A filmmaker was taking the blame after New York police officers were summoned to what they thought was an armed robbery, but turned out to be a location shoot for his upcoming movie.
The confrontation ended peacefully when officers ordered an actor playing a gunman to drop his weapon.
“I made the mistake,” Fred Carpenter said in a telephone interview. “I was supposed to tell the local police precinct what we were doing.”
Carpenter was filming inside convenience store in Bellmore, on Long Island, on Tuesday morning in a scene in which a gunman takes a number of people hostage. A passer-by apparently thought it was the real thing and called police.
“All of a sudden I’m directing and 15 police officers come in,” Carpenter said. “And for a moment I’m thinking it’s part of the movie and then I said, wait a minute, I wrote the movie and this wasn’t in the film. And it was like, insanity.”
Nobody was injured, but police said the outcome could have been tragic.
“The officer went inside, the actor — it turned out to be — still had the gun in his hand,” said Detective Mike Bitzko, a Nassau County police spokesman. He said responding officers “showed great restraint” disarming the situation.
Because he was filming on private property inside the store, officials and Carpenter said he was not required to obtain a county film permit, but Bitzko said police need to be notified about scenes involving gunplay.
Carpenter had praise for the police response and noted his film, “Jesse” is about a fictional Nassau County police detective named Jessica Weinstein who investigates the death of her brother. One of the film’s stars is Burt Young, best known for his role in “Rocky.” The actor who played the gunman was Mike Tattoo, Carpenter said.
“When you’re doing independent films, you’re working on budgets of a couple hundred grand or less,” he said. “We try to use as many private locations as possible. We were so close to the highway, I guess we didn’t realize that people would be looking in.”
He said he would reschedule the shoot and promised to contact police ahead of time.
“They’re there to protect us and something bad could have happened.”
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More