High Speed Pursuit!

I was sitting in my van at the station eating my lunch (even though it wasn’t officially lunchtime). The desk calls me and tells me to head over to Burbank.

Rats (uh, I mean, Yay!). I wolf down my sandwich and speed off the lot. The assignment desk tells me that I’m chasing a pursuit that’s in progress.

Fellow photographer, Marvin Stone. He ran a block and did a good job at the end of the pursuit. •••

You never know how these things are going to end. It could turn and head away from me, in which case I could be driving for hours and never catch it. Luckily, this one is headed towards me and actually ends when the suspect hits another car.

One of our other crews was closer to the end of the pursuit and managed to get some great footage. My job is now to get the other crew on TV as soon as possible. I immediately pop my mast and establish a microwave link back to the station, then set up my camera and lights for the live shot.

Reporter Bobby Caple also was in on the run down the block to get the end of the pursuit. •••

The other photographer comes over to my van and feeds back from his camera everything he and the reporter recorded. They got the two crashed vehicles, witnesses and even the suspect as he was being taken away. Score!

We do a couple of live hits for the late afternoon shows at 5pm & 6pm. The station sends out a night side reporter to cover the story for the later newscasts.

Somehow (this isn’t always the case), I get assigned to stay in the mix and help the night side crew.

It’s a little trickier to set up the live shot now. During the earlier shows, the cops had blocked off traffic in both directions and we were set up on the same street as the pursuit. You could see cop cars and everything in the background of our live shots.

Reporter Amanda Burden. She and another photographer got the hand off for the nightside newscast. •••

The cops had opened up the street and traffic was back to normal. We had to set up the van on a side street and cable around a corner to even be on the same street where everything had taken place. Power lines prevented us from setting up any closer. By the 11:00pm newscast, people who wandered past us were asking what had happened. There wasn’t a trace of the earlier police activity. I worked an hour and a half of overtime and never got a lunch break. The fact that I had eaten before the assignment? Hey, let’s just keep that between us, okay?

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