Slashdot Mirror
UK Police Raid Party After Seeing "All-Night" Tag On Facebook
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently the police like to spend their time trawling our private information on Facebook looking for criminals. 'Riot police stormed a man's 30th birthday barbecue for 15 guests because it was advertised as an "all-night" party on Facebook. Four police cars, a riot van, and a force helicopter were dispatched to a privately-owned field in a small village near Sowton, Devon in the UK on Saturday, ordering the party shut down or everyone would be arrested. The birthday barbecue was busted up before they even had a chance to plug the music in, reports the BBC. It was about 4pm when eight officers with camouflage pants and body armor jumped out of their vehicles and ordered everyone out about an hour into the party.' The event's organizer, Andrew Poole, said, 'The police had full-on camouflage trousers on and body-armour, it was ridiculous. There were also several plain-clothes officers as well ... they kept on insisting it has been advertised it as an all-night rave on the internet. The times on it were put as "overnight" in case people wanted to sleep-over, but after being explained this they were still banging on saying it was advertised on the internet. They wouldn't accept it wasn't a rave. It was in a completely isolated field.'"
Since 1994 with the introduction of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994.
I cant take credit for this info though, shamelessly stolen from the discussion on reddit yesterday.
Since Thatcher took exception to the actual all-night raves that went on in the early nineties. The government take a dim view of anyone having fun, Thatcher (and Blair and Brown for that matter) take a dimmer view of spontaneous communities forming for the purpose of socialising, dancing and casual drug-taking. This is due to the neo-Liberal tenet that people are entirely selfish entities, plotting and scheming against one-another, the only way they should be able to express themselves is through the free market.[1] The point being that these raves were legal, but were not taking part in government-approved capitalist venues, people there were not consuming government-approved drugs (such as alcohol) and even more galling: they went against the principle that people are essentially selfish.
So. Thatcher had to shut them down, because they went against the government's philosophy of how the world should look. It was an amazing time though, and if you meet a 40-something Brit, who wears a suit to work, has two point four children[2] and you assume they're a boring old git, think again. Chances are a few years ago they were standing in a field, listening to great old school rave[3], and enjoying a sense of community the population of Britain can now only dream of. All thanks to the jackbooted thugs who have been forcing their Cold War derived ideologies on our fair isle for too long.
One of these days we're going to go Wat Tyler[4] on their arses.
[1] See The Trap.
[2] British idiom Two point four children, referring to the average number of children per-household in the UK.
[3] Just a small example: Prodigy - Out of Space (not for everyone, but that's not the point)
[4] Wat Tyler, leader of the Peasants Revolt.
(captcha is 'corrupts', how apropos!)
Raving is not a crime.
TFA: "[...] section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which grants police powers to remove persons attending or preparing for a "rave" (defined as playing amplified music "wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats," during the night)."
Well, apparently it is.
Our wealth breeds emptiness
1) The police didn't scour facebook - locals did, saw it, and reported it as a rave.
2) The helicopter was out anyway, and they just asked the helicopter to fly over the site to really check if there was a party on its way back
It was not police scouring facebook and dispatching a helicopter.
It embarrasses and annoys me that this happened in my own country, which I do love dearly, but I wont let the usual anti-UK/US/Australia facebook crowd exaggerate it further.
You should read a bit of history, matey. "Never had any kind of revolution or defining moment"... "never had to struggle to get (freedom and liberty)"....
Take a bit of time out to read some history and you might find out why you've got the right to vote, what habeus corpus is, why we we're allowed to move from parish to parish without getting permission from our lords and a whole lot more.
£800 for a tent, mobile sound system, barbecue food and booze for 20 friends sounds cheap. I've spent more money on a Christmas dinner for a few friends. I think you just dont like people who break laws against people having fun. He publicized the event to his friends, not to the whole of facebook. What exactly is this Rave thing the law was designed to ban anyway? From what I remember it was introduced because entrepreneurs were organizing parties where they sold drugs and booze on land with out the owners permission with the pull of all night music. Well no one is going to make much of a fuss about putting a stop to littering peoples fields, potentially with dead teenagers. But this was a thirty-th birthday barbecue with music and a tent to hide under when the rain got too bad, set in a field so that alcohol could be consumed and slept off in your own tent. There used to be a pub in Exeter which allowed much the same deal in its field. The pub has been bought by a national chain now and camping in its field is no longer allowed. This country is becoming a vile place to live, no strike that, this country is a vile place to live.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Actually the Facebook bit was just an afterthought. If you follow the links to the original BBC article, you would see that the local neighbors actually called the police when they saw a group of unfamiliar people gather in the same are where a rave previously took place a few days before. They called the police, who apparently then went out and investigated.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/8155441.stm
That doesn't excuse what the police did after the fact. It should have taken at least a low grade moron to see that these people were having a BBQ. It's kind of frightening how far out of control things have gotten across the pond. It seems far worse than the US. They have surrendered some very basic liberties to the government and they don't appear to be screaming to get them back which is also confusing. This is obviously some very bad legislation that needs to be revisited. Are the elements that got this type of legislation passed still in control over there?
They are in a very slippery slope.