It's about time. As AP reports, "Four paparazzi have been arrested for reckless driving while chasing Britney Spears' car."

Celebrities have been complaining about aggressive photographers for years now. I, like many other critics, haven't been particularly sympathetic to the stars. But after seeing paparazzi actually stop the ambulance carrying Britney Spears to the hospital last week, I had a wake-up call. It seems Los Angeles police had one, too. As I wrote in my On the Edge piece on Friday,

after dealing with the paparazzi on a daily basis, some of these stars obviously figured out something we bystanders hadn't fully absorbed — these single-minded photographers are, quite simply, dangerous.

Hello? Car chases are dangerous. That's why police departments — especially in densely populated cities and suburbs — have strict policies for officers governing when such chases are permissible.

As superstars like George Clooney and Julia Roberts have tried to tell us recently, what's at stake here goes far beyond the privacy of a handful of pampered celebs. What's at stake is public safety: the safety of pedestrians out for a stroll in a residential zone, the safety of children being dropped off or picked up in school zones, the safety of the stars and, yes, the safety of the paparazzi themselves.

MarketWatch's Jon Friedman, writing a few days after me, made a similar point: "I'm beginning to envision a tragic conclusion to the whole Britney Spears media circus: The Hollywood paparazzi seem determined to hound her until she is dead."

— Kelly Jane Torrance, arts and entertainment writer, The Washington Times