On Jan. 21, Purdue senior Andrew Boldt was shot and killed in the electrical engineering building on Purdue’s campus.
The shooting was sudden and unexpected.
No one knew what was going on. Students on Indiana University’s campus first heard it from their friends in Lafayette.
Someone was killing people.
People flipped on the news to find Indiana in an uproar.
After reports and emergency calls, police rushed to the scene of the shooting and began to secure the premises.
However, they forgot a skywalk on the second floor.
This allowed Exponent photographer Michael Takeda access to the building, according to an article in the Journal & Courier.
He went in, camera in hand, to get close-up footage of the tragedy.
In a report he filed against the Purdue Police Department, Takeda claimed he didn’t know other entrances were blocked off. The police said Takeda had gone to the bridge to find a way to sneak inside.
Takeda claims he was treated roughly, shoved to the ground, his equipment damaged and he was verbally abused, according to the Journal & Courier. The police denied all of this.
Takeda was detained and his cameras were confiscated. Eventually, Takeda was released. However, the recordings of the altercation were not released with him.
In the initial panic, it is hard to imagine that anyone, police, civilian, whoever, would be able to follow textbook procedure. Each situation is unique, and officers must think on their feet.
This sometimes means that witnesses or journalists can be mishandled or mistreated.
But after the fact, the law should step in and correct wrongdoing, and make public footage that shows a misstep, such as the manhandling of a jouranlist.
This didn’t happen.
Whatever the reason, it is simply unacceptable that the law had such a severe misunderstanding of journalists' rights.
Purdue maintains it was part of the ongoing murder investigation, according to the Purdue Exponent.
After six months, the Exponent now has the footage in hand.
Takeda wasn’t acting as a student at the time of the incident. He was doing his job as a journalist and a photographer. He had a duty to find out what was going on and to provide answers to the public.
The police and the university kept him from doing that, possibly out of fear or because they didn’t understand themselves what his rights were.
Indiana has what are called “sunshine laws,” which are laws that grant the public access to government records, meetings, deliberations and votes.
The Exponent tried several times to gain copies of the footage, but the university only allowed the Exponent to view the recordings.
The Exponent then filed a lawsuit in the Tippecanoe Superior Court, demanding the footage taken be released.
“We are disappointed that Purdue has forced us to file a lawsuit to compel the university to release video footage that, by law, we believe should be available for anyone to see,” said Pat Kuhnle, publisher and general manager of the Exponent said in the Exponent article when the story first broke.
Finally, six months after the shooting, the Exponent can finally report on the photographer’s struggle.
Purdue had no rights to withhold the footage. It belonged and belongs to the public, who have a right to see it. It belongs to the paper, who has a right to report on it.
Takeda didn’t deserve to be detained or have his equipment taken.
If his claims of physical and verbal abuse are true, the Exponent has a right to verify them. But he did get caught in the middle of panic, and mistakes can be made.
But those mistakes need to by addressed by both the law and the media.
It’s disappointing that the Exponent had to work so hard to do its job.
