Proof yet again that the people tasked with keeping us safe are actually just plain stupid:
There were 3 Mancunians called Shoshin busking in Briggate [Leeds] making a rather pleasant kind of urban sound. I stood and watched for a while, made a donation and took a few pictures. After a while they were approached by an official in a red jacket who told them they had, had complaints about the music being too loud. He also told them that they weren’t allowed to have leaflets available to the public or sell CD’s.
He walked off and stood watching with a PCSO. He returned shortly afterwards. I continued taking pictures. Red decided that I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of him and the PCSO doing their job, I explained that I was and took another picture to prove it. He then instructed the PCSO to get my details and began ranting about terrorists and not wanting his picture in the paper. The PCSO asked me to come on one side and talk to me which I did. He then began babbling about terrorists, asked me for my details and asked me why I had an attitude! I told him I would not give him my details. I told him that as he is a public officer I had every right to take his picture whilst doing his job, because unlike other countries law enforcement officers are accountable here. He told me that he didn’t want his picture in the newspapers because of the terrorist threat. That makes absolutely no sense to me. I told him he should go back to his station and look up the advice given to Chief Constables in relation to the harassment of photographers. He of course had never heard of this.
It’s quite a good demonstration that in many cases there aren’t orders, there isn’t a culture; Britain’s surveillance society is just a bunch of old fashioned, stupid jobsworths abusing their authority with powers they don’t even need.
According to his blog, Kevin visited the Bridges Shopping Centre in Sunderland with his son to spend the £10 his father gave the boy on a family visit. While there, he seated his son on a coin-operated train ride and snapped a photo of him with his cameraphone. At this point, a Bridges security guard came by and ordered him to stop taking pictures. He said that it was mall policy, and implied that Kevin was taking pictures because he was a paedophile. Kevin told him that this was ridiculous and took his son to find his wife and get out of the mall. He also took a picture of the security guard “so that if I later wanted to make a complaint to the centre I would be able to identify him.”
Outside of the mall, Kevin was stopped by a police constable who had received a complaint from mall security that a suspicious potential paedophile had been taking pictures on its premises. The PC threatened to arrest Kevin “for creating a public disturbance” and ordered him to delete the photo of his son. The PC also averred that the Bridges Shopping Centre is a hotbed of paedophile assaults.
Has the world gone completely mad? Threatening a man with arrest for taking photographs of his own son? And in what way is the shopping centre a ‘hotbed of paedophile assaults’? Do those (whatever the plod meant) normally occur in the full glare of hundreds of busy shoppers? Where do the police think this wave of alleged paedophilia, which merits such interventions and indeed a whole Independent Safeguarding Authority, is coming from?!
It’s cast iron proof that we need to be extremely careful about what powers we give the police. They keep insisting they need to lock people up without charge for 42 days, that the DNA profiles of people unconvicted of or innocent of a crime should be retained for years, despite it already having been proven that there’s no advantage in doing so, even that photographing police officers should be a crime. And all the while they keep protesting that you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, that these powers won’t be misused or abused, yet Bob Patefield’s video shows the exact opposite – multiple police officers flagrantly abusing their authority because of legislation which allows them to. It couldn’t be simpler.
Of course these police officers could have spent time looking for pickpockets, for muggers, for violent drunks or wife beaters, but why should they when they have the Terrorism Act 2000 and the Police Reform Act covering their backs? Are they reacting to a moral panic which only the police seem bothered about? Did all police at some point decide that photographers were either terrorists or paedophiles, and needed to be stopped? This wasn’t after all one of the high profile stops in London a couple of months ago – it was in the north of England. Perhaps it was just a case of how the police operate when they have laws which allow them to abuse the innocent.
It was heartening to attend the Mass Photo Gathering in January, organised by I’m a Photographer Not a Terrorist, which demonstrated just how angry and fed up people are by this abuse, but it’s certainly not ended. The police’s insistence on extra or additional powers can’t ever be taken at face value; there has to be a proportionate need for them. After all how often do terrorists use DSLRs to scout targets which can be seen clearly on Google Street View? And how many amateur photographers really go around being ‘anti-social’? Good grief.
The use of Stop & Search without grounds for suspicion has been ruled illegal by European Court of Human Rights. This ruling from Strasbourg comes as thousands of photographers are set to gather in London on Saturday 23rd January to take mass action to defend their right to photograph after a series of high profile detentions under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act.
Our society’s visual history is under threat of extinction by anti-terrorism legislation. Section 44 of the Terrorism Act has in effect ended the confidence of the citizen to engage in the act of photography in a public place as photographers, artists and illustrators, amateur and professional are harassed by police invoking terrorism legislation to stop and search them. The act of documenting our street scenes and public life, our built environment, whether iconic or not, is now considered to be an act of hostile reconnaissance and could result in the detention of the image-maker.
The Mass Photo Gathering has been called by the campaign group I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist! which has over 9000 followers on Facebook.
Over 300 of Britain’s best-known photographers have signed a letter to protest against the use of terror laws to stop and search by police and the officious regiment of Police Community Support Officers. The letter comes after news that a photographer belonging to the NUJ – Andrew Handley of MK News in Milton Keynes – received £5,000 after being unlawfully held for taking pictures of a car accident.
What both these pieces of news demonstrate is that police nationally have, without proper legislative authority, taken it upon themselves to obstruct the rights of photographers and the duty of journalists to go about their business. As I have said before, there is an ongoing struggle about the control of public space, which has profoundly symbolic importance for a free society. What seems to be happening is that police using terror laws have decided that all public space has been re-designated as state space, over which the police and CCTV systems have exclusive photographic rights.
It’s a well-made and terrifyingly logical argument, and unquestionably connected to the broader issue of New Labour’s systematic drift from accountability and the rule of law. A government dedicated to ignoring the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling on its National DNA Database, to trying to lock people up without charge for 42 days, to setting up databases which precriminalise the entire population is the root cause; finding the solution is more difficult. On the one hand Porter is entirely right when he says the police are acting autonomously in how they are increasingly (mis)managing public space; on the other there’s a Home Office which despite its public distancing from the police on this matter, privately relishes it. After all they don’t expect Section 44 of the Terrorism Act (which the police didn’t even ask for), the DNA database, ID card, ISA or any other intrusive legislation not to be used.
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