TV Crews Call Tickets Harassment : Media: Parking news vans on the sidewalk at City Hall used to be standard procedure. Now the police are cracking down, but they deny that it is retaliation for coverage of the Rodney G. King beating.

Television reporters and camera operators who cover press conferences at City Hall say Los Angeles police are using pens to retaliate for coverage of the Rodney G. King beating.

Police are writing a blizzard of parking tickets and traffic citations for news crews who drive TV vans onto the sidewalk outside the offices of Mayor Tom Bradley and City Council members.

The crackdown has continued despite an agreement negotiated by Bradley with the city Department of Transportation allowing TV vans to pull up on the sidewalk outside his office and those of City Council members. The Transportation Department normally handles parking enforcement in Los Angeles.

Police officials deny that the King controversy has prompted their sidewalk sweep, however. They contend that the news vans are a hazard.

The flurry of tickets increased last week when two police units were sent to City Hall to issue citations. TV crews complained they were given parking tickets and moving violation citations and then were ordered off the sidewalk.

One news crew was chased into a pay-to-park lot at a nearby courthouse. But when the cameraman and reporter carried their video equipment across Spring Street to the City Hall steps, the police cited them for jaywalking.

“It’s pure harassment because of the Rodney King incident,” said another cameraman, Tom Bravo, who left a City Council meeting on Wednesday and found a $28 parking ticket on his van’s windshield. The citation was inches away from a Los Angeles police “news media” dashboard placard and a KCOP-TV Channel 13 identification sign.

Said Channel 13 reporter Dana Adams, who accompanied Bravo: “The fact that it’s the Police Department that’s doing this, and not the Transportation Department, makes it blatantly clear it’s because of the Rodney King thing.”

Art Stewart, a cameraman for KNBC-TV Channel 4, said television reporters parked freely on the City Hall sidewalk until TV stations aired an amateur cameraman’s now-famous March 3 home video of King’s beating by Foothill Division officers. The incident ignited a bitter power struggle between Bradley and Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

“I’ve been parking on that sidewalk since 1970 with no problem,” said Stewart, who also stepped from City Hall to find a parking citation on his news van. “It’s unfair. We’re getting caught in the middle of a political dispute.”

But that contention is “absolutely ridiculous,” said Lt. Fred Nixon, a Police Department spokesman.

“Our officers are responding to complaints from citizens. Parking on the sidewalk is breaking the law. Our primary concern in this matter is to deal with the stream of complaints we’re getting about it.”

Nixon said passersby in wheelchairs have had to roll into the street when news vans have blocked the sidewalk. “Our officers aren’t out looking for something to do. They are responding to an unsafe condition,” he said.

Pedestrians outside City Hall agreed. “These trucks are in people’s way,” said Shonda Spinks of West Covina. “Regular people don’t get to park on the sidewalk. Why should (news crews)?”

One anonymous passerby on Wednesday left this note on a news vehicle’s windshield: “Your car does not belong on the sidewalk. Please be considerate. Signed, a concerned person.”

But Bill Yeager, program director for all-news radio station KFWB and president of the Los Angeles Radio-Television News Assn., said sidewalk access is necessary for television coverage of City Hall. He said his group plans to ask the City Council to rewrite the Municipal Code so that TV trucks are allowed there.

“It’s political,” said Yeager, who also charged that police have recently searched two KFWB reporters’ cars after stopping them for alleged traffic violations. “I consider it harassment.”

The broadcasters’ association asked Bradley’s office to intercede when tickets began appearing on news van windshields in March. As a result, the Department of Transportation issued a memo April 9 authorizing TV vans to park on the Spring Street sidewalk if they could not fit in a 19-space “press parking area” beneath City Hall.

But many television trucks are equipped with rooftop microwave antenna “masts” that prevent them from being driven into garages, said Phil Ronney, a KCBS cameraman. And news vans parked beneath City Hall cannot use a video hookup box that the city has installed next to the Spring Street sidewalk to carry TV pictures from the building, he said.

TV trucks broadcasting council meetings or press conferences live must park on Spring Street so their video signal can reach microwave receivers atop distant Mt. Wilson, said Ronney, who was ticketed last week while videotaping a Bradley press conference.

Although most of the dozen or so TV news organizations that regularly cover City Hall have apparently been paying the parking fines, tickets for moving violations go against crew members’ personal driving records.

“The station’s going to have to pay us to go to traffic court if we get those,” a cameraman for KCAL-TV Channel 9 said Thursday.

KCBS-TV Channel 2 cameraman Gary Johnson said he hopes to get his station to send a lawyer to court with him to contest his driving-on-the-sidewalk moving violation. “I told the officer I understood relations between the LAPD and the media isn’t all that great now. But why pick on us?” Johnson said Friday.

Patricia Ballaz, a news camera operator for KTTV-TV Channel 11, said television crews are reluctant to park in public parking lots where they are required to leave their keys with attendants. Electronic equipment inside TV vans can cost up to $200,000.

The idea of toting a 50-pound camera and tripod from a distant parking lot also is unappealing, she indicated.

“Since this Gates thing heated up, our crews have been ticketed daily,” said KTTV reporter Carol Lin. “It’s getting to be that covering a Mayor Bradley news conference costs us $28 a pop.”

Or more, if you’re reporter Evan Reid and cameraman Kirk McLemore, who work for Continental Cable.

After being blocked from the City Hall sidewalk by police, they paid $12 to use the courthouse parking lot. Then they were slapped with jaywalking tickets totaling $40.

That news prompted groans in Bradley’s office. Bill Chandler, a spokesman for the mayor, said television crews should be given proper access to City Hall.