NYPD and Times Square shooting: Your phone is a First Amendment device

First, what had happened?

Cityroom New York Times :: The typical afternoon furor in Times Square became something more menacing on Saturday as throngs of police officers drew their weapons and pursued a man with a large knife down Seventh Avenue and then shot him to death.

"Police shoot man in Midtown, and tourists reach for cameras" a report by Michael Schwirtz | Aaron Edwards, cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com

A lot of people followed the pursuit, filmed the scene and uploaded it later to YouTube.

Talking To Strangers :: The New York Times reports that in the wake of the Times Square shooting the NYPD confiscated one bystander’s phone and video footage, and told him not to talk to the media. To Mr. Miller’s credit, after this happened he went to the New York Times to talk to someone about the experience.

Why confiscate the phone?

A report by Josh Stearns, jcstearns.tumblr.com

Josh Stearns on Twitter