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.'"
Did the owner of the field give informed consent for the gathering? If so, then the police had no business being there. Apologies are almost certainly in order.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
"Honestly, what's the justification for this nonsense?"
"War on drugs" ring any bells? - it's a euphemisim for oppression.
High ranking police all over the planet have built beuracratic kingdoms around the idiotic idea of declaring war on a social problem. In the US where this moronic idea came from it costs $100 billion/year to police just pot alone, yes $100 BILLION every YEAR just to stop people smoking pot. $10 billion of that goes directly to the DEA who LOBBY legislatures to keep the status quo. One american is arrested and has their life ruined every 18 seconds just for smoking pot. UK, Australia, etc, are no different.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The root of this all is the War on Some Drugs.
Fixed that for you.
"But local people, fearing a rave was going to take place after previous events with loud music at the same premises, alerted the police."
Ok, so they may have gotten a little rowdy in the past; send patrols by to make sure things stay calm, and break it up after if it starts getting out of hand. Go up and ask questions a bit, make your presence known, to make sure it stays under control. There are ways of controlling a bad situation without much fuss, and without eliminating the possible bad situation.
This was just plain horrid reactionary behavior that points out flaws in laws that, while have good intentions, allow for abuse and make people despise them.
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
How do you figure? The reports say "after previous events [...] at the same premises", not "after previous events with the same people".
How would you feel if you visited a bank the day after it had been robbed, and random people accused you of being a bank robber, just because you happened to be at the scene of a previous robbery?
>>No, no, no, only raves: "playing amplified music wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats during the night".
Interesting law. It specifies that it applies to people regardless of if they're trespassing, so they can be used to order people off their land, as long as a superintendent of the police thinks that 2 or more people are "making preparations" to hold a rave there.
If they don't leave their own land, a constable can arrest them without a warrant.
Crazy times.
However, it does define a rave as a nighttime party of 100 or more people, and I think the 15 dudes BBQing under a tent during the afternoon doesn't look much like a nighttime rave. The police were acting against the law.
From BBC news [bbc.co.uk] - "But local people, fearing a rave was going to take place after previous events with loud music at the same premises, alerted the police."
In other words, this bunch were notorious around town for partying all through the night, playing loud music and generally being a pain in the ass to everybody else. They may have been just barbequeing when the police showed up, but the locals knew what was comming and decided enough was enough.
Where did you get that they were "notorious around town" from? I don't see mentioned anywhere that the "bunch" were notorious around town for causing trouble. All I see is that a bunch of locals decided that they'd contact police. A bunch of locals giving police "information" is not reason enough for the police to respond in the way they did. Heck, if YOU lived in my neighbourhood I just might be tempted to get me and my friends to make up stories about YOU and get the police to raid your house. How would you like that? Not very much I am guessing.
In case you don't understand what I just said, let me put it in another way. Lets just say I have a bunch of friends here on slashdot and that I got together with them to accuse you of being a troll. All of us (me and my friends) will agree and email the slashdot admins that you're a troll. Upon hearing this, the admins revoke your account and ban you. How would this be right?
"We've gotten some complaints about parties around here in the past. If you don't keep it quiet and under control we'll have to break it up."
Nope, too hard. Get the riot squad.
private information on Facebook
Idiots think putting information on internet is private.....
He'd rented a sound system for 17 friends in a field? Well, I'm not going to judge before all the facts are in, but it seems a little excessive. And considering that local residents had complained about raves in the area before, it seems a little suspect.
However, the fact that the police shut down the party before they had anything more than suspicion is still wrong, I think. If they had the guys assurances that it wasn't a rave, wouldn't it have been enough just to send someone back at 8PM and someone at midnight?
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
This garbage really pisses me off. The next time one of you whiny little maggots start crying about how some criminal got off the hook and you start to say "We should have 'tougher laws' to fix this", think about this story... this is what "tougher laws" get you... a super uptight nit-picking police force that busts up a RUTTIN' BIRTHDAY PARTY because it used the "wrong words" in the invitation.
and I think the 15 dudes BBQing under a tent during the afternoon doesn't look much like a nighttime rave. The police were acting against the law.
This is where the part making preparations comes in play. From the face of it the law is pretty much on the police's side. They see some people setting up a tent, building up music equipment, arranging some catering - there you go, looks just like preparations for a rave party.
And of course ravers are very scary, extremely dangerous and highly aggressive people who are likely to be totally high on whatever drug is in fashion nowadays which is why there is clearly a need for a helicopter, body armour, and the rest. (/sarcasm)
You see a lot of kiddies complaining along the lines of "a rave shouldn't be illegal". But in britain, it is. Yes, really. Not concerts or parties, but raves.
The reasons are probably that overtime raves became a problem for some and they wanted something done against them. The other side was not intrested in fighting it and so things got passed into law and voila, you got a specific type of party made illegal.
England, believe it or not is still democracy. More so now then in the last couple of decades because it is no longer ensured who is going to win an election in a region. Safe seats aren't that safe anymore.
If YOU don't fight for your rights, then someone else wins with their rights. The problem with raves is simple, it is the struggle between the neighbours who want a quiet night and the party people who don't. Both have rights but they can't both excersise them fully without restricting the other.
So either the ravers turn down the music or the neighbours give up their quiet night. Ideally, both sides should work this out but as you can see on this side, working things out ain't part of human nature. The anti rave laws have come into being to deal with "illegal" events being held at random location with absolutely no care being given for the consequences. This doesn't just upset the neighbours, it upsets others in the entertainment industry. Not entirely fair is it that a local pub has to spend a fortune on sound isolation but a random group can just hold a rave anywhere, break every law that exists, not pay taxes and get away with it?
The law didn't come into place because YOU played techno in your yard and the neighbour complained. It came into being from 1000+ parties being held in location with no fire safety, no securty, causing serious disturbances. Not just noise, but traffic and things like fights breaking out.
The ravers suffered the public wrath and did NOT regulate themselves to fit into society. Of course, that is not a rebel thing to do but it is the thing to do if you don't want society to turn against you. Because as silly as this story is, the average voter (that is people who actually do vote, not just people who can vote) doesn't give a shit. They just see the tabloids depiction of ravers as crazed druggies, heared from someone at work how a rave is a warzone and are all in favor.
Democracy is just another word for dictatorship of the many. The raves that got out of control created these laws, which weren't oppososed by the ravers themselves and now you got this silly situation.
Most laws are silly, but exist because people are silly. If a lot of rave parties didn't cause such a nuisance (you could hold a rave party the same as any other concert and follow laws of fire safety, drugs laws and noise pollution) then there would be no desire to have them restricted. There are laws that says you can't drill into your wall after or before a specific hour in a building that isn't standalone. Why? Because someone found it neccesary to drill all night in an apartment block. Well not SOMEONE. A LOT of someone's. The apartment block is actually a good example, an old flat might easily have several hundred of apartments and drilling in one sound through the entire building. If a person only drill once every 3 years, it takes less then 1000 people to have drilling going on day in day out.
That is the reason there are rave laws and lots of others. Because without them people just can't be consider the affect their action have on others.
Want to protest that? Then don't say "it shouldn't be illegal". You should made sure when the laws were introduced that it didn't become illegal by doing the same thing the petitioners did. Make your case and show that YOUR case benefits the greater good (gets the most people to vote for you).
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I've never been to the UK but over the years I've read no small number of stories coming from across the pond that just leave me shaking my head: the ever-present cameras, the citizen databases, the monitoring and surveillance, etc. How are the good folks in the UK not in the streets about all this? Maybe I'm wrong -- in fact I hope that I am -- but the UK seems to be barreling down the road to Big Brother. To see a Western nation going down this path truly disturbs me.
There are all kinds of stories of the lunacy going on in the States, too. Anybody reading slashdot / digg/ reddit etc would get a completely distorted view of what America is like, just as you seem to have with the UK.
Since Thatcher took exception to the actual all-night raves that went on in the early nineties. ...
Mrs Thatcher had been out of power for 4 years when that bill went through Parliament.
Guess you were too busy popping pills at those all night parties to notice though ;P
Isn't that argument against a lot of Liberal and neo-Liberal programs, such as socialized healthcare or the like?
I thought these people couldn't take care of themselves, not that they took care of themselves too much.
FanFictionRecs.net
While its true that recent governments seem to have lost a sense of what is "reasonable fun" I think that is only part of it. With the UKs increasing population and the decreasing cost of amplifiers part of the issue is that parties are now loud enough and frequent enough to disturb far more people than before.
What troubles me more with this is not that the police turned up in force (everyone makes mistakes) but that they persisted in shutting down the party once it was explained to them what was happening. What happened to reasonable policing and a little trust? Take the guy's details if needed and if it did turn into a rave then at least you would know who was responsible. The police are supposed to use discretion when using their powers. Examples like this make us remove and restrict those police powers and that means that when they really do need them they won't have them available.
I have of course heard of the comedy program 2.4 children.
That was comedy?! Jesus...
Come on, citation please.
WTF? Why should they shut it down in the first place, or have me pay the cost? I have a party, it's going all night, where's the crime? Did I miss when it became illegal to celebrate?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, but that relies on the police and courts being sensible and that sure as hell ain't gonna happen.
Us English are incredibly apathetic. Not just about the laws themselves, but about informing ourselves about what is going on. We would rather read rubbish the The Sun and The Daily Mail and have our opinions given to us rather than think for ourselves.
It all boils down to never having had any kind of revolution or defining moment. Most "modern" countries have had some kind of defining moment where they laid down the values and ideas on which they define themselves. The French Revolution, loosing WW2, overthrowing a dictator... We never had anything like that (our civil war didn't do much to help) so we have nothing to base our modern self-image on. We try to apply the mythical "British" values of the old world to the new one.
Ideas such as freedom and liberty don't hold much weight here, as we never had to really struggle to get them. There is no clear divide between freedom/democracy and subjugation/imperialism for us.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Thatcher did this, four years after she left office the prime minister's office (1990), and two years after she left parliament (1992)?
Yes she did, laws take time to be passed. Firstly, she appointed Michael Howard who had this crock of shit drawn up and then introduced it to parliament. John Major only kept him in the cabinet, she promoted him originally and probably gave him the mandate to oversee this being drafted as he was a barrister.
Also remember that one of the major events that brought this law into being occured 9 years before the bill was passed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beanfield
It was this that event and the way it was portrayed in the media that led to this bill sailing through parliament and onto the statute books.
And to top it all off, Major was just another of her chronies anyway. I never actually beleived that anything changed about who governed Britain when she left office as it was still the same party in power. She was so authoritarian in the early days of her leadership that she moulded that party into her image. It has taken them 10 years of oposition to get some fresh blood in that is even slightly willing to look at things differently.
I am still not convinced they have changed much now, but that is a different issue we can find out at the next election, since they are probably going to be back in power soon.
Perhaps with all the citations and links you could have at least made sure your leading claim lined up with some dates. All your grand ideas about 'government approved this' and 'capitalist that' seemed like the drug-induced foggy ravings of someone who doesn't even have their dates right.
Oh, and a lovely insult to finish your post off, how charming.
I dont read
> How are the good folks in the UK not in the streets about all this?
Because the vast majority are inside, rotting braincells by watching so called "reality" tv shows, iroically called "Big Brother". They just don't care, unless it stops them:
a) smoking
b) drinking
c) watching tv
d) having sex
And the people who do care get slagged off as terrorists/paedophiles/etc, or just plain ignored.
It became illegal about 15 years ago - from TFA, it states Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. This basically criminalised raves (which at the time were being demonised from hysteria and moral panicing from the tabloids and the politicians), even if they are held on legal ground.
AFAICT, it criminalises any gathering of over 100 people in a public place where music is played (defined infamously as "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats"), unless they have obtained the appropriate entertainment licence, but furthermore, any it allows the police to disperse any gathering of 2 or more people if the police think they're preparing a rave, or 10 or more people if the police think they're waiting for a rave.
No evidence, no courts, no right to appeal.
Of course, the police deserve criticism for applying the law in a case that was clearly not in its original spirit, but let's not remember the law they used to do it is broad and draconian. The worrying thing is that the police haven't backed down and acknowledged it as a mistake - they still believe that anything advertised on the Internet as an "all-night party" should be illegal. What is this, a curfew? Telling us when bed time is? Talk about nanny-state - it's like the strict rules my college used to have about parties, where you needed permission, and parties had to be over by midnight.
From TFA, the polic: "far more resources would have been used to police the event". In my experience of Cambridge's Strawberry Fair, these resources would predominantly have involved the police doing a fishing expedition in order to catch people with cannabis on them (I experienced this first hand when travelling through Cambridge Train Station that day - even though I wasn't going to the fair, every single person getting off the train that day was detained for about 30 minutes for stop and search for drugs).
1.66 children born/woman (2009 est.) is not the same as children per household. More to the point the 2.4 children stat was the one time average number of children per family. Many households have single people in them, not families.
On one hand, we have a government that is entirely too willing to "Control and Defend" (what ever happened to "serve and protect"?) and on the other hand, we have short-sighted people who are all too willing to request and expect such things from government.
It was "the locals" who contacted the authorities to have this birthday party cancelled according to the articles. (I wonder how much we can trust the articles to actually be telling the truth in this matter?) If this is true, then "we have only ourselves to blame" in that we are begging government to protect us from just about everything.
No amount of any single thing will back this problem out. Soccer moms and elderly don't give a rat's ass about freedom and self expression. They want the world to change for them, not the other way around. And I have to admit that I have my own "the world offends me" perspective from time to time... especially when I am driving and the person in the passing lane is moving too slow and I get blocked in by two or more drivers who don't seem to notice or care that they are impeding traffic. (There are those moments when I actually wish I could slap a police light on my car, whip out a badge and a gun and get crazy on their asses... but at just about that moment, I remember that this is exactly why I don't own any guns -- I might use them! And frankly, I know I'd have much to regret if I ever did.) I can identify with the world offending me in any case, but here's what I do about it:
I try, as often as possible, that in order to protect my own rights, I have to make allowances for and respect the rights of others and that [especially] includes the right to be DIFFERENT. I think that somehow, the world of people at large has forgotten that when you try to take the rights of "some people" away, you invariably harm the rights of ALL people. Perhaps I am showing my age, but there was a time when we taught this sort of wisdom in schools... civics or social studies... not sure what they might be called today, but it seems pretty obvious to me that people of my age, older and younger either never had such classes or didn't learn from them.
But here I sit with a real problem. Because I am in the clear minority in this position as are many slashdotters who probably agree with me. On this issue, the need to see that rights are to be protected and respected for ALL or NONE, I am a member of a minority group. The rest of the people don't understand or even care about their rights and freedoms. I want the world to change for me... but really, for us all... but primarily, for me.
Wait. You mean "free" xor you mean "democratic"? If the majority of people through democratic voting can institute laws like those, then you're not living in a free country, if they can not - it's not a democratic country. You can't have both.
And of course, if they were really "illegal raves", why was a new law needed. They were legal raves criminalised by the law...
(It's a shame we don't seem to have these sorts of marches and protests over the even-increasing authoritarian laws we have now.)
I think everyone misses the point that no law is impossible to change or remove.
So blaming John Major even after Blair elected and did nothing about it doesn't make any sense.
I would be just like Obama, keeping Guantanamo open even with more torture and blaming W. Bush for Guantanamo while he can easily close it down. (which he did or something)
the police get even more declawed, demoralised, and afraid of doing thier job
Are we living in the same world? Declawed? Half the shit they pull off today as routine would at the very least have resulted in a severe investigation a quarter century ago.
Demoralised, yes. I give you that. Mostly by the way people look at them less and less as "serve and protect" and more and more as "stasi on crack". Mostly because of news like this, where they act not only like they're above the law, but like they are the law with no review and nobody to answer to.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And that is it. They will play music for an audience without paying to the local RIAA. It is almost like Sicilian Security.
The next thing they must do is go by the houses, see who has invited friends for a BBQ and arrest say daddy Fawkes in front of little boy Guy (Guido), so he learns what a bad person daddy is and he won't go against government.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
No one was arrested.
So the police went over the top ape-shit and actually staged a helo-insertion raid that cost god knows how much to do when they didn't even have any crime to charge anyone with?
What, they didn't have a desk-jocky somewhere they could have told to drive out and ask about the BBQ?
Occam's law says they probably were setting up a rave.
First off, its Occam's Razor, and secondly, you are clearly unfamiliar with it. Occam's Razor states that "entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily" therefor based on Occam's Razor less than 20 people in a field with a BBQ grill at 4pm in the afternoon are having a BBQ.
And yet the BBC as well as the Police failed to mention that rave was found? Don't you think a situation as embarrassing as this would have prompted to the police to at least mention the fact that they found ANY rave gear at all to prevent this very type of public outcry?
A sound system for 17 people isn't ridiculous at all. I have frequently put up a sound system for parties just involving a few people. Mainly because many of my friends are musical. A party of just 17 friends can easily include a couple bands or a few DJ's without any difficulty at all.
And $1,300 dollars is easily reachable for 17 people for a little party like that. The generator rental can be about $200, high quality liquor with a variety of mixers and decent beer can be an additional $500, good food for 17 people can be an additional $600 if you bring some steaks or something equivalent. That might be a bit excessive, but that assumes you didn't have to pay for the location, rent a large tent, or buy any additional gear or equipment. All it would take is the purchase of an additional speaker or a large grill to bring the costs down from excessive to pretty minimal.
I know, as I've spent that much on parties even smaller than that even when I've already had the venue. Plus an event with 17 people confirmed will be lucky to have that many people show up due to cancellations, an event with 75 people confirmed might get larger, but still nowhere near what I would consider to be a rave.
The television will not be revolutionized.
None of us here can judge one way or the other based on the news reports.
And yet that is EXACTLY what you are doing. YOU started the assumption that the police were correct in their conclusions, based on their superior future-predicting ability, based on little detail in the reporting. The only facts we have are less than 20 people, a BBQ grill, 4pm in the afternoon, a 'sound system' (incidentally I've routinely seen DJ level sound systems used at people's backyard family gatherings around here so I think this is a complete BS detail to use anyway, maybe this dude knew someone who could get him pro-level gear for his BBQ?), a field, and NO CHARGES FILED. So there was in fact no crime committed. OR even about to be committed because they were NO WHERE NEAR meeting the conditions (100+ people, rave music, etc). But that wasn't good enough to stop the tac unit it seems. I still have no idea why just sending someone around in a squad car to have a word was so out of the fucking question. Incidentally, what if you were planning an all night party with rave music and had PROOF that only 50 people would be there? What would the police do then?