Interesting one, now that almost everything ends up on youtube.
Man photographs accident scene from the other side of the road, and is threatened with arrest.
goo.gl/ld36pH (Daily Mail)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpP6tRqLaM8 (phone video taken surreptitiously, capturing most of the exchange).
The Mail does not reserve judgement, nor does the Police Commissioner.
"Mr Surl, a former police superintendent with Gloucestershire constabulary before he became Commissioner, said he had asked the force to investigate the matter ‘with the utmost urgency’.
He said: 'It appears the officer involved has fallen far short of the behaviour expected and required by the Constabulary.
'I have only seen the public-facing evidence, but it appears the officer swore at a member of the public, followed that up by saying he was lucky not to have been assaulted by the police, threatened him with arrest, mistreatment and a remand in custody."
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Bit of a non event really - typically Mail.
Copper dealing with fatal RTC. Crime scene established. Bloke sniffing about with camera. Pictures appear on social media before relatives aware. The guy was busy enough as it was without being distracted.
Press generally ask for permission and pictures are sympathetically produced.
Ok, threatening to knock his head off was not the brightest move but there is some initial dialogue missing and overall the rest of it was reasoned and calm.
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Perhaps such camera activity when uploaded in such manner falls under the old "Outraging Public Decency" criminal law?
From wiki:
Modern case law has established two elements that must be satisfied for the offence to be committed:
1.The act was of such a lewd character as to outrage public decency; this element constituted the nature of the act which had to be proved before the offence could be established, and
2.it took place in a public place and must have been capable of being seen by two or more persons who were actually present, even if they had not actually seen it.
Last edited by: Lygonos on Tue 7 Jan 14 at 21:58
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Except that he wasn't uploading to social media or interfering with the crime scene.
Taking photographs is not illegal. All the copper had to do was ask that the photographer didn't put the pictures on twitface or whatever instead of throwing his weight about and making up offences.
The idea that the police can control social media is idiotic anyway. What if this had been in a city centre?
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It was the making up of offences and the (groundless) threats of nicking him that got me. And it tied the copper up as well, as soon as he was questioned on the grounds of such actions he knew he was found out, so resorted to the physical threats and intimidation
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Copper should be charged with threatening behavior!
If we threatened to knock a stranger out then that's what we would likely face!
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I note though that Zero for example sympathizes with this amateur paparazzo but condemns in no uncertain terms the more professional one alleged to have tried to sneak into Schumacher's hospital room by pretending to be a priest.
I'm not adopting either posture. I just note these things. You have to remember people can make big money with a couple of heartbreaking closeups. Huge money, enough to make them not care about looking ungentlemanly.
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Given he was an experienced police officer (sergeant) who must have known better, I did wonder if he was trying to provoke the photographer.
A lot of people would have struggled to remain calm in the circumstances and told the officer to go forth and multiply (now an offence I believe).
The officer clearly wasn't overloaded - otherwise he couldn't have spent 10-15 minutes blustering. And he had in his hands the tape he was in the process of removing.
If he had said "I know you're within your rights to take pictures sir, but there is the possibility of a serious injury here so can I ask that you don't put pictures on social media for now - there are going to be relatives who are unaware of this", the chances are he that would have got a cooperative response.
Hindsight is great of course. I imagine Sergeant Wallace can think of a dozen better ways he could have handled it now.
Maybe he is a decent egg who had a bad day. Happens to a lot of us, and we have to live with it.
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Point a lens at the old bill or other security forces especially when there's anything going on and the chances are some of them will object and start chasing and harassing you. It's always been like that. I speak from personal experience, here and elsewhere.
Fair's fair though. You keep them on their toes and they keep you on yours.
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I thought the Chief Constable pictured with the commissioner was rather fragrant, though.
In my day they were all grumpy old men!
HO
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>> Chief Constable pictured with the commissioner was rather fragrant
That Cressida Dick's quite winsome too... or perhaps it's just the name, the first one I mean not the surname.
Can't help feeling Horatio that you are revealing a susceptibility or weakness for the combination of authority and fragrance. Perhaps I should say fragrance and authority.
Heh heh....
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>> That Cressida Dick's quite winsome too...
Ah ! A fellow dirty ol man. Maybe it's the uniform. Either could come to my place anytime.
Perhaps the derbys and black stockings ??
HO
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I wouldn't wear them in public though Ted.
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>> Maybe it's the uniform. Either could come to my place anytime.
>> derbys and black stockings
Parking restrictions run late in the West End, so everyone with a car tensed up a bit when a uniformed meter maid came into a restaurant where I was having dinner (years ago) and called out someone's registration number. A bloke got worriedly to his feet, prompting the meter maid to take most of her clothes off, push him down and sit in his lap as the friends who had hired her as a strippagram roared with laughter.
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When I am out videoing trains, I carry around with me a couple of sheets of paper (laminated) with the rules and regulations of filming on stations from British Transport Police and Network Rail and the TOC if it has one.
Only have agro with SWT. They have no published policy, and their staff sometimes get stroppy. Had a "discussion" with one SWT guy at Surbiton where he said it wasn't allowed - full stop. He said he would call BTP so I told him to go ahead. He did, they reviewed the situation on CCTV and the SWT guy went away sheepishly.
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After the Mark Duggan inquest the Met have proposed that armed police wear video cameras. I thought some police had them already and the UK is inundated in CCTV. I can see the sensitivity of filming (photographing) accident victims and the police reasons for requesting it is not done, but it is a bit hypocritical for them to hassle photographers.
Last edited by: Uncle Albert on Sat 11 Jan 14 at 15:15
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>> it is a bit hypocritical for them to hassle photographers.
We're British Alberto. Hypocrisy means nothing to us. It's our meat and drink.
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ACPO guidelines from 2010 here:-
tinyurl.com/pee3uwu
Although this is dated 2010 since the date of this letter there have been no other laws passed with regard to photography in the UK that I am aware of.
Last edited by: R.P. on Sat 11 Jan 14 at 16:59
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Nice and unmabiguous that one. I've listened to that YouTube clip a couple of times now - The Officer does come across as rather Officious. "My Crime Scene" etc etc...I often wonder what the Police Power is to close roads in these circumstances. Maybe someone will challenge it one day.
As for seizing the camera - this is really reminds me of Police states - you can't do that in a democracy....seizing it for evidence ? eh....what of....?
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Yes, clear enough one would think. Amateur and press photographers play a vital role 'in providing images to catch criminals' or words to that effect.
Yes, but providing images to catch the BiB pushing the envelope a bit too far here and there (I know, I know, they're only human and so on). And there's the rub. Coppers don't like cameras when they're at work.
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>> Coppers don't like cameras when they're at work.
And they can be an incomprehensible law unto themselves. In Boumedienne's Algeria I attended as a hack a government junket in Tamanrasset, in the middle of the Sahara, to formally open the second section of the trans-Sahara highway and announce a package of government bounty for the (very thin) population of the region. Tuaregs and their black slaves had been summoned to line the streets for Boumedienne's stroll through them, with the Security displaying a certain anxiety about their long brassbound muzzle-loaders, which were not allowed to be discharged in celebratory style, what a swizz.
Some Gendarmerie - paramilitary rural coppers - arrested the entire foreign press, twenty or thirty of us, perhaps a few Algerians too, for, they said, 'photographing military equipment': the trucks and road graders etc that had been lined up for us to photograph FFS.
The French in particular were extremely annoyed. We sweltered in the back room of a minute mud police station - we wouldn't have fitted in the cell and even the gendarmerie quailed at the thought of what the French would think of its sanitary arrangements - for a couple of hours until a senior officer with some brains turned up and released us.
Those fuzz don't like lenses, uh uh.
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I wouldn't want my fuzz photo'd
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>I wouldn't want my fuzz photo'd.
Wasn't that you in the Daily Mail WP?
Outside Jonathon Woss's place IIRC?
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>> Wasn't that you in the Daily Mail WP?
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>> Outside Jonathon Woss's place IIRC?
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I was being rude.
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>I was being rude.
They must have Photoshopped your fuzz from the photo then ;-)
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>..for they said, 'photographing military equipment'..
I was dragged into a police station in Walvis Bay by members of the SWATF who thought I had taken a photograph of them leaving the station to get into their armoured car. Actually, I'd just loaded a new film but two gorillas grabbed me under each arm and carried me through the doors leaving Mrs K. and a friend outside.
They were going to throw me in the cells and destroy my camera, a brand new OM-1MD, and ignored my offer to give them the unused film.
Eventually, Mrs K. got sufficiently annoyed with being blocked outside and drew herself up to her full 5ft 4" and used all her 8st. to barge her way into the station.
Launching a full bore verbal barrage at my Afrikaaner captors, who probably didn't have a clue what she was calling them, she intimidated them into letting me go complete with camera, film and bruised ego. She's much better with words than me, God bless her.
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>> God bless her.
I was once humiliatingly rescued from converging coppers in front of our old gaff after dark at carnival... just as they were about to catch me my wife and daughter appeared causing a change of demeanour. I seem to recall the words 'Is he yours, madam?' before I was led away expostulating and trying to scold them... the neighbours were in fits of laughter.
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>> neighbours were in fits of laughter.
I should mention that that kerfuffle too was caused by my attempts to photograph guys in riot gear formed up nearby, exercising my rights as a citizen and hack... They shone a powerful light at my lens to dazzle it, and I was dodging about trying to second-guess them and take a couple of flash shots when they weren't shining the light. Then ordinary uniformed officers converged and chased me about a bit until the women saved me to my great embarrassment.
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>> Those fuzz don't like lenses, uh uh.
>>
>>
Nor the KGB. Friends and I once travelled to Baku in Azerbaijan when it was part of the Soviet Union. We had, erm, forgotten to go through the formality of obtaining an internal travel visa which would have legitimised our trip from Tbilisi, where we were billeted with appropriate travel documentation. An overnight train was our chosen method of transport for this illegitimate visit. On arrival we headed by taxi for the main city square, which housed the local parliamentary building, in front of which was a large statue of Lenin, natch. The square, on that day, was host to several Red Army tanks - for reasons which will become clear.
One of my comrades posed in front of the statue and made the sort of salute that fans of Lazio football club favour, whilst I photographed him. What should suddenly appear but an unmarked Soviet jeep, replete with dark clothed and behatted KGB sorts, who immediately grabbed a camera and removed the film - but the divvies picked the wrong one and left me with my camera and unapproved photograph therein. Schtum kept I.
We were curtly informed that they knew who we were and that we weren't supposed to be in that Republic, and that if we didn't amscray back over the internal border before the day was out we'd be arrested and removed from the country entirely. Which would have been unpopular with our University back in the UK.
There were significant numbers of troops and the like on the streets that day (this is early 1991), and if we'd had any brains we'd have taken a hint to behave ourselves from the name of one of the main streets we saw - 29th April Street - for it was 29th April that day. We had asked our cab driver the significance of the date and he laughed and told us it was the day the Soviet Army "liberated" (i.e. annexed) the country.
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>> I
>> often wonder what the Police Power is to close roads in these circumstances. Maybe someone
>> will challenge it one day.
They did..and lost... (I know this is private property, but I'd suggest this is relevant and there'd be less chance of police having the right on private property, than a public place).
tinyurl.com/mpdw7hx
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Aside from anything else that Policeman should be disciplined for being a total plank.
Outrageous.
He'd have had to follow through on his threat of arresting me.
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>> He'd have had to follow through on his threat of arresting me.
It's on record so he's in trouble anyway.
A lot of things go on that are 'off the record' too though. It's up to individuals to do their best to be decent and do the right thing.
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>> He'd have had to follow through on his threat of arresting me.
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To keep it in perspective though...there's not many places in the world where you'd get a great deal of choice in the matter....and have a decent chance of justice at a court....and not get your lights kicked out in a cell.
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Agreed.
In Turkey there are signs outside all police and Forces' installations and prisons stating photography is not allowed.
In pre-Arab Spring Tunisia, haven't been there since so don't know about now, photography of any official building or person in uniform was totally banned. This even went down to the level of the local postman on his moped or the local post office in a street scene, made life difficult to take shots in the streets when there was a police officer on virtually every street corner. Was warned that photographs at the Antonine Baths in Tunis/Carthage could only be taken in two directions as in any other directions the wall of the Presidential Palace could appear in shot. One of our party was held at gunpoint, after a little chase, when he was spotted by one of the guards taking a sneaky shot of the Presidential Palace Changing of the Guard from inside our mini-bus as we drove by. The photographer had to demonstrate he'd deleted any images and the guide was ordered to report to his local police station the following day when he had his guiding credentials suspended for a month for 'allowing' it to happen on his tour.
Wasn't unusual to be stopped by the police two or three times a day and asked to produce passports, etc. Would regularly see police stop vans in the middle of road junctions and hold all the traffic to make sure everyone saw while they would turf everything out of the back on to the road then just shrug their shoulders and drive off leaving the poor driver with the contents of his van strewn across the road.
One of the most beautiful but also sinister countries I've ever visited, did think at the time it was a country ripe for change.....
Couple of months after we came back my son's girlfriend was held at the airport for three hours, while they held her plane and all its passengers on the tarmac, and had her explain why she was travelling in a British plane and on a British passport; she is British born of a British mother and naturalised Tunisian father. Apparently her father's family were loosely related to a Government Minister and they spotted the family name assumed she was Tunisian and trying to exit the country without using the state airline and using a false passport. Took phone calls to the British Consulate to sort that out. Didn't make her popular with the other passengers who'd sat on the plane for three hours.....
Certainly are more scary places for photographers than this country, that's for sure.
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>> Certainly are more scary places for photographers than this country, that's for sure.
Yes. I'd like ours to stay less scary.
In 2003-4 I was doing some work in Greece that probably involved about a dozen trips there in the end. I was asked at one point to take some snaps of one of the retail shops in Athens airport (it was the design/layout/location that was the subject of the interest). This was not long after the British plane spotters were arrested on spying charges.
It seemed wimpish to refuse, so I did it very surreptitiously. I obviously wasn't thinking straight, because if I had been spotted and hauled in, my demeanor would have been hard to explain.
I'm not sure I'd even risk it at a UK airport now.
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After Houari Boumedienne died, the press were summoned to the national cemetery to see the grave, piled high with floral tributes, and to watch an endless procession of FLN-connected worthies - the mayors of small towns, people like that - filing past to pay their respects.
Presently sirens were heard, and motorbike outriders appeared at high speed, escorting four or five big black cars - 7 Series BMWs and DSses - which disgorged a lot of heavies and five or six rich women, who fell face down among the flowers howling and screaming in the manner of Arab female mourners. They went on and on for an astonishing length of time. The Algerians looked a bit anxious and told us that those were 'Boumedienne's women'. Eventually they stopped screaming, got back into the limos with their bodyguards and the procession rushed away, blues and twos going.
None of the assembled hacks dared even to finger their cameras, let alone peer through them, although they wanted to (I did too).
I got pulled for having a camera in Tanzania and Chad too. The paranoia is centred on military installations of every sort imaginable. White European hacks are seen as potential enemy spies however harmless most of them are in reality. The military are always big stuff in poor countries, even ones that aren't ruled by the military like Algeria and Cockle's Tunisia under Zine el Abidine Ben Ali who was former military security...
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>> Zine el Abidine Ben Ali who was former military security...
Actually something more like head of the secret police, civilian not military. But I think he bore the title of general.
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>>To keep it in perspective though............
Absolutely. And it needs protecting from planks who might endanger it as a result of their own behaviour.
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I think there will be a good few contentious situations where camera fitted police "accidentally" press the delete button.
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those memory cards are notoriously unreliable.
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Crafty photographers have 2 cards in the camera! "Of course I'll delete them pal. Look its gone." Exit right humming, soto voce.
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Police vs. casual photographer - Fullchat
