Slashdot Mirror
UK Police Threaten Teenage Photojournalist
IonOtter writes "In what seems to be a common occurrence, and now a costly one, Metropolitan Police in the UK still don't seem to be getting the message that assaulting photographers is a bad idea. UK press photographer Jules Matteson details the event in his blog, titled The Romford Incident. The incident has already been picked up by The Register, The Independent, and the British Journal of Photography, which contains an official statement from the Metropolitan Police."
I have just resigned from a county force after serving 4 years and this doesn't really surprise me at all. Most cops just don't know the law and certainly aren't kept abreast of developments. This isn't aimed at the officers, as there is simply no time for this. My normal working week was around 55 hours consistently working 12 hour day / late / night shifts. When on duty you are writing an hour for every hour you are out doing your job, and have around 15 fairly complex investigations ongoing at any one time... all the time being expected to respond to 999 calls... Not that we were flush for cover; at least once a month there were periods of several hours where only one or two officers covered a large suburban area of around 100,000 people, it was a wonder no-one is seriously hurt during such times.
As a result.. officers don't keep up on the law, they aren't trained in it and expected 99% of the time to generally do what they think is right and then look it up afterwards. 20 years ago there was a "spare" shift every fortnight used to learn updates to legislation and practise self defence skills; this is seen as a wasteful excess in the modern police service.
Stopping a press photographer from photographing a public event in a public place featuring members of the public, and some public servants in the form of military personnel, or police officers who are expressly forbidden preventing photographs being taken of themselves or their identifying markings?
I read about this yesterday on El Reg, and watched the video. The kid was polite yet firm, and remarkably well informed for a teenager (he's 16). I hope he gets a few of these idiots fired.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Britain has recently elected a new government, one which (on a few issues) is less authoritarian than the previous Labour government. Thirteen years of Labour led to some unwarranted laws coming into being, ranging from making it illegal to photograph a police officer - technically a video filmed by an American at a G8 summits' protests in London is illegal and should not have been shown...despite the fact it showed an officer shoving a man to the ground having not even been provoked; the assaulted man died minutes later of a heart attack.
So yeah, Labour (a right-wing party whose swing towards that direction began in the Thatcher years) brought all sorts of unpleasent socially restrictive policy, implemented gradually to the point where - ironically for those who saw it once as a permissive, left-wing outfit - they became more authoritarian than our traditiional right-wing party (Conservatives) ever have been. One of the early Labour architects, Lord Mandelson, has among the most poignent views on Internet restriction; ranging from prosecuting people with cartoons for 'possession of child porn' to much tougher sentencing for those who infringe copyright.
But to stay on topic; two things are probably most disturbing (yet predictably New Labour) about laws like forbidding photographing police is that they are justified as 'stopping terrorism'. Ridiculous as photographs of British plod are all over the Net. The other disturbing point is how easily most of the population rolls over and takes this like some apathetic whore. Two people close to me, a friend and a family member, both have no qualms with providing samples for the proposed 'DNA database' that our government pondered bringing in, and I know even more individuals with absolutely no qualms with the (now scrapped) identity cards. Want to encrypt your hard drive but get charged of a crime that requires computer access for the police? Not giving up your password can get you years in jail; and no freedom-loving geek has yet set a precedent against this.
Yes we're the most watched people in the world, yes you can be detained and not charged for weeks if suspected of 'terror offences', and yes our local governments have enthusiastically used some of New Labour's reforms to enforce their own supposed justice (think monitoring people suspected of avoiding tax or claiming welfare wrongly etc). What's worst is that much of Labour's work along these lines won't even be done away with by the imcumbent coalition; which has our most liberal major party as a component.
I explained a bit more about the change of government here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1702892&cid=32742270
It's simply not the case that the UK is seeing civil liberties eroded more since the change of government last month, already we've had firm action to reverse some of the policies of the previous government, and we've promises of much more to come- if even some of them are followed it puts the UK in a much better state.
I'm not naive enough to believe things will be perfect, but currently the situation in the UK is certainly that civil liberties situation in general is actually improving from where it was, not getting worse, for now at least.
One of the promises is the re-introduction of the sus law. If you don't remember that, it was the power that the police had to stop and search anyone at will. It was used disproportionally against black people, and was the primary cause of the early 80s inner city riots.
If Carmeron goes ahead with it, it would seem like an erosion of civil liberties, no?
For sure, for now Cameron can do some popular things by scrapping some of Labour's least popular policies. But to be sure, in time they'll implement plenty of their own. Don't forget the anti-rave and anti-traveller legislation of the previous Tory government. Nor their use of their use of the Metropolitan police force as a political army to fight the mining union. Tories are not naturally civil liberty minded.
Here's the actual evidence
I find it ironic that the article claims the police made "a costly" mistake, because this huge multimillion dollar organization was fined 3,500 pounds. And no police officers were fired, jailed, or otherwise punished. In the mean time a chilling effect has been felt by photographers everywhere because they know they can get harassed by police officers anytime and anywhere; and have to spend time and money and energy filing a complaint and going to court with a good possibility that they will lose the case unless somebody happens to have HIDDEN camera evidence.
At least it hasn't reached US levels yet. In the US police commonly murder, destroy evidence, manufacturer evidence, steal, destroy property, illegally detain, falsely arrest, sexually assault, gang rape, so on and so on, and are almost never prosecuted or punished; unless you consider paid leave punishment.
I'm sure some moderator can't wait to troll moderate because they are ignorant of the world around them. Or, perhaps they never pick up a news paper. The reality is, in the US, police have steadily been changing from police organizations to paramilitary units. They are equipped as such. Even worse, most actually do consider themselves above the law and the general public's overseer. Accordingly, they have been working hard to disarm the public and to portray those who understand the Constitution as nut jobs; especially those to value and understand the second amendment which is designed to prevent this type of criminal abuse.
To support the "war on drugs" is to support murder and crime and to further strip the population of its constitutional rights. The latest round of of criminal empowerment has been the anti-terror laws. Both laws serve no purpose other than to empower criminals, including the police and federal authorities. In the US, the prison system is the fastest growing government service. The prison population is the largest of any industrialized nation and is larger than many small countries. Remember, if you support the "war on drugs", you are directly supporting criminals. Literally, on both sides of the fence.
I realize the context of the article is actually within the UK. I mention all this because I hope people can grasp the state of things and head things off before they become anywhere near as corrupt as things are in the US.
Where the government can have cameras, but you can't.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Uh, no.
Failure to comply with a lawful order is only applicable in situations where the police legally can make you do something, it doesn't give the police any authority to order things in the first place.
Police can require people to do things in a few, specific circumstances. The main ones:
When the person is breaking the law, they can order them to stop (obviously).
They can demand people identify themselves.
Both those are covered under the specific laws, though. Failure to comply with a lawful order is complicated, but here are some examples where it can be used:
Refusing to allow yourself to be arrested via passive resistance. Aka, refusing to hold out your hands to be handcuffed, or to come out of a locked car. (This is not resisting arrest, which requires violence on your part. And this is where the whole concept of locking yourself to things and not having the key came from...the police can't charge you for failure to obey orders you cannot physically obey.)
When there are breaches of the peace, even if that specific person is not committing a criminal act (Aka, ordering a crowd that is unpeacable assembled to disperse. If they do not, they can start arresting random people for that.)
Likewise, if there's been a fight, the police officer can order the two participates to stay away from each other, or even for one of them to leave.
When they have a reasonable suspicion of someone's behavior including lawbreaking, but do not have enough evidence to, or just do not feel like, arresting them. Aka, someone keeps looking inside the car window of a car they admit don't own, and the police officer believes they are going to steal it or break into it....he can order them to leave that car the hell alone.
But they cannot just randomly give orders and demand they be followed. There has to a legally justified reason for the order. And something like 90% of 'Failure to comply with a lawful order' is probably an additional charge to other lawbreaking when the person wouldn't stop breaking the law, like someone who was trespassing and refused to leave even after the police ordered him to.Or, as is listed above, 'loitering'. This is exactly how loitering laws are designed to be used...not to wander up and charge with, but, for the police to have the ability, when they see suspicious behavior, to make the people stop. The police see you loitering, tell you to leave, you don't, they arrest you for refusing to do something they can lawfully do.
This does not mean, of course, that the law is not abused, or even that it's a good idea. But it doesn't let them order whatever they want.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You, and other Americans, need to learn the following few phrases:
"Is this a consensual search?" followed by "Sorry, but I don't consent to searches."
"Am I being detained?" followed by "Am I free to go?"
"I am calling my lawyer," followed by "If I am not free to go, are you denying me my right to counsel?"
In your case, the second line above would have started the ball rolling.
Don't say anything else, don't get mouthy, don't try to demonstrate your incomplete knowledge of the law.