press Pass!