After months of rising tensions between celebrities and the “stalkerazzi” — including a spat captured on YouTube between photographers and surfers trying to protect a Hollywood actor — city officials in LA have suggested anti-paparazzi laws.

There is only one problem: William Bratton, the LA chief of police, thinks the proposals are a waste of time.

Mr Bratton blamed the worst excesses of the paparazzi on celebrities themselves, noting that, “since Britney [Spears] started wearing clothes, [and now that] Paris is out of town and not bothering anybody any more, thank God, and evidently Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, we don't seem to have much of an issue”.

The latter remark was a reference to allegations that Ms Lohan, star of movies such as Mean Girls and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, has been spending a lot of time with her friend Samantha Ronson, a DJ.

Photographers said that restrictions would curtail press freedoms.

“Say Britney has a baby, and I'm hired by three newspapers to cover the story, does that make me a news photographer or a paparazzi?” asked Jeff Rayner, a British photographer who has worked in LA for several years. “Besides, there are already privacy laws in LA. Big ones. You can't photograph people on private property, for example. Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson — you never see paparazzi pictures of these people. Guess why: because they're not stumbling out of a nightclub at 2am without their boxer shorts on.”

There is agreement that the paparazzi business has become more aggressive in recent years. This has driven down the prices that photographs can fetch, heightening the aggression, which was witnessed in the confrontation between photographers and surfers protecting the actor Matthew McConaughey.

In cases when photographers used to capture their prey from a distance they now have to get out of their cars and join a scrum. The traditional British “pap” is being replaced by an influx of guerrilla-style photographers, some of them Mexican immigrants, with little to lose, failsafe point-and-shoot cameras and GPS systems that make finding houses of celebrities easy.

“They act like a pack of wolves,” complained Dennis Zine, a city council spokesman, at the City Hall meeting on Thursday. Mr Zine, a former LA police sergeant, said that he took up the cause against the paparazzi when he heard reports that it cost $25,000 (£13,000) for police to accompany Britney Spears to hospital when she had a breakdown this year.

He supported proposals such as forcing the paparazzi to carry ID cards and put a fluorescent letter “P” on their vehicle numberplates so that they can be recognised easily.

Mr Bratton denied the $25,000 figure and said: “There are currently on the books sufficient laws, rules and regulations [to deal with photographers].”

Mr Zine managed to attract plenty of angry city officials and celebrities to his meeting. John Mayer, a singer-songwriter, complained that he is frequently followed late at night by cars without numberplates. “Without knowing who is following you, you do not know why you are being followed, which brings about a very real possibility of suffering harm,” he said.

Mr Rayner said that he did not condone the kind of photographers who run red lights: “Eventually, someone will be killed, whether it's a celebrity or a photographer.”

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