San Diego Patch regional editor Ken Stone has an alarming update about the fortunes of 49-year-old Ramona freelancer J.C. Playford. After recently reporting about the reinstatement, after three years, of Playford’s San Diego Police press pass, Stone has details of a Tuesday altercation at the U.S.-Mexico border involving the photojournalist, an off-duty SDP officer and Department of Homeland Security official.

From Stone’s report:

Playford says he filed a formal complaint Wednesday against a San Diego police officer over what he calls an “assault and battery” incident on the [San Ysidro] pedestrian bridge.

Playford posted three YouTube videos depicting his exchanges with authorities on and near the bridge, where he says he had stopped to film a K-9 drug search of a car passing into the United States. “This is what a dictatorship looks like,” Playford says in one video during his time talking to police.

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It’s been mentioned in recent months as a logical possibility. Now, according to a dispatch in the San Diego Reader (and several other reports), the notion of UT San Diego taking over the Orange County Register has moved to the reality stage.

Per Don Bauder’s blog post:

John Lynch, chief executive of the UT, told the Downtown Lions in a Power Point presentation May 8 that the UT is in final talks to purchase the Orange County Register, Coast Magazine, and 24 local newspapers in Orange County.

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