Some footage surfaced on Thursday of Kanye West and his road manager involved in a skirmish with paparazzi at Los Angeles International Airport that morning. The rapper/producer was in the departures hall ready to enter the screening area before hopping on a flight to Honolulu, and obviously took exception to being approached by a photographer. After the altercation, security and police arrived and West and his manager, Don Crowley, were instead arrested on suspicion of vandalism.
The two men were held at a nearby station before posting a combined $20,000 bail and being released later that afternoon. Both were charged with felony vandalism, but it’s unlikely West will be charged for anything more than a misdemeanor, since it was the lighting unit that he threw the ground, while Crowley was the one who threw the camera. In California, damaging property valued over $400 is prosecuted as a felony; however, while it’s been reported that the camera has a retail value of about $1500 (the camera been reported by other outlets as being worth $10,000, but that’s pretty steep for a still camera), the lighting unit is only worth around $100. Crowley will then likely be further charged for subsequently damaging the TMZ camera that caught the incident, which he is seen in the footage trying to wrest away from the paparazzo, damaging it as well. TMZ.com claims that that camera is worth $7000.
In the TMZ video, West (seen in a grey hoodie) and Crowley (red hoodie) are seen walking towards the screening area as they snag a camera away from a paparazzo, who immediately begins yelling for the police, to which West responds, “Ain’t no police, man.” Earlier in the video, he yells, “I took it,” referring to the camera. As Crowley slams the camera to the ground, West does the same thing with the camera’s lighting unit, just before LAX security personnel arrive on the scene.
According to police and the TMZ cameraman, once police arrived on the scene, they stopped West and Crowley as they tried to enter the screening area, and the shenanigans didn’t stop there. While police had the two men apprehended, they asked the TMZ cameraman if he had filmed the incident, and after he said that he had, West tried to lunge at the him, saying, “Gimme that f*cking tape,” though police held him back before taking him and Crowley into custody.
In blog written after the incident, West claimed that he’s “cool” with the paparazzi, but claimed that “[t]his guy wasn’t cool,” referring to the first paparazzo whose camera had been damaged by him and his goon. After the guy told Kanye that Justice and Simian had just produced another music video that was better than his.
(TMZ.com, MTV.com)
