Photography of Police in UK now illegal - and being enforced

Can't people just accept the law. It's there to protect the police.

59 dead from terrorist attacks in the last ten years, I make it. There have also been a significant number of attempted attacks.

I'm inclined to ask 'how many people have been killed by the police in the last ten years?'. Zero, I should imagine. I am for a well-struck balance here, and accept certain changes in police powers. This particular thing just seems unnecessary.

When I say "any pictures", I mean any pictures of the police. Or at least, it could easily be interpreted that way by the police.

No it's not. It's there to arm the police with another weapon to use against you; to further erode your rights as a citizen.

59 dead from terrorist attacks in the last ten years, I make it. There have also been a significant number of attempted attacks.

I'm inclined to ask 'how many people have been killed by the police in the last ten years?'. Zero, I should imagine. I am for a well-struck balance here, and accept certain changes in police powers. This particular thing just seems unnecessary.

According to the British Journal of Photography, the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, which is set to become law on February 16, “allows for the arrest and imprisonment of anyone who takes pictures of officers ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’.” The punishment for this offense is imprisonment for up to ten years and a fine.
However, even before the passage of the legislation, police in Britain have already been harassing and arresting fully accredited press photographers merely for taking pictures of them at rallies and protests.
Besides the 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain, one for every fourteen people, Police are now equipped with mobile surveillance vans and head mounted cameras and they routinely videotape everyone at a protest, yet anyone attempting to record them has been met with increasing hostility.
Justin Tallis, a London-based photographer, was taking pictures of the anti-BBC protest this past weekend when he was approached by an officer. The officer demanded to see his photographs and when Talis refused the officer tried to seize his camera, arguing that Tallis ’shouldn’t have taken that photo, you were intimidating me’.
“The incident lasted just 10 seconds, but you don’t expect a police officer to try to pull your camera from your neck,” Tallis told BJP.
“The police are arresting journalists, seizing their equipment, treating them as suspects, looking at their photographs, taking copies, perhaps returning them to them, taking no further action often (but not always) and they’ve got, straight away, what they want,” solicitor Mike Schwartz of Bindman and Partners told a UK National Union of Journalists conference.
“At every demonstration, the police are figuratively scratching their heads as to how they can get hold of your material. That’s what they’re after.”
“The police take action, they often get what they want, and allow the lawyers in court to mop up what’s happened afterwards. That’s one of the trends and areas where there is a real problem: the police arresting journalists and seizing their material in order to use it in prosecutions.”
An incident captured on camera and uploaded to You Tube proves that some police officers in Britain already think that it is against the law to film them. Film-maker Darren Pollard was clearing up flood debris from his front garden when he noticed the police harassing a youth opposite his house. Darren retrieved his camera and began filming the officers. After noticing Pollard, the officers approached and then tried to claim that it was illegal to film them. After being informed by their superior that it was not illegal to film police, the officers left the scene.
See the videos here: http://www.tpuc.org/node/124

No it's not. It's there to arm the police with another weapon to use against you; to further erode your rights as a citizen.

As someone whose father, who is a perfectly decent man, is a policeman, it annoys me when everyone acts like all the police are spawned from the arsecrack of satan himself.

There's a few who agree their power, agreed, but must are just decent, hardworking people who are doing their jobs and trying to help keep this country safe. If all the police suddenly disappeared we'd really be in it.

That guy in the first video is a ******* idiot and deserved to be arrested. I didn't watch the second video.

The police will use this law to get away with disgusting behaviour like this......

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=273220&in_page_id=34&in_a_source=

Here's an update on this story from the yesterday's Telegraph.........

Andrew Carter, a plumber from Bedminster, near Bristol, took a photograph of an officer who had ignored a no-entry road sign while driving a police van. This might have appeared a somewhat petulant thing to do, but taking a photograph in a public place is not a crime. Yet the policeman smashed the camera from Mr Carter's hand, handcuffed him, put him in the back of the van and took him to the police station, where he was kept for five hours. When he returned to answer bail the following week, he was kept at the station for another five hours. He was released without charge, despite an attempt by the police to claim some spurious offence of "assault with a camera".

You want to live in a society like this?

I see some people agree with what I have mentioned and other probably have not even read what I posted and followed like sheep.
I am someone whom has close contact with the Police and more recently the armed forces. The law in question is there to proect the publics best interests, the people who enforce the law and the public as a whole.
Like every single thing in life there are minorities that spoil things for everyone else. There is no exception in the law. Some people will abuse their powers. And these are the cases which take up the column in the papers. They do not publish the thousands of times things went well. We also read what the papers publish whether it be true or not so truthful.
I have spoken further with people in the know and he knows of no Police Officer who would arrest for a simple snap or video of the police doing an everyday thing. Then cases like protests/raids/terror incidents, well it is a different story to which the police will envoke the law and IMO should do so to the fullest. I would not wish to be put at a high level of thread due to some scrote taking video at a protest, it then gets into the hands of a extremist and then I am on a special wanted list. There have been incidents in the passed, as well as grave diggings etc. So as a preventative measure for more serious things, the new law works well/
So please take note that it is a minority of Officers who abuse their powers and when things get published it is probably one bad case out of many many good incidents prior.

59 dead from terrorist attacks in the last ten years, I make it. There have also been a significant number of attempted attacks.

I'm inclined to ask 'how many people have been killed by the police in the last ten years?'. Zero, I should imagine. I am for a well-struck balance here, and accept certain changes in police powers. This particular thing just seems unnecessary.

On what grounds?

Yes, there was a case in Dundee where someone was detained under anti-terrorist legislation for jogging on a river-side cyclepath after being shouted at by river police.

The thing is, nobody's suggesting these silly abuses will ever go to court and the people will ever actually be convicted of anything. What is being ignored though is that if the police have any basis for action whatsoever then they can make the average citizen's life very difficult indeed these days without any sort of prosecution.

No, it's really not.

I hear where you're coming from, but your issue (and mine) is with this pathetic joke of a government, not the Police force.

You can't blame PC Bloggs on the ground for the rules placed on him by his superiors. Sure, coppers have occasionally stepped out of line, as in any walk of life, but you cannot tar all with the same brush.

Being a gobby Northern ******. Sadly, that's not a crime

Seriously though, he was right, and the officers should have apologised, and left. Sad thing is, the film maker was quite obviously trying to make them lose face. More training for the officers in handling 'media' is in order, methinks...



The WPC would get it though

The majority of officers won't be abusing the law - so why are you all so dead against it?