Four shutterbugs on the Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan beat were shut down earlier this week.
In what may be the beginning of a long-promised crackdown on stalkerazzi, who often take outrageous, if not dangerous, measures to snap the money shots of Hollywood's party girls, Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies arrested a quartet of cameramen at two separate locations in West Hollywood late Tuesday and early Wednesday. The lensmen were rung up on charges of blocking the sidewalks while awaiting the departures of Spears and Lohan, respectively.
First up Tuesday night was the bust of Spears-chasing photographers. They were nabbed while loitering outside the B2V Salon just before 8 p.m. while waiting for the pop star to emerge from the shop, where she was getting a color touch-up.
Of the roughly 50 photogs congregated outside the salon, two—David Tonnessen, 31, and Christian Shostele, 37—were arrested. The men were cited after ignoring repeated requests by deputies, made via loudspeaker, to clear a path on the sidewalk.
Tonnessen was booked at the West Hollywood station on a misdemeanor of blocking an entrance and was released on $250 bail. Shostele, meanwhile, was ticketed outside the salon and released after forking over $500 bail at the scene.
Just a few hours later and a few blocks over, two photographers working the club beat for TMZ were busted outside the West Hollywood hot spot Villa.
Deputies again issued warnings to disperse via loudspeaker just before midnight, and at roughly 1:30 a.m., when wannabe clubgoers and other night-owl passersby were unable to forge a path through the paparazzi scrum, they were called back to the scene.
Out of roughly 24 photographers stationed outside the club, waiting for Lohan's grand exit, two lensmen, both working for TMZ, were arrested.
Christopher Gonzalez, 21, and Vagn Rauch, 23, were both taken to the West Hollywood station and booked on misdemeanor charges. Both were released on $500 bail.
TMZ, never shy about injecting itself into a story, wrote about the incident Wednesday, claiming that only one of the cameramen made it to the station and was kept behind bars for six hours. The other, the site claimed, was kept in the back of a squad car for an hour, before being released.
Time will tell if the paparazzi learned their sidewalk-clearing lesson. Both they and Spears were back out in full force Wednesday night, when the pop star popped in to the Beverly Center and tested the mettle of the mall cops. No arrests were made.