Attacks on basic constitutional rights like this are becoming more and more common:

Brendan Colin Jones, 25, was sitting on a park ledge on de Maisonneuve Blvd. just east of Berri St. At one point, he swung around southward and his feet were on grass behind the ledge.

The Victoria native's ticket cited his offending behaviour as "using urban equipment for uses other than those intended."

Montreal police Sgt. Ian Lafrenière said Jones was told "several times" that he was sitting "somewhere else than on a park bench" and in so doing was guilty of an infraction.
...
He saw police approach people who were drinking alcohol nearby, took out his small digital camera and shot some photos.

"I saw this as an opportunity to observe how police deal with underprivileged people," Jones recounted.

Then a police officer came by and asked if he had been taking pictures.

"Once I realized she was attempting to get me to give her my camera, I became confused and told her I would not give it to her," Jones said.

"I had not committed any crime and had been sitting peacefully, just like many others around me."

The officer's two partners joined her, and Jones slipped the camera into his pocket. The police then told him it was illegal to sit in a city park when not on a bench and he would have to leave.

Although this happened in Canada, this is becoming more and more common everywhere, including the United States.  In some cases, people who video record arrests have been arrested under "wire tap" laws.  In this case, a private citizen was in a public place, and took pictures of uniformed police, while performing their duty.  All of these things are perfectly legal, and in a free society, should always be perfectly legal.  The police didn't like this because it opens them up to scrutiny, and so they decided to use an obscure law to penalize this person for something he had every right to do.  They cited him for "misusing urban equipment".  In some cases I've read, they've taken memory cards and claimed it was illegal to take pictures of them.

In this case, they fined him for using a wall as a bench.  Interestingly enough, the park was designed so that the walls were supposed to be used as benches!

Asked about fining someone for sitting in the park, Jean-Yves Duthel, spokesperson for Ville Marie borough mayor Benoit Labonté, said: "If they do it in respect of the bylaw, there is no problem."

The purpose of the granite surfaces at Émilie Gamelin Park is to have people sit on them, said Montreal architect Gavin Affleck, a specialist in urban spaces.

As a budding amateur photographer, I find these stories especially disturbing.  I've often times thought about what I'd do in a situation like this, and I still haven't quite decided.  My current thinking is that I carry multiple memory cards at all times, and if I saw police approaching, I'd try to swap out a blank card secretively.  Perhaps it would be smarter to always have a couple of pictures of something on the card I'd swap out so it looked more believable.  I'm not sure.  What has this country come to that I have to think about these things?