First Fridays/Urban Nights thread (live, versus, food)

[Natural510]

This wasn't random. If you read his story, he was filming a large group of kids who got in a argument, one of them knocks the camera out of his hand, and instead of backing off, he chases after the kid into the group and catches a beat down for it. Then posts on Facebook (!) right after it happened looking for sympathy.

[Tarheel8406]

I agree it wasn't random in that he was doing something that called attention to himself and that put him in an unsafe situation, but the attacker didn't gain anything by knocking the phone out of his hand. (In other words, this wasn't a robbery.)

For the record, I'm not implying that Dayton is an unsafe place. This is actually the first time I've heard of something like this happening here. However, incidents like this have happened throughout the US, whether it's a person attacked by a large group or by one or two people, and robbery isn't the motive.

[CarpathianPeasant]

.

This is getting confused.

He arrived, parked and went north on St. Clair street, then west (to take a look at Courthouse square) then south and was at Fourth & Main (apparently headed back to his scooter) when the large group of people who were just walking (according to the film rather rapidly) passed Third & Main heading south.

That's when he started filming, then, based on the video, he walked back north into the crowd possibly to see what was going on. Nobody was fighting but then people were headed in different directions. Some may have been headed for transportation home.

Look at the film posted here carefully a couple of times and you'll see it, too.

[weatherphotographer]

Originally Posted by Natural510

This wasn't random. If you read his story, he was filming a large group of kids who got in a argument, one of them knocks the camera out of his hand, and instead of backing off, he chases after the kid into the group and catches a beat down for it. Then posts on Facebook (!) right after it happened looking for sympathy.

He also wrote his own Wikipedia article too. Go over there and nominate that sucker for deletion

[Natural510]

Originally Posted by weatherphotographer

He also wrote his own Wikipedia article too. Go over there and nominate that sucker for deletion

Then again, after Epic Beard Man gained (and kept) his own article, I knew WP had gone to the dogs.

[CarpathianPeasant]

Originally Posted by weatherphotographer

He also wrote his own Wikipedia article too. Go over there and nominate that sucker for deletion

I would imagine a good many people -- especially controversial people and political people -- have likewise done so.

I saw nothing about the incident under discussion here in the Wikipedia posting provided by Yahoo search in my quick glance through the article. If there is an article describing it, please post the link.

[Dayton Sux]

I'm just curious, but why would Esrati not have a right to film the crowd? I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I know, there's nothing prohibiting a person from recording an event if it's occurring in public.

You are correct, David has the right to film or photograph anything that happens in a public space as long as he is on the street or sidewalk. The Photographers Right. I know about this since I used to do tons of street photography in Dayton, usually of buildings and street scenes & such...not so much people.

This is really sad to hear. Esrati has been a gadfly but we need guys like him around. Also explains a bit of what was going on.

And we are very lucky it didn't turn out the way a perhaps similar swarming thing did in Louisville back in March:

Louisville looks to other cities for lessons on flash mobs

[weatherphotographer]

Esrati made his mistake by running after 25 punks. Where did he think he was, at Bob Saget's game show called 1 vs. 100?

And at 51 years of age, I'd expect him to take the high road. Esrati is in the same class of punks that harassed him imho

[weatherphotographer]

Originally Posted by Tarheel8406

That makes sense. From what I can tell though, it seems like he was just filming the mass of people at first and happened to catch the fight. (And I'm not sure I'd even call it a fight. It just seems like some kids were yelling and pushing each other.)

After reading about this, I was curious about people's rights to privacy in a public setting. The ACLU, which I'll admit is a somewhat biased source, says that people don't have a reasonable expectation to privacy in a public place. So according to them, Esrati had the legal right to record. Whether he had the moral right is subjective, and I think most people would say it wasn't a smart thing to do.

I can't say I'm surprised that something like this happened though. As gentrification has occurred throughout the US, there seems to be more and more violent acts targeting random people.

In short, if you are downtown people, don't pull an "Esrati" and try to take on 25 people at once. Plain and simple. It's just common sense. Sorry, I can't feel a damn bit sorry for him. Not one bit.

[weatherphotographer]

Does anybody know Esrati well enough? I certainly hope somebody can get him to post here, and he can straighten out some of the things we didn't see in the video. The whole second half of that altercation is audio only, and I'd like to here his side. Not that crap he wrote on the blog, let's FIND OUT WHAT REALLY HAPPENED!