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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.'"
I guess everyone should put all night party tags on their Facebook pages tomorrow night.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Instead of keeping people you know to possibly be intoxicated confined to an event all night where they can only do harm to themselves (if even), let's break these gatherings up so some of these people get intoxicated elsewhere, and have to drive home early.
Raving is not a crime.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Must suck for those guys to live in a police state. Man am i ever glad to live in a free an democratic country.
Oh, wait...
...citation needed.
Just post it to facebook, the police will take care of the citation...
'Had it gone ahead, it is likely that far more of our resources would have been used to police the event and there would have been considerable disruption to neighbouring properties.
That's from a spokeswoman of the police there.
I mean seriously, you're gonna say that because it's easier to make people stop doing something that you have suspicion it might be illegal it's better to mess up a tax paying citizen's freedom?
To loosely quote Sam Vimes of Discworld, "It's better to say we caught the guy what done it instead of saying we caught the guy who looked like he'd do it. Especially when they say, Prove it."
Also...
'It was fortunate that the force helicopter was able to fly over the site as they were returning from another task.'
Really. In the same article the spokewoman says that it cost them 200 pounds to deploy the helicopter for 20 minutes. The birthday boy spent 800 pounds to get his party RUINED by the police. Fuck you guys, seriously. What the fuck.
Frankly I am old enough and bitter enough to just want kids like that off my lawn, my neighboors lawn, and if they are loud enough, the field next to it as well for that matter.
From BBC news - "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.
The actual legislation if anyone's interested.
The root of this all is the War on Some Drugs.
Fixed that for you.
Yeah, I have neighbors who do the whole "BBQ" thing. They like to stay up "barbecuing" until about 4:30 a.m., and one of them in particular likes to rap an entire song's worth of memorized rap lyrics in a loud monotone for several minutes at a time.
Now, I don't want camouflaged police showing up, but when I call the cops and these guys demand to know "which neighbor was it?" and STILL don't shut up after the cops are gone, I have to think that somebody with a Facebook account and a field is probably driving his neighbors FREAKING insane.
Thank goodness for my linux box and synths that can play a nice loud PSHHHHHHTTTT sound, brown or pink as you like it. (Had to work linux in there somehow)
Ravers only write Java and Python code.
Real programmers don't go to parties, unless they have bearded men with homebrew beer or possibly pen and paper role-playing games (but not miniatures!)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
>>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.
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.
Probably arrested under the Criminal Justice Bill.
I went on two London marches to fight against this bill 15 years ago. They were determined to stop us having free parties, "Illegal Raves" as the media called them. No conveys of more than 6 cars, no parties in fields, no freedom to enjoy life without corporate involvement. In my eyes, this is where CCTV Britain started. This was the start of anti-social laws. The nanny state.
These parties still go on though. Fuck the police.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
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 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.
One american is arrested and has their life ruined every 18 seconds just for smoking pot.
Really?
Who is this person? It must be awful for them to have their life ruined every 18 seconds.
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
As the (winning) republican in the district said, "If that's how she handles leadership at her own events, how could you trust her with running a country?"
Yeah... I think it is pretty foolish to cite a quote from the one person with the most to gain by portraying the situation in the absolutely worst possible light. Unless of course you aren't interested in making a convincing argument but rather just showing support for your team.
Pfft. If you've read about the Busby affair, the dems in question were acting like little princesses and attacked a sheriff. They deserved to get pepper sprayed for their idiocy.
Once a cop starts acting in an illegal manner - he assaulted a woman for refusing to state her birthdate, something perfectly within her right per a recent SCOTUS ruling - he loses all special privileges afforded his position. Sure it may be legally wise to continue to "respect his authority" but ethically not so much. In fact, the crowd's response to try to pull the assaulted woman away from the rogue officer could easily be the more ethical response.
And of course this all ignores the elephant in the room - who called in the noise complaint in the first place? The one reported to have complained about not just a "loud party" but a "loud democrat fundraiser." All of the immediate neighbours that were in town at the time have denied it and the police have refused to release any information - not just the caller's identity but even the tape itself.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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.
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).
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.
I still remember that event quite well. It was on the news about the Police attacking the Peace Convoy and me and a friend hitched down from sheffield to show support for the peace convoy.
We got as far as the roundabout with the turn off to stonehenge, where we were told if we went in that direction we would be arrested as the area was placed under martial law.
As we pondered what to do next an ole volkswagon combi van pulled up and we ran and jumped in, where we were taken up to the forest where what remained of the peace convoy were.
The Police wanted to come in to the Forest but couldn't get permission to do so.
The actions of the Police that day and many other days was criminal, but the Police being the Police were above the law.
We saw the same sort of actions taken against the miners during the miners strike and now frameworks are in place such as the asbo to make even legal actions illegal. While asbo's can be justified, using them to clear homeless people from central London in preparation for the 2012 Olympics doesn't seem right.
Britains got to the state where if you want to do something, protest against climate change whatever, its going to be dangerous to your health and well being. The Police will do as they like when they can get away with it.
It's pretty much been like that most of my adult life, provided you keep your head down and don't do anything to get noticed you will largely be ok.
I'm so glad I got out of the UK