Photographing Police.. Police State example

[BluePurpleRed]

I know this has prob been done to death on other sub forums, a new slant / rant though ..

Potter actor sentenced over drugs :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8161154....

Seems he was caught after taking a photo of the police and was arrested and then they found pictures of the plants on the camera ( err delete all / snap card when the blue lights come on anyone? ) Arrested though??

So welcome to the police state I guess, no photographing the police, stop and search on dubious terror laws (my friend got done the other day, although he was pleased as it was proof his new leather jacket was "badass" I called him a tt

Also, soon you have to get your earnings puiblished when you make a lot more that your comrades... no I mean colleagues ( I wish!)

Top few percent do a something like a quarter of all tax, so when they leave in droves for Europes / Asias welcoming arms we get to take up the surplus... brilliant. Tax take hugely down, so its bend over time in 2010. Just in time for a massively over budget NHS IT scheme, Olympics fiasco and a national ID card scheme.

fking government s.

PS. I should have just called this a rant in the title... oh well.

Edited by BluePurpleRed on Tuesday 21st July 17:46

[Mr_annie_vxr]

BluePurpleRed said:

I know this has prob been done to death on other sub forums, a new slant / rant though ..

Potter actor sentenced over drugs :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8161154....

Seems he was caught after taking a photo of the police and was arrested and then they found pictures of the plants on the camera ( err delete all / snap card when the blue lights come on anyone? ) Arrested though??

So welcome to the police state I guess, no photographing the police, stop and search on dubious terror laws (my friend got done the other day, although he was pleased as it was proof his new leather jacket was "badass" I called him a tt

Also, soon you have to get your earnings puiblished when you make a lot more that your comrades... no I mean colleagues ( I wish!)

Top few percent do a something like a quarter of all tax, so when they leave in droves for Europes / Asias welcoming arms we get to take up the surplus... brilliant. Tax take hugely down, so its bend over time in 2010. Just in time for a massively over budget NHS IT scheme, Olympics fiasco and a national ID card scheme.

fking government s.

PS. I should have just called this a rant in the title... oh well.

Edited by BluePurpleRed on Tuesday 21st July 17:46

Except he was carrying an illegal knife, had drugs on him and then was growing more drugs at home..

Simple case of lads drawing attention to themselves and then getting some attention which lead to a search and a number of illegal items being found.

I've been photographed numerous times as are most officers and it will not attract attention, it all depends how you go about doing it and what the surrounding circumstances of the situation are. In this case it appears the officers made the correct decision to have a closer look as it resulted in the recovery of drugs and an offensive weapon.

You can't just randomly search on terrorism unless you are in certain areas, the rest of the time it triggers hosts of alarm bells and phone calls to you to justify why you have done it.

[paddyhasneeds]

Daily Mail said:

Waylett and Innis were stopped under the Terrorism Act in Lodge Road, St John's Wood, west London, after the actor took a photograph of a police patrol.

Makes you proud to be British.

[twistedsanity]

So as a police constable can you lawfully arrest somebody without there consent(tacit or otherwise) for taking a photograph? and are they obliged to give you there name or answer your questions?

[gti tim]

I read this as he was stopped and searched under Terrorism powers, the result of which a knife was found, and several bags of drugs. As a result of this, his camera was checked under the Terrorism laws, which showed the growing of cannabis. A search would be authorised by an Inspector once he was arrested and in custody, and further drugs found.

I would say a damn good stop. This wouldn't have made the papers had he once not had a bit part in a film. One less knife being carried on the streets.

I would also ask this question : Why was he carrying 8 bags of gear? I would have locked him up for possession with intent to supply for that many bags. CPS would call it possession, so appropriately charged. The knife is the big thing here, which is not focussed on at all, as far as I am concerned.

[Dr Jekyll]

gti tim said:

I read this as he was stopped and searched under Terrorism powers, the result of which a knife was found, and several bags of drugs. As a result of this, his camera was checked under the Terrorism laws, which showed the growing of cannabis. A search would be authorised by an Inspector once he was arrested and in custody, and further drugs found.

I would say a damn good stop. This wouldn't have made the papers had he once not had a bit part in a film. One less knife being carried on the streets.

I would also ask this question : Why was he carrying 8 bags of gear? I would have locked him up for possession with intent to supply for that many bags. CPS would call it possession, so appropriately charged. The knife is the big thing here, which is not focussed on at all, as far as I am concerned.

In other words the terrorism powers are a convenient catch all and nothing to do with terrorism. Exactly what we suspected.

[GTIR]

The way I see it is if you have nothing to hide then who gives a fk if you get stopped and searched.

Police do have a "nose" for people that are dodgy, thats why my mate Stevo was getting so pissed off that he had not got stopped for about 6 years. I pointed out he had calmed down was not so confrontational and had better things to do than commit crime, like looking after his kids and his company.

He said "FFS, if a black man cant get stopped in London for no reason then what do I pay my tax's for? I could be carrying a bomb!"

As a side note;
I am also all for these ANPR vans I think they are a superb idea.

Edited by GTIR on Tuesday 21st July 19:20

[paddyhasneeds]

The problem is misuse of very broad ranging powers.

Plod see someone who looks a bit dodgy but they can't actually stop him even though their coppers nose is in overdrive because he hasn't done anything wrong so instead they're able to do so under that lovely catch-all of anti-terrorism (which don't forget is also good for removing 80 year old hecklers from party conferences).

Do you really not see anything wrong with that or does the ends always justify the means?

[Zod]

This case is very close to the line.

"Photography and Section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000

Officers have the power to view digital images contained in mobile telephones or cameras carried by a person searched under S43 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to discover whether they have in their possession anything which may constitute evidence that they are involved in terrorism. Officers also have the power to seize and retain any article found during the search which the officer reasonably suspects may constitute evidence that the person is involved in terrorism."

[twistedsanity]

""Photography and Section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000"
i am very interested as to where it says that an "ACT" of parliament became a law?
seriously, unless you consent how can you be arrested for an ACT passed by a bunch of eejits who actually work for a private company and not for the good of the people?, indeed the current eejit was not even elected and even if he was we have a soverign who makes the laws so we cannot have a true democracy, something is very wrong in this country, if the BIB are reading this i would very much appreciate an answer to my above post if they would be so kind

[Einion Yrth]

GTIR said:

The way I see it is if you have nothing to hide then who gives a fk if you get stopped and searched.

Well I fecking well would for a start, arrogant officious bds wasting my time is not what I think a police force should be.

[uriel]

Last week I was touring Scotland by motorcycle, stopped at a layby to stretch my legs and took the following photo:



As I did so, a Police Range Rover drove passed, saw me, stopped and reversed back and asked me over. I then got questioned what I was doing taking pictures, got the terrorist speil and they demanded to check through the pictures in my camera.

Either they're hyper paranoid, incredibly bored or I've discovered the location of a secret government installation hidden in a loch!

[Guybrush]

GTIR said:

The way I see it is if you have nothing to hide then who gives a fk if you get stopped and searched.

Matters are not quite as simple as that. With that attitude, you'll just encourage a police state. Everyone has a right to privacy. When we had such privacy, the UK was a very low crime country. To achieve low crime does not mean agreeing to a police state.

[Guybrush]

uriel said:

Last week I was touring Scotland by motorcycle, stopped at a layby to stretch my legs and took the following photo:



As I did so, a Police Range Rover drove passed, saw me, stopped and reversed back and asked me over. I then got questioned what I was doing taking pictures, got the terrorist speil and they demanded to check through the pictures in my camera.

Either they're hyper paranoid, incredibly bored or I've discovered the location of a secret government installation hidden in a loch!

The old American president Abraham Lincoln once said (something like): a man is able to cope with considerable adversity, but for a true test of his character, give him power...

[Tycho]

uriel said:

Last week I was touring Scotland by motorcycle, stopped at a layby to stretch my legs and took the following photo:



As I did so, a Police Range Rover drove passed, saw me, stopped and reversed back and asked me over. I then got questioned what I was doing taking pictures, got the terrorist speil and they demanded to check through the pictures in my camera.

Either they're hyper paranoid, incredibly bored or I've discovered the location of a secret government installation hidden in a loch!

There was a big thread on this a few months ago in the photo subforum and IIRC they need a warrant to look at the contents of the memory card. They must have been bored but I would have told them to feck off if they wanted to look at the photos.

[Jasandjules]

Japanese Tourism is going to plummet.........


Seriously, this country is f***ed.

[john_p]

Were you near Faslane (Gare Loch)? I can understand them getting twitchy if you were taking pictures of nuclear subs, but I don't see any in that photo

[Einion Yrth]

john_p said:

Were you near Faslane (Gare Loch)? I can understand them getting twitchy if you were taking pictures of nuclear subs, but I don't see any in that photo

Hard to see what use a tourist snapshot of a sub's conning tower might be to terrorists.

[uriel]

john_p said:

Were you near Faslane (Gare Loch)? I can understand them getting twitchy if you were taking pictures of nuclear subs, but I don't see any in that photo

Nope, this was down in Ayrshire somewhere.

I'm disappointed with myself because I knew about this phenomenon and that there was just a memo issued to the police to remind them that we are all within our rights to take pictures etc, and I'd have liked to have thought that should I find myself challenged I'd have told them to ps off unless they could give me good reason, stand up for my rights and liberties etc, but when it came to it, I folded like a bh and sheepishly let them defile my privacy. I could have had perfectly legal, yet saucy, pictures of the missus or anything on the camera that they would have had a gawk over with no justification.

[Funk]

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both."

I think it's a disturbing abuse of power and exactly the kind of bad law-making indicative of Labour's insidious desire to control and dictate every aspect of our lives. Communism has nothing on a Labour Government - at least the Communists were open about what they were doing. Labour seem to sneak new laws in under the pretence of it being for something benign when in fact it can be stretched or scoped to allow for far more concerning uses and curtailment of freedom. The 'catch-all' of terrorism and the introduction of laws to 'combat' it has been one to the worst infringements of civil liberties in years. Even taking an optimistic position and saying that the powers are only used for 'good', it means the terrorists have won. We now live in a society that's paranoid about terrorists, paedophiles and being asked to spy on our family, friends and neighbours by the Goverment.

The law mentioned the other night about new 'powers' in the run-up to the Olympics (yet introduced quietly in 2006) is one such example. It allows Police and - get this - 'Olympics Officials'(!) to enter a private dwelling or premises in order to remove anything that might be used in protest against the Olympics..! The law was supposedly originally put in place to control advertising, but as with so many of the new laws, it is so vague that it could be stretched or bent to cover almost anything.

We really need shot of this Government as quickly as possible, and to ensure that they never again take power.