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."

Comments

Transparency

[spqr0a1]

This journalist will be alright. Nothing gets the government scared like a big steam of bad press (which the internet is more than willing to provide).
Now is a great time to be living. Despite all of the bad news about orwellian government in the UK, not even they can get away with harassing citizens in the age of the internet.

Yup, can't stop the signal and all that.

Re:Transparency

[Xest]

FYI the Orwellian government in the UK was overthrown in elections in May.

The new regime isn't perfect, but it's a whole lot better, and has done more for civil liberties in the last month than the old government did in 13 years.

What they'll do about things like this is yet to be seen, but sadly these things take time, although some people will cry on about things like this as examples of their failure, the reality is it takes more than a month to change these things. The real test will be in a year or two, to see if they've lived up to their promises.

I hate the new government for it's stance on some things, it's lack of mention of the Digital Economy Act for example, but looking at our old government, and at many other Western governments around the world it's hard not to be grateful because the new government at least so far looks much better than the governments a lot of other major Western powers are lumped with, and the one we used to have. Looking at the likes of the US, Australia, France, Germany and such it's possible that right now we actually have the least Orwellian government out the lot, but time will tell for sure I suppose.

Re:Transparency

[Falconhell]

"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"

Almost certainly that major news outlet belongs to the Murdoch press who, along with the mining industry have run a virrulent campaign against the Rudd govenment for the last 9 months. They were almost certainly parroting the Liberal oppositions line of attack.

If you are looking for lobbists THAT is who to look at-dont just repeat the propaganda of a desperate opposition.

Anti-Terror laws abused? Really??

[cc1984_]

It's not just photographers who are at the receiving end of this absolute abomination of a law. Does anyone remember Damien Green whose house was raided by Anti-Terror police for basically selling tittle-tattle to the press?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damian_Green

Makes me sick.

Re:Anti-Terror laws abused? Really??

[BasilBrush]

Damien Green was arrested by members of SO15. What used to be called Special Branch. Special Branch has always been the department concerned with political matters. They are the police department that play a part in the protection of VIPs - politicans, and foreign dignitaries. They are the group that arrest spies. etc.

If there was a Watergate Affair in Britain, then Special Branch would be the department that would arrest those involved and investigate. That was true back in the 1970s, it's still true now.

The Damien Green affair most certainly comes into that remit, and always would have done. It's the arrest of a politician for misconduct in public office, and involves a spy in goverment offices. It's very clearly Special Branch business, and would have been so had it happened at any time over the past 40 years and more.

But the bigger question is why does it matter which particular officers were used for the arrest? It's an irelevent operational matter. What's important is what law is the basis of the arrest. And that was not terror law. He was arrested for misconduct in public office.

The real scandal here is that he should have been prosecuted. There was ample evidence. But MPs stuck together rather than let one of their own face prosecution. One law for MPs another for everyone else. A bit like the way the smoking ban law and British licensing hours for serving alcohol don't apply in the palace of Westminster. MPs believe they are special and inconvenient laws that they create shouldn't apply to them.

Re:Anti-Terror laws abused? Really??

[Xest]

Or Iceland whose major banks had their assets frozen using anti-terror laws.

I'm British and even I think that move was absolutely shocking. It's not that I disagree with freezing the assets of the banks necessarily although I do believe it was a rushed decision that wasn't thought through in the slightest, it's the fact we were willing to effectively brand an entire nation as terrorists just because we didn't want their banks to take our cash with them when they went under.

Local councils under the last government were also using anti-terror legislation to spy on families who registered their kids outside their catchment areas, to perform surveillance on people whose dogs had fouled on public property and not been picked up.

Anti-terror legislation has a long history of abuse under the old government, I just sincerely hope that under our new government this is merely a remaining trace element that will be delt with, but we'll see I guess.

Still, Damian Green's party hold the majority of power in the coalition government right now, so hopefully having been victims first hand they know the importance of fixing bad anti-terror legislation.

Re:Anti-Terror laws abused? Really??

[Xest]

That's a horrendously biased account that misses some extremely important facts, and you are outright incorrect in most areas.

Starting with SO15, it's not just a rebadged special branch at all, and your suggestion of special branches role is rather narrow so as to be utterly misleading. No, SO15's official name is "Counter Terrorism Command", see here for a list of their roles:

http://www.met.police.uk/so/counter_terrorism.htm

Note how they're entirely terrorism focussed nowadays, and have been since well before Damien Green's arrest?

Moving on from the role of SO15, the issue isn't the branch of police involved, the issue is the way they were involved, and to some degree, the fact they were involved at all.

If you agree that they should have been involved, then the question arises as to why due process wasn't followed, why despite initial denial that there appeared to have been contact between the police and the opposing (then ruling) party or at least some members of it, and why the police investigation involved searching for things clearly unrelated to the leaks but which are extremely suggestive of political motivation.

But there's a valid question as to whether the police should've been involved at all, because there was a clear public interest defence and the CPS would've hence never been able to pursue a case anyway, this adds further evidence towards the idea that the raid was entirely politically motivated- clearly no real prospect of a conviction, searches for and through unrelated data, then why bother? This is ultimately why the case was dropped, your theory about MPs standing together makes no sense, because the vast majority of Labour were very much interested in a prosecution and they held the majority of seats in parliament.

Realistically it was almost certainly another one of Jacqui Smiths grossly authoritarian moves, and it failed miserably. It's not a case of one rule for them, one rule for everyone else- the public interest defence which would've defeated any charges with ease in this particular case (you're right there was plenty of evidence he did it, that wasn't in dispute, there was just no evidence is wasn't in the public interest) applies to anyone. In fact, to prove this point this is also why the people involved in the MP expenses leak last year avoided any charges or prosecution too, because despite pressure from MPs to act, the police also dropped that investigation because there was no way they could defeat a public interest defence against that act of leaking those documents. The evidence they did it was there, the evidence it wasn't in public interest simply didn't exist. The people responsible for that leak weren't politicians or anything of the like, they were normal citizens yet contrary to your point, public interest prevailed in their favour.

Re:Anti-Terror laws abused? Really??

[BasilBrush]

Starting with SO15, it's not just a rebadged special branch at all, and your suggestion of special branches role is rather narrow so as to be utterly misleading. No, SO15's official name is "Counter Terrorism Command", see here for a list of their roles:

What you say is true, as is what I say. I was't trying to give a comprehensive list of the department's responsibilities, I was describing the reason why they are the correct department to do the arrest. That reason goes back to the fact that it has always been Special Branch's role, and Special Branch is now part of SO15.

http://www.met.police.uk/so/counter_terrorism.htm
Note how they're entirely terrorism focussed nowadays, and have been since well before Damien Green's arrest?

You aren't looking closely enough. See the line: "To assist the British Security Service and Secret Intelligence Service in fulfilling their statutory role". That's MI5 and MI6. If MI5 or MI6 need police to arrest someone, they get SO15 to do it. And MI5 is responsible for protecting British parliamentary democracy, and investigating spies. Both reasons for which they were involved in this case.

There is no question that SO15 were the right department to make the arrest. And that has nothing to do with their anti-terrorist role.

If you agree that they should have been involved, then the question arises as to why due process wasn't followed, why despite initial denial that there appeared to have been contact between the police and the opposing (then ruling) party or at least some members of it, and why the police investigation involved searching for things clearly unrelated to the leaks but which are extremely suggestive of political motivation.

I'm not sure what you are fishing for here. It's pretty straightforward. There had been a pattern of the Tory party getting hold of Labour government policies before they were announced, and in some case stealing the idea and announcing it as a Tory policy, or in other cases poisoning the well prior to the policy being announced by Labour. This was not whistleblowing - there was no wrongdoing on Labour's party. It was plain and straightforward spying for Tory political purposes by a civil servant Christopher Galley - run by Damien Green MP.

Due process wasn't followed - i.e. Green prosecuted - for the reason I already said: MPs closed ranks - they didn't want to see one of their own imprisoned.

because there was a clear public interest defence

There was no public interest defence. The Home Office is entitled to keep their policies to themselves until the point at which they are ready to announce them. If this was a whistleblower, he'd have shown wrongdoing at the Home Office. But he didn't. And he'd have released to the news media. But he didn't - he released to the Tory party. This was spying on the government for party political purposes. No more and no less.

your theory about MPs standing together makes no sense, because the vast majority of Labour were very much interested in a prosecution and they held the majority of seats in parliament.

That's not true. That's a mis-recollection on your part of what happened. The majority in parliament was weak, and plenty of Labour MPs were involved in this sticking together to stop a fellow MP being jailed.

Re:Anti-Terror laws abused? Really??

[cc1984_]

Due process wasn't followed - i.e. Green prosecuted - for the reason I already said: MPs closed ranks - they didn't want to see one of their own imprisoned.

[Citation needed.]

The official line was "insufficient evidence", which is ironic considering the amount of evidence they collected from his home/office.

If I were to make a completely unsubstantiated claim as well, I would offer that they didn't prosecute because it would have brought to light the horrific way it was handled (no warrant to search his home, potentially illegal bugging of his home) but I have no evidence to back that either.

Re:Anti-Terror laws abused? Really??

[Xest]

...and you don't think moving special branch into a counter terrorism unit and still using that unit to carry out arrest of politicians is a bad idea? Seriously?

It doesn't matter how you cut it, use of a counter terrorism unit to arrest MPs is heavy handed and a bad idea, just as using anti-terrorism laws to freeze the assets of a foreign sovereign nation (Iceland) was a bad idea.

I'm not sure why you're jumping to accusations of spying now, because that's even more obscure. Certainly there was no suggestion of that even from the likes of Jacqui Smith or the police force themselves so I've no idea where you cracked that conspiracy theory up from.

At the end of the day it simply was what it was- an opposition MP leaking details of plans that were against public interest and getting away with it for precisely that reason, and again, this isn't a rule specific to MPs as mentioned in my previous response to you and the example cited.

There was no spying, there was no conspiracy amongst MPs, there was no special privileges for MPs.

The very fact it was against public interest is demonstrated by the events that occured since:

- The ditching of Jacqui Smith who was responsible for much of the policy that ran against public interest after numerous similar embarassments, culminated by her expenses fuck ups coupled with a much less authoritarian viewpoint by Labour heading up to the elections

- The fact Labour got absolutely slaughtered in the elections for pushing the kind of policies that were being leaked

I can see you seem to hate the Tories and I'd never vote for them myself either, but really, that doesn't change the fact this was a clear cut public interest case just as the expenses scandal was, and a heavy handed use of a counter-terrorism unit.

Lucky it was not FIT

[AHuxley]

UK Police Forward Intelligence Team where asked about not wearing ID vid :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KRgmn-n5ls

Re:Lucky it was not FIT

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know what the outcome is? It happened a year ago and I can't find any news on an IPCC decision.

Re:I can't really afford a big camera

[MoonBuggy]

Really? From what I can see in the article, the officer made up several untrue 'laws' throughout the encounter.

Even if the photographer happened to be in technical breach of some all-encompassing terror law, it could easily be argued that the way the officer handled it shows a desire to arrest for any old 'crime' rather than an actual response to a threat, not to mention worrying ignorance of the law. The letter of the law is not the only thing that matters, in theory at least, intent comes into the matter too.

Re:Lions and Donkeys

[MoonBuggy]

I didn't realise that it was like this, and it sounds like a damn shame that those are the conditions you had to work in, but would you also agree that the officer in question (and those in similar cases) seems to have an attitude problem?

You say the police are "expected 99% of the time to generally do what they think is right and then look it up afterwards", which is certainly not optimal, but is somewhat understandable. What I don't see, however, is what genuine harm the officer thought was being done by someone photographing a public parade. Using the 'everyone might be a terrorist' argument just leads to the conclusion that nobody can be trusted with cameras, and beyond that I can't see why he was stopped.

Re:Journalist seems like a raging asshole.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Legally, he was undoubtedly right. He's an adolescent smartarse, though. The cops tried to goad him into being an even bigger dick than he was, and he tried - and succeeded - in goading them into shooting themselves in the foot. Morally, I don't think either side can really claim the moral high-ground here.

To be fair, though, right now he's young and stupid. He hasn't yet figured out how to manipulate a conversation in the direction he wants it to go. He hasn't figured out how to calmly let the other party hang themselves - he had that whiney teenage defensive thing going on from the start. Maybe he thought that was "being assertive", I know when I was sixteen I couldn't tell the difference either. He's got balls, and I hope he learns the difference between challenging authority effectively and being a smartarse. We need people to stand up to authority whenever authority is wrong, but I don't think he deserves to be the new pin-up boy for reason.

Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly

[Roger W Moore]

Remember: in any reasonable state, it's not the policeman's job to write or interpret the law

It is part of their job to interpret the law since you have to interpret it to apply it, but that interpretation can be challenged and corrected by the courts. The sad thing is that this has happened, more than once, and yet the message still does not seem to be getting through to them. While I can certainly understand that the journalist in question was being aggressive and extremely annoying he was within his rights and if you can't handle people like that you should not be a police officer.

A far better way to have handled this would have been to just stand in front of the guy blocking his pictures all the while asking him politely if he would please wait until the start of the parade. That way you achieve most of your aims, get your message across loud and clear and annoy the journalist.

Re:THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM !!

[ledow]

I'd say that any terrorist that plans his act of terrorism by filming in a public street and attracting huge attention is probably an idiot. Are they not able to use, say, maps, local knowledge, a quick stroll down the road in question and/or their brain to "plan" something "terrorist-y"?

Terrorists tend, on the whole, not to be very bright. That's why the "shocking" terrorist acts are things like - smuggling a weapon on board an international flight with valid ID, driving a gas-laden car into an airport security barrier, pulling a bomb out of your rucksack on the bus and detonating it, putting a bomb under someone's car, etc.

Thank God we don't have any smart terrorists... the kind who would, say, cause a security alert at an airport in order to have it evacuated and then set off the car-bomb parked outside (away from all the security, checks, police officers with guns, etc.), in the open-air, right where 10,000 people just got evacuated to. Or fly the damn planes themselves and possibly hit something actually critical instead of a block of offices. A single dedicated, smart, evil person could do a damn sight more damage that all the "terrorist" acts put together. Fortunately, they are few and far between.

Terrorist are stroppy teenagers with knives - attention-seeking idiots who don't quite grasp that killing innocent people doesn't get you any closer to having other people see your side of the argument. Unfortunately, the biggest terrorists tend to be large, first-world governments, and they still act in the same way.

This

[ThatsNotPudding]

Nothing gets the government scared like a big steam of bad press (which the internet is more than willing to provide).

This more than anything else is why the days of the True Internet are numbered - to be replaced by an electonic version of the Panopticon. I used to think the most precious commodity in the future would be potable water. I was wrong; it will be true privacy and anonymity.

Carte Blanche for terrorists.

[SharpFang]

All the terrorists need now is to get police uniforms now, and they can do pretty much anything they desire. Kidnap people, tell people to move out of their operation area, forbid people from taking photos of them, essentially operate unrestricted and unhindered in broad daylight in plain sight of city monitoring. And anyone who asks them questions will get "detained" into a black bag on the back of their van.

Identification

[Aceticon]

I am surprised that he didn't ask the police officer for identification.

Once the encounter went from the stage of being just a chat to the stage the police officer physically tries to stop you and/or tells you that you must do something and/or asks for your identification then the natural step is to ask the officer to ascertain that he is indeed a police officer (not just somebody dressed as one).

While the ID itself would be pretty damn useless (this being the UK and the Met police which never had an officer convicted of abuse of power even when do so and people die) the act of getting the officer's ID should change the dynamic of the discussion from the "Copper trying to get somebody to do what he wants" to the "Properly identified Police officer enforcing the law" which in this specific case, given that the law was in the side of the freelance photographer, would actually constraint the officer's actions.

That said, in the UK and given the anti-terrorist laws that we have in the books, the only real restriction by law that Police officers have is that at most they can only fuck-up somebody's life for 28 days by keeping them in jail without charge for that length of time.

Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly

[commodore64_love]

>>>In some states here in the US, you actually do have to answer reasonable questions from a police officer

Dear police brown-noser: Constitutional law trumps lower-level State law. Quote: "No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

And Then There's THIS Asshole: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v60oNUoHBYM
And this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibSwITK4jjQ
And this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KM1ukwBGv4
And this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPRrHYn3TiU
And this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUzd7G875Hc

And on and on and on. We are living in a world where armed soldiers (police) can beat up citizens at will, and there's almost never any consequences for the m,other fucjerks. They are there to SERVE us and we pay them to do that duty - not to treat us like white serfs to beat into submission whenever they feel like it. Sig Heil! like a good little servant. Or be led to your beating (see the above videos).

Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly

[commodore64_love]

Even when you're polite, it doesn't mean you'll get good treatment. I encountered Homeland Security while driving from California to Texas, and even though I smiled and submitted to the Armed Soldiers, they still made me stand-around in the hot sun for two hours. Why? I refused to pop my trunk. I politely told them if they get a search warrant from a judge, then I'll open the car, but I will not submit to an warrantless search. So they punished me.

And then there's the guy who was flying from St Louis to Washington DC (his home), and the TSA forced him to an interrogation. He too was polite but it didn't stop the Armed Idiots from harassing him and making him miss his flight. Oh yeah - his crime? He had about $5000 in his wallet. Oh noes! OMG! A fucking american who has money! He must be a criminal!

Fuckign a. Freedom? More like serfdom.

AUDIO OF TSA INTERROGATION of innocent traveler: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWcUFB92S2o#t=1m15s

Re:it's not a bad idea, and it's not costly

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a pretty good start.

http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/

Re:"antagonising the police" isn't a crime

[lightversusdark]

Absolutely right. Last week I returned to my hometown of London with my American wife, and within minutes of stepping off the Tube saw a guy waving his finger in the face of a policeman shouting words along the lines of "You're out of order. Do your f'ing job properly."
I turned to my wife and said "It's good to be home".
I have no idea what the situation was, and who was in the right, but we both agreed that in the US this kind of reprimanding of a public servant would be cut short with use of force.