When it comes to pursuing their celebrity targets, the paparazzi aren’t known for their decency. So a British photographer’s departure from his LA agency in protest of Britney Spears’ “aggressive” treatment is a hint that media harassment of the unraveling celebrity has reached a new and frightening level.

Nick Stern has resigned from Splash, a British-owned celebrity photo firm based in Los Angeles, in protest of the “aggressive” techniques used in chasing Spears, and has forecast calamity.

“Directly or indirectly, Britney is going to come to some horrific end, or a member of the public will,” he said. “It’s not what’s being done, it’s the way it’s being done. As she continues to deteriorate psychologically, I just can’t see a positive way out.”

The greatest danger, according to Stern, is the high-speed convoy of photographers’ cars and motorbikes that follow Spears around Los Angeles.

The paparazzi organized a football-field-long line of cars in pursuit of the emergency transport even yesterday, when the LAPD used a Desert Storm-style siege on Spears’ estate to surreptitiously transfer Brit to a mental health facility.

In an unsuccessful attempt to throw cameras off the scent, police and medical staff spoke secretly about “delivering the package” in an operation carried out with military precision.

“The paps are completely out of control,” Stern, 43, remarked. “It’s not unusual to have 20 or 30 cars pursuing her at any one time. It’s become acceptable to drive at 80mph down the wrong side of the street into oncoming traffic. I was horrified at what goes on. It’s so aggressive, there are fights and crashes and slashed tyres. I felt I needed to say something.”

Perez Hilton responded to a question on The View about whether he felt terrible for bringing celebrities down by stating, “If Britney committed suicide tomorrow and died, she would be the only one to blame, I think,” before Britney’s first hospitalization. He wasn’t even questioned about Britney, yet he seemed to be salivating at the prospect of her death. Maybe he was scared and had some responses planned ahead of time, but it didn’t come out the way he intended it to, but he was indicating to me that he refused to take responsibility for the way he was breaking her down.