Chief Bratton on Paparazzi Taskforce: 'It's a Total Waste of Time'

Photo by Roby Ferrari via Flickr

As John Mayer, Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes), Eric Roberts, the Screen Actors Guild and others tell their paparazzi horror stories to a regional paparazzi taskforce at City Hall right now (aired live online and on Channel 35), the LAPD is setting up their own press conference for later this morning.

But earlier this morning NBC grabbed LAPD Chief Bratton, who thinks this is all baloney, citing that there are enough laws on the books to enforce the problem:

"If you notice, since Brittany started wearing clothes and behaving; Paris is out of town not bothering anybody, thank god; and, evidently, Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, we don't seem to have much of an issue.

"If the ones that attract the paparazzi behave in the first place, like we expect of anybody, that solves about 90 percent of the problem. The rest of it we can deal with.

"So as far as all this grandstanding and foolishness, waste of city time on this issue -- and the fact that I felt aggravated enough about it to interrupt my workout to come over and set the record straight, LAPD has no intention of participating in this farce."

Musician John Mayer had some suggestions during his testimony. One of them was that you can put a big "P" on license plates to identify cars owned by paparazzi. Don't think that one's going to fly.