"That's what makes us civilized"
What's disturbing is the philosophical idea that you (and not the State) have the right to confiscte property because you think it's right. Only the State, after due process of law, can take your property away from you. (The other example is if you don't pay a loan on a secured asset. Then the owner of the property can take it.) That's what makes us civilized. You don't have to worry about your neighbor's cousin Jeb coming down from the mountains to bash your car window out because you have a difference with your neighbor.
ChromeLight in the dpreview.com forums
Ah. So it's only cool if the Approved Gang does it, not if an Individual Gangster gives it a go. Right.
Two cheers for our "civil" civilization, wherein support for aggression against private property lives as long as that aggressor is part of the local violence monopoly cartel with the either half-hearted or half-brained support of a majority of those eligible voters who bothered to show up at the last election and whose aggression is cloaked in a set of rules arbitrarily hammered out over the years in pursuit of an uneasy compromise among raw expediency, the fads of the moment, and vaguely undefined concerns over "civil liberties!"
Clearly, what would have made this State Appropriation legitimate was the addition of some fancy paperwork littered with Latin legalese and some prick wearing a badge and a sidearm.
The case in question is detailed here. Karen Redfield, the principal of a California public elementary school, seized a press photographer's equipment after hearing concerns about a man videotaping children from across the street. She seized it even though Reneh Agha was off school property and he explained what he was doing when she confronted him.
But most importantly, it wasn't hers in the first place and it doesn't matter if an entire platoon of Sheriff's Deputies waving Court Orders around literally or figuratively stood behind her at the time of seizure. This was theft and she ought to be ashamed of herself.