Street Drama

Vienna, Austria - melanie - Saturday, April 13th, 2002 : goo

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on the way home we watched a black man getting arrested and several punkkids/homeless people getting harrassed, having their photo taken (nice polaroid camera there.), while a camerateam from some austrian TV programm filmed it all. close ups, zooming in and all. so damn professional, so damn illegal. we stood and stared for a while, then called people to get us in contact with legal aid. it was all over as quick as it had started. the dogs were nervous, so were the cops, civil pigs were smoking cigarettes with the punks and everyone got their wallets back. the kid they had pushed to the wall and whose arms they had twisted a minute ago had disappeared and we walked up to the cameraman still incredulous, still angry and clutching cellphones. he told us it was a program about "small criminals", told us that yes, this was making a big deal out of a non existant problem, and yes, it was quite sensationalist, and yes, the TV station wanted him to deliver 3 close ups, of "the criminals' faces". he said he cuts off heads on purpose, makes the camera shake and blurs up images on purpose. he says he needs to do his job, was shaking and seemed disgusted and embarrassed. "it disgusts and embarrasses me but it is just a job." walked up to the punks, "wanna have this incident archived?" and were met by lame justifications of the random obviously staged harrassment of homeless kids that just wanna hang and drink at the trainstation. "i mean, we are basically calling for them to arrest us. they watch us for 12 hours, then they get us. it happened to me too. he will get out in 12 hours." and "no, i don't see how it could help anyone if we archive and research these cases. i mean, it happens all the time."
happens all the time. in a city near you.

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