Take a photo, if you dare. (Getty Images/Alex Wong)

Vice President Joe Biden’s communications staffers apologized yesterday for forcing a student reporter to delete photos he took while covering an event in Rockville. The student, who works for the University of Maryland-affiliated Capital News Service, was at an event Tuesday about domestic violence prevention that featured Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), and the actress Mariska Hargitay.

The reporter, Jeremy Barr, who is also a student at Maryland, was credentialed for the program, though he was not seated in the press area. According to Capital News Service, Barr took several photos of Biden and the other speakers. But after the event concluded, an aide in the vice president’s press office confronted Barr:

After the event was over, Barr was questioned.

“(The staffer) asked, ‘Did you take any photos during the event?’” Barr said. He told the staffer, yes, he had taken a few photos.

“She said, ‘I need to see your camera right now.’” Barr said. The staffer called Barr’s presence in the non-press area an “unfair advantage” over the other members of the media at the event.

Barr was also told to turn over his iPhone for inspection that he had not taken any photos with it. Although Barr was sitting in the general audience, people around him took photos throughout the event and were not stopped while exiting. The staffer, Dana Rosenzweig, then made Barr wait in the auditorium for 10 minutes while talking to a superior.

Following the encounter, Lucy Dalgish, the dean of Maryland’s journalism school, shot off a letter to Biden’s press secretary, Kendra Barkoff, charging that the vice president’s office had violated federal law that prohibits government officials from seizing a journalist’s equipment.

“This statute makes clear that it is the policy of the U.S. government to provide special protections for the press against searches and seizures by law enforcement and other government officials, except in limited circumstances,” Dalgish wrote. “The exceptions allow federal officers and employees to search and seize materials from the news media only when a member of the press has committed a crime unrelated to the possession or withholding of the materials or where there is a necessity to prevent death or bodily injury.”

Barkoff later called with an apology, Capital News Service reports, though her statement was not given on the record.

“Rockville is not a third-world country where police-state style media censorship is expected,” Daglish wrote in her letter.