Britney Spears has unintentionally done Lindsay Lohan, and perhaps countless others, a good turn.
With the recent paparazzi scrum around Spears making the days when overeager shutterbugs were bumping into Lohan's car seem almost quaint by comparison, a Los Angeles City Councilman has proposed a "personal safety zone" law that would make it harder for the media to close in quite so easily.
Councilman Dennis Zine, a former cop, introduced the motion Friday.
"I don't want a repeat of what happened to Princess Diana with a celebrity in Los Angeles," Zine told the L.A. Times. "We had to have 12 officers escort [Spears] to the hospital that if not for paparazzi would have been [available] to prevent crime somewhere else."
"It is a major issue we have to address. We are in a celebrity town."
It cost the L.A. Police Department an estimated $25,000 to ferry the Spears caravan—an ambulance, a couple of cars with family and friends, and a horde of paparazzi—to UCLA Medical Center from the singer's Beverly Hills home early Thursday morning, Zine said.
And their job wasn't done upon arrival at the hospital. Once there, officers needed to ensure that other patients and staff remained safe while the onerous process of admitting Spears was under way.
A helicopter and a special team that guided the ambulance out of a side entrance of the Summit neighborhood were also employed.
Four photographers were busted Jan. 16 and booked for reckless driving after they were caught pursuing Spears at what authorities said were dangerously high speeds, following too close to her vehicle and making unsafe lane changes.
"In their efforts to get the latest story, these photographers often pose a serious hazard to public safety," he wrote in his proposal. "Paparazzi are becoming increasingly aggressive in their tactics, posing a clear danger not only to the people they are trying to photograph, but to the general public around them."
On Monday, police cited a number of lensmen for illegal parking after they set shop outside the gated community where Spears lives, where they were angling for a better view of the aftermath of her reported fight with manager Sam Lutfi.
Zine's law would require the City Attorney's Office and LAPD to draw up new ordinances to regulate how the paparazzi do business, including one stipulating a specific amount of "clear space" that would keep the madding crowd from disturbing private businesses and residences, blocking the entrances to emergency facilities and otherwise bothering people on public streets and sidewalks.
They "block entrances to vital public service centers such as hospitals and courthouses," Zine's proposal says. "Private enterprise also suffers when paparazzi impede access to offices, shops and restaurants."
Police Chief William Bratton, while admitting that there are issues at hand, told the Times he doesn't think additional laws are in order.
"Councilman Zine is responding to frustration we all have with the paparazzi," Bratton said. "We already have appropriate laws within the constitutional guidelines and we intend to do that whether it is erratic driving, trespassing on private property or any action that goes beyond the constitutional rights to cover a story."
Spears, he said, is an L.A. resident who needed help the other night.
The paparazzi "are the ones making a spectacle of themselves," Bratton said. "We will do what we need to do to protect the public from this cast of characters."
City Attorney and LAPD officials have been asked to report to the Public Safety Committee in 30 days with restriction ideas, including a minimum "personal safety zone" for the targets of the tabloid media's affection.