“Wasting Breath” with US Bank Tower’s Security Team

As we previously posted, a group of NPRO members set out this past Sunday to photograph Los Angeles’s lovely downtown. This area is notorious for its excessively vigilant security personnel, and we wanted to see if we could exercise our constitutional rights and shoot the array of skyscrapers freely and openly. It turns out we couldn’t.

As we began photographing the US Bank Tower at 633 W. 5th Street, managed by Maguire Properties, we were approached almost immediately by a Universal Protective Services (UPS) security guard, and soon there were six (6!). We were told they would call the police and we would be arrested, that no pictures were allowed from their “private sidewalk,” that they actually owned the sidewalk, and that we were idiots and jerks who should quit asking questions.

The kicker is that, when Angelo of Hollywood politely explained photographers’ rights to one of the UPS guards, he responded that that was just “differing points of view.” Yeah … except that one viewpoint is about the law, and one is not.

Please Voice Your Concerns:

US Bank Tower

633 W 5th St.

Los Angeles, CA 90071

(213) 615-6300