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.'"
The root of this all is the War on Some Drugs.
Fixed that for you.
>>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?
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.
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).
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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
If the party is too loud, I'm quite sure there would be existing laws on the books to deal with that. Noise ordinances and the like, specifically aimed at people who are just too loud, especially too loud late at night.
If the party was held somewhere illegally -- hi mr. warehouse -- there is also a set of laws to deal with that. Trespass laws.
No, this law was passed to stop people from having raves when it was held on private land, with permission, in areas where nobody would be calling in complaining about noise. Because of the evil MDMA and K and pot these kids were taking. It's all for the children, understand, they need to be protected via jail time and criminal records.
We in the US had a similar deal pass, but it's not nearly so draconian or invasive... but then again, Brits will be Brits and if there's anything British it's draconian and invasive police forces (I kid, but only *slightly*).
Why didn't they use discretion? Because that would be admitting wrong on their part. Like that would fucking happen -- nosir, it matters not that they were expecting glowstick-wielding pacifier-chewers and found 30-somethings with a grill and beer. They came to break up a party and by god nothing is going to deter them from running around in their ninja get-up barking orders at confused and upset people. You've gotta feel like you've got a big dick somehow, and admitting they goofed and called all their buddies to come help for no reason is about as far opposite a big-dick feeling you can get this side of your gramma applying ice to your boys wearing naught but a sheer negligee.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
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.
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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
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).