Photo Shoot Showdown p. 18

By: Dorothy Giobbe

Staffer at New Jersey weekly arrested; incident
follows public sparring between newspaper and mayo sp.

ONE WEEK AFTER filing a lawsuit against the mayor, the Elizabeth (N.J.) Reporter is again at the center of controversy after a staff photographer scuffled with police officers.
Robert Griffith, a volunteer at the weekly tabloid, was charged with obstruction of justice and resisting arrest. The arrest took place at Elizabeth City Hall, where Griffith was shooting photos of a 77-year-old woman who had been mugged inside the building.
Griffith charges he was roughed up by two policemen as he tried to leave the crime scene.
The cops claim Griffith was preventing them from helping the victim. Mayor Christian Bollwage, who has publicly denounced the Reporter, is trying to distance himself from the whole affair.
As Griffith remembers it, he was just trying to do his job when he was manhandled by members of Elizabeth's finest.
"About 23 feet inside city hall, I saw a woman sprawled out and propped up against a wall with a compress being held on her forehead," he said.
"As soon as I saw she was OK, I became a photographer and went to get my Polaroid from my car, which was parked close by outside. I knew I had a great story ? 'Woman Mugged Inside City Hall.' "
Griffith claims that when he got back to the scene and started shooting photos, two cops demanded his camera and film. He refused and left the building. In the parking lot, he was grabbed from behind by the officers, who slapped handcuffs on his wrists, he said.
Griffith, who was a city council member for 18 years and is now a candidate for union county clerk, was taken to police headquarters where he was charged, fingerprinted and sat for mug shots.
"It was a traumatic experience. I was flabbergasted," Griffith fumed last week. "The mayor is behind this, unequivocally. It ties in with other things that have been happening with our newspaper."
He plans to file a complaint against the city for excessive use of force.
A spokesman for Bollwage said, "The mayor had nothing to do with this arrest. He was not in his office and he found out about it three hours after it happened."
A statement from police director Patrick Maloney expressed "full faith" in the conduct of his officers.
The latest spat is a continuation of a running feud between the Reporter and Mayor Bollwage's office. In the Reporter's suit against the city (E&P, Oct. 29, p. 14), the newspaper accused the mayor of seizing and destroying bundles of the newspaper ? a charge the mayor hasn't denied.
Bollwage, maintains that the Reporter is a trashy propaganda pamphlet which is trying to pass itself off to the community as a legitimate news source.
However the lawsuit ends up, it's clear that the Reporter won't win any awards for journalistic excellence.
In its own coverage of the incident at City Hall, the Reporter ran a one-sided account under the all caps headline: "Mugger Still At Large/Police Abandon Victim/Pursue Elizabeth Reporter."
The Reporter also printed Griffith's photo of the dazed mugging victim on page one ? along with her name and address.
Though editors at the Reporter contend that the victim gave permission to use the photo, an area shopper took the newspaper to task for putting the victim at risk.
"The perpetrator of this crime is at large," read an editorial in the competing Elizabeth City News, "and, should he pick up a copy of the Reporter . . . would know how to find the victim again."