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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."
The Independent may be less, well, un-Independent than most of the mainstream rags, but no-one pays much attention to it. And The Register is read by as many people who count as the scrawlings on the average 6th Form toilet wall.
It's not to say that the laws aren't being abused. It's that pompous claims like
The Independent forced senior officers to admit that the controversial legislation is being widely misused.
are more "haha I stuck it to the Man!" exaggeration than evidence of the Met receiving a genuine reprimand from those who represent us.
The Metropolitan Police are the London police force. A quick survey of complaints against the police will show why this is unsurprising. Most British police forces are pretty good. I've lived in Herts, Cambs,Hants,Somerset, and never had the least concern about the local police force, as regards its competence or its honesty. But the Met has a reputation for corruption and violence, along with the West Midlands Police. Whether this represents the reality of policing in those areas - I wouldn't want to live in either of them - or whether large urban police forces just tend to go this way (think LA) I don't know. The Met also suffers from having a national role (which I believe to be quite wrong) and to be subject to lots of political pressure. But the motto of the Met really needs to be "quis custodiet ipsos custodes".
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The only qualification required generally to join the police is a clean criminal record, and some very basic skills, mostly physical. After that the course length is stunningly short(weeks) for a job which has a responsibility as strong as high responsibility jobs. High school qualifications are minimal, and tertiary is a waste of time, untill you have done the hard yards and learnt the chain of evidence mantra.
Lets simplify it. When push comes to shove and they are chasing a theft suspect, the ability to run, react, tackle, and subdue are at the top of the list. The police officer could not be like Richard Stallman for example. The mere presence of some intellectual brilliance, probably removes any ability to "do the grunt work".
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
It seems the UK is slowly but surely slipping away and turning into a police state. A human rights report a while ago called the UK an endemic surveillance society and the situation keeps getting worse. Unfortunately the problems around photography are not unique to the UK, I have personally been bothered in The Netherlands by security personnel on two occassions and have been asked to delete a photograph by two plainclothes policemen after taking a photo which had one of them in it. All three of these incidents happened in a public space. Under the fear mongering guises of combatting terrorism, crime and child porn and the influence of undemocratic powerful intellectual property lobies trying to protect an outdated business model from colapse our civil liberties are slowly being eroded away. I sincerely hope there will finally be a huge public backlash one of these days when people start to realize what's going on but so far most people appear to be content to let themselves be led like lambs to the slaughter.
As much as I want to agree there is a thin line between the right to freedom becoming a privilege [of those who know their laws and can effectively challenge law enforcement] or disappearing completely to intimidating tactics we've all witnessed in recent weeks (G20, Toronto)
Now, unless one wants their country joining the likes of Russia, where journalist homicide has become normal practice, with six having been killed this year alone (9 the previous year), giving them as much bad press as possible should be the least we can do stand up for our rights (especially if you don't know them!).
As my grandfather tends to say (quoting somebody famous probably) - "there is just one step from comedy to tragedy". Adapt it as you will to the context, but the UK seems to have taken two steps too many in that direction in recent history. And that's just what made it to the press!
but I think he failed the initial attitude test and they were trying to goad him into failing it even harder.
Not because of something he said, but the tone in which he said it and the fact he never let the officers get a word in edgeways.
(There is the other, orthogonal issue that nobody ever likes to admit that they're wrong - particularly not when they're in a position of authority - and as soon as something like that happens it's vanishingly unlikely to end nicely for the photographer because the only way it could end nicely is if the police officer could be persuaded to double-check that they were in the right, get told that they weren't, apologise and let the photographer go about their business, which gets less and less likely the longer it goes on because the longer it goes on, the bigger the cock-up the occifer has to admit to.)
5:53 - "Hey! Ah! Fuck! You pushed me down the stairs! You pushed me down the stairs! Officer, you pushed me down the stairs!". Listen to the tone of voice.
From the blog, "I spent several hours yesterday in hospital with severe and debilitating back pain from being pushed down the stairs".
This guy sounds like a fucking clown from Monthy Python's Flying Circus.
Nothing gets the government scared like a big steam of bad press (which the internet is more than willing to provide).
There was this one hour TV show that I used to watch in the 1970s, it was an era when nobody could get any more than about 12 channels, and only 3 channels had anything anybody seriously wanted to watch, so this show had quite a following. It exposed governments, politicians and corporations that did evil and malicious things. The show was called 60 Minutes, and I figured that with all these big time, bad characters being exposed every week, then in a few years their should be absolutely no corruption whatsoever in government or industry, because these investigative reporters were exposing everything. Now it's a few decades later and this show is STILL exposing corruption in government and industry.
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.
officers were advised that Section 44 powers [anti-terror laws] should not be used unnecessarily against photographers.
Ref: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-uturn-on-photographers-and-antiterror-laws-1834626.html The bolding was mine. It's all very pathetic that this case is somehow framed to make it look like a victory for freedom.
He sounds hysterical in the video and has an attitude problem from the very beginning.
No, he doesn't. Unless by attitude problem you mean he informs the cops that what he's doing is legal when they claim it isn't.
The police demonstrate, in the face of an aggressive asshole, a supreme amount of calm and reason.
lol -- the police demonstrate a supreme lack of reason, actually.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Nothing gets the government scared like a big steam of bad press
Which is why the (free) press will be persecuted by anti-terrorism laws next
He may well be a terrorist !! What would you say then ?? Hm ??
I would say that the world needs many more of that sort of terrorist.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
BS. There will be no change in Orwellianism in either the UK or the US unless and until the entire system is reformed. Witness the total farce that is the "change" Obama brought in.
Shut down Gitmo? Bring the troops home? Curtailing the free pass that the corporate sector gets on the taxpayer's dollar?
Nothing changed. Nothing meaningful to US foreign and long term policy anyway. The UK will be the same. This is because the policy makers and power brokers are not the figureheads that you vote for.
Here in Australia, our prime minister Kevin Rudd just got ousted by, and I quote from most of the major news outlets, "power brokers behind the scenes", among whom is her de-facto partner. I don't know about anyone else, but that to me indicates just how much is controlled by the electorate, and how much is controlled by powerful lobbyists who the public do not vote for and never even see.
I hate printers.
but this isn't about keeping abreast of the latest developments in the law. this is about something really fundamental, which you'd hope coppers would learn really early on in their job, and would be reinforced by a pervasive culture:
1) "people don't have to do what I say just because I'm a copper. they have to do what I say insofar as I enforce the law"
2) "if someone's doing something legal and I don't want them to do it any more, I can't make it illegal just by telling them to stop"
3) "I'm not the parent of the members of the public I meet. I don't get to win every battle of wills because I am an officer of the law"
"it is however a conscious provocation" So what? Should the fact that it is a conscious provocation alter the police officer's behaviour in any way? also, note that speeding is a criminal offence. taking pictures of a public parade is not.
"an internal NUJ event on public property". wtf? what kind of "internal" event would take place on "public property"?? and what has that analogy got to do with filming a *public event* on public property and then subsequently filming *public servants* going about their *public duties*??
these copper twunts were irritated because this guy wouldn't do what they asked him to. but he wouldn't do what they asked him to, because he was *doing nothing wrong*.
"he sounds hysterical in the video" Of course he does! He's a 16-year old kid and these big burly twats keep on grabbing him and his camera for no reason other than that they've decided they don't want him to do what he's perfectly entitled to do.
hint: just because they wear a uniform doesn't make them automatically right.
"antagonising the police" isn't a crime. And, since they are not a member of the public because they are a Police Officer, that "Causing alarm and distress to a member of the public" doesn't apply to him (though it DOES apply to the total prat, therefore the officer broke the law you're asserting the pratt did.
I propose to you that the police officer was the pratt and not only that abused power and position to break the law.
Maybe in 25 years, the government will really care what happens online. For now, they're all nicely isolated from that in their ivory towers of rich upbringings, knowing the right people, their party "firewalls" of support and funds, etc. To the current generation of MPs, the Internet (including all of us) might as well be some weird, barely relevant subculture, like Goths or Emos.
Not being up to date with legislation is no excuse for making up imaginary laws.
If they do not know something to be illegal, they should do nothing.
I don't care if he was talking in a miss piggy voice, he was R I G H T. When, legally, you are in the right, there's nothing else to say. The police here had no purpose or right to do what they did. In fact, detaining this guy was taking them away from policing the crowd. They were actively making the march more dangerous by their absence.
Judging someone by the tone or pitch of their voice is idiotic. It is the content that matters.
The police demonstrate, in the face of an aggressive asshole, a supreme amount of calm and reason
That's funny, because every time I see video footage of such an event, it's the police who are screaming, yelling, attacking, and generally acting like exactly the aggressive asshole you describe.
All police are authoritarian jerks.
Yes, all not some.
Any individual police officer who has never done such a thing has ignored another officer doing so, covered up for another officer doing so, and so on. And hence is just as bad if not worse.
Well, you might embarrass them, or catch them doing something they shouldn't. Since they automatically have the advantage in any "he says, she says" kind of encounter, the solution from their perspective is obvious. Many places are making it illegal to photograph or record police.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Hmmm
It is not conscious provocation, it is merely recording the events as and when they happen. I found it interesting that the spokesperson for the Met Police questioned why the journalist had recorded the incident.
The reason for recording said events is that without some form of recording, or without extensive independent witness corroboration, the courts almost always side with the police's version of what happened. regardless of how absurd the police version is.
In this instance we quite clearly hear the Police Officers inventing a series of criminal offences to justify their actions. Without the recording, it would be the police officers word against that of the journalist, he would have been arrested and no doubt charged and finally convicted for a public order offence, despite not actually committing any crime.
It seems there are way too many apologists for the police that are willing to excuse any and almost every action they do.