It it legal for the police to delete pictures from your camera or take your film or camera?

Can you give the exact situation including nation?

Also check out the Photographer’s Bill of Rights. It is for the US.

And for the UK

Oh, sorry. Duh! In the United States is it illegal for the police to take your camera if you are on public property shooting nudes.

I know that you can be arrested and your camera will be confiscated but do they have rights to the images?

I know they can copy the images as evidence but as far as keep the complete pic from you? not sure, I should know this but do not. I’ll check it out

If they delete the images they will have a hard time proving you have broken the law. Even a half decent lawyer would rip them to pieces on the stand.

True, thanks. My photography class and I were having a conversation about this after watching Spencer Tunick’s Naked World. He’s the photographer that has shot large crowds of nude people all throughout the world. He’s been arrested a few times in the United States and we were just wondering if the police had ever tampered with his film.

Oh! Well that’s entirely possible and you’d have to ask him to know for sure. Photographers’ rights have had a kind of rocky history, specifically with officers and private security people infringing on the right to photograph public places because you “might be a terrorist” or they don’t want you taking pictures of them or any other number of ridiculous reasons.

I have the urge to shoot a few nudes in public but really, really don’t want to be arrested so I think I’ll just stick to the studio or somewhere on my own property. My biggest curiousity is what would happen though.

I would have thought that your model would be more likely to be arrested for public decency (what ever that is) offenses than you.

@EmpressPixie Good point in Mexico they took my camera no questions asked and I just let it go. IN DC after 911 they surrounded our car stopped at the Pentagon to snap photos and the police watched my buddy delete the info but did not take the camera. The signage clearly said NO Photography so he was happy to not have it taken away or arrested/fined. He apologized for us being stupid tourists and we left asap.

Well I looked up Spencer Tunick on Wikipedia and he was arrested 5 times in NYC, although the charges were later dropped.

They only have to right to take your camera and film if you are on government property.
Anything else and they are abusing their power. They have NO right to take your film without a court order. You have the right to take photographs in public places (streets, sidewalks.. etc) or anywhere that permission from the owner is given. You can photograph anywhere (businesses, homes, schools) from a public space, such as the road. If it is not legal to take a picture directly on the premises, just go to the road!
see here, The Photographer’s Rights guide:
http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm

I would have thought, while walking around in a public place with naked women, the police would be the LEAST of the problems.

They have a right to copies, if they are evidence in a criminal case.

They have to have a court order to seize the originals.

In case of illegal pictures (child porn, etc) they can hold the media until they get the court order to destroy the images.

don’t forget that often what the law says and what happens in practice are two different things: a 4-year-old was arrested on Christmas Eve without a warrant, interrogated for 11 hours and then locked up. No lawyers, not even an interpreter was provided. And yes, the whole system is now in trouble, especially since the child had done nothing wrong (which is irrelevant anyway). But the fact remains that it happened anyway and has marked her for life.

Always remember, even after the images have been deleted, if you DO NOT take any further photos you can retrieve them with one of the numerous applications used to rescue deleted files.