besieged: Reese Witherspoon

Prosecutors say they will not file charges against paparazzi who chased actor Reese Witherspoon from her gym to the Westside, Los Angeles, community where she lives.

William C. Hodgman, head of the district attorney’s Target Crimes Unit, said prosecutors agreed with Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detectives that although the actor undoubtedly was terrified when a swarm of photographers “besieged” her in April, there was insufficient evidence to bring charges of false imprisonment or any other crime.

“In this specific instance, we couldn’t prove any criminal behaviour by the paparazzi,” Hodgman said.

Authorities have opened a wide-ranging investigation into whether increasingly aggressive paparazzi are provoking confrontations in order to create the opportunity for lucrative “candid” photos. The Witherspoon case, however, illustrates the difficulty of making cases against the photographers, despite a recent rash of well-publicised run-ins with celebrities, including the weekend gun attack on a photographer staking out Britney Spears, they said.

False imprisonment charges were used successfully in 1998 against two rogue paparazzi who boxed in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, outside their son’s Westside pre-school. The incident took place before Schwarzenegger became governor.

But in the Witherspoon case, police were unable to substantiate that the pack actually trapped the star of such movies as Legally Blonde and Sweet Home Alabama, they said.

“This doesn’t mean something didn’t occur. I have no doubt Witherspoon was besieged by the paparazzi that day. But through witnesses and videotapes, we weren’t able to corroborate the incident Witherspoon described,” said Detective Jeff Dunn, head of the LAPD’s Threat Management Unit.

Frank Griffin of Bauer-Griffin, one of the top celebrity photo agencies, said his photographers were not involved in the incident. The media, police and prosecutors tend to “blow out of proportion” allegations like those involving Witherspoon, he said.

“These prosecutors make a lot of noise so the politically active celebs keep supporting them? If a crime had been committed, someone would have been charged,” he said.

The April 16 incident began when one paparazzo, in a rental car, scraped Witherspoon’s vehicle outside her Brentwood gym. Photographers told police that they approached the actor to tell her about the problem.

Witherspoon reported that she was swarmed by paparazzi. Believing that the photographers were boxing her in to prevent her from leaving, the actor got her personal trainer to help her make a getaway, she said.

Witherspoon told authorities that the photographers followed her into the streets and tried to force her off the road. When she reached her gated community off Sunset Boulevard, the actor was again surrounded by photographers, she reported, forcing her to seek help from a security guard. Once inside the gates, she called 911 from the home where she lives with her husband, actor Ryan Phillippe, and two children.

The paparazzo who struck the car held a French passport and was staying here as a tourist, Detective Dunn said, adding that the photographer reported the car damage to the gym. Police did not identify the paparazzo and said they did not know whether he worked for any photographic agencies.

Police reviewed videotape of the incident in the gym parking lot and at the community gates, but were unable to verify that paparazzi ever detained Witherspoon, they said.

The actor is known as one of most hands-on mothers in Hollywood. As pictures of stars and their children going about their daily lives have supplanted glamour shots in today's tabloids and magazines, Witherspoon and her family have increasingly been confronted by paparazzi, several sources said. “When she takes her kids to school, they yell vile, insulting things at her,” one source said.