North Wales Police Don’t Enforce the Law, They Are The Law!

The Reclaim North Wales biking rally was recently held in Betws-y-Coed to demonstrate against North Wales Police’s heavy handed treatment of bikers in the area. Motorcycle News claimed:

the force admitted stopping around 400 motorcyclists every summer weekend, including 350 who have committed no offence.

Imagine Motorcycle News’ surprise then when they aimed a camera at officers who were monitoring the rally, who turned out to be armed police:

Strangely enough the cop couldn’t quote the legislation needed to justify his seizure of MCN’s camera. When the Register then asked the force whether the cop’s seizure of the camera was lawful, their response was:

“The officer had valid operational concerns about the vehicle being identified via the media and endeavoured to explain his concerns. Given those valid concerns the officer had to be guarded in the explanation he provided at the time. The officer did not object to being photographed and throughout sought the journalist’s cooperation.”

Err no. Not only does the spokesman fail to acknowledge that the cop changed his story quite quickly from concerns about his registration being publicised, to objecting about a photo of him being taken, but he also fails to answer the question. For the record it looks pretty likely that the cop actually needed a court order to get away with snatching the camera; just saying ‘operational concerns’ isn’t good enough. And as the Register also notes, a poster named plasma10, who may or may not be the cop in question, says on the original post on MCN:

I did not over react, however if someone continues to do something when you’ve asked them politely not to several times then unfortunately a harder stance has to be taken

If that’s the cop, then he too thinks he doesn’t have to abide by the law. It all sort of proves the demonstrators’ point, doesn’t it?

(via Marc Valée and Glyn Moody)

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