Just to highlight something people may not be familiar with. It is now an offence under the law in the UK to photograph or film a police officer.
At the same time, the only way people can record the actions of them is to photograph or film them.
Doesn’t this seem to say “Don’t take pictures of us while we’re beating, intimidating or harassing you”? Especially after the recent footage that has been released after the G20.
Update 2: Lots of links
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7888301.stm
- http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/18/2546456.htm?section=world
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7999277.stm
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/03/g20-protests-police-tactics
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/davehillblog/2009/apr/17/g20-police-assault-ian-tomlinson
This isn’t just about ludicrously orwellian posters
On the other hand…
You don’t want anybody to photograph or film you when you’re working either. At least not everybody wants that.
And, the people the police is up against aren’t saints and angels either.
I don’t want to say that some police agents are not doing something wrong.
And it certainly is not easy when you’re a police officer and in front of you are 100′s of people who are furious and hold weapons in their hands. Shouldn’t a police officer be able to defend himself? What if he defends himself and somebody films it and ohh… some of the footage disappeared and made the police officer look very bad. While in reality he protected his life.
Don’t believe everything you see on TV or the internet!
Both parties are equally as bad or as good.
Let professionals figure it out, not a video camera.
Get independent trained people in those protests to evaluate the police.
@tbscope, watching or filming me while I work would be perfectly ok… Most of the time it would be like watching paint dry as all I do is sit in front of a computer all day.
On the other hand, the police have been given the power to protect us, power to use reasonably force against us even. You’d kinda want them to use that power for good wouldn’t you? And if they did use it for bad things then getting caught on camera for the world to see is a good thing right? Especially as they tried to suppress CCTV footage which is supposedly there to protect us, only to release it after amateur footage got out into the press.
As for your other arguments, the police are the ones carrying weapons, forcing people into small spaces (so called kettling) preventing them access to lavatories, clean water and food for the duration of the protest. Boxing angry people in isn’t a good idea…
In your closing statement you tell me that we should “let professionals figure it out not a video camera” well OK, that’s like saying lets throw away the evidence and let someone decide. That’s never what should happen, evidence has to be brought and in the first instance people have to be brought to justice whatever their crimes, be it that they assaulted the police or the police assaulted them.
When we’re living in a state where CCTV is being used to prosecute people for dropping litter and withheld when it concerns a police officers behaviour we are living in a police state. This is NOT a good thing, allowing the police and the state 100% control over the people as if they were cattle is not a good solid basis of a democratic society. Restriction of the peoples right to protest, restriction and constriction of people in the act of protest, abuses of surveillance systems and the proposed introduction of biometric identity cards and the idea of a national DNA database point to a state which has lost all notion of freedom in a hazed mist of security, terrorism, confusion and fear mongering.
This is not the country it used to be.
The Police should DEFINITELY be under constant scrutiny. Every step they take, every move they make (heh) should be under the eye of the public and other authorities, because they have been entrusted with a great responsibility: upholding the peace and order and a sense of safety. And they have great responsibility because nobody can really talk back to the police, because that would be considered obstructing justice, by definition. So a form of documentation that everything went right is CRUCIAL to the protection of the people, because after all, every police officer is — just as we all are with our flaws — a human being.
In many cases, police officers have been convicted for police brutality thanks to proper video and/or audio documentation, in many countries.
Video taping “while somebody is working” is definitely important where it matters. If there is suspicion or high risk of theft, violence or other forms of crime, then video surveillance is very much justified.
You may also want to read how your reasoning was terribly flawed in
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/relativist-fallacy.html
In this instance you claim that video taping you isn’t ok therefore you use that argument to reject using video taping the police as a legitimate activity.
The reality here is if it weren’t for the people’s right to video tape the police doing naughty things then the police wouldn’t volunteer that information willingly would they? As proven by recent events post G20.
The second major flaw in your argument is here;
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html
where you appeal to authority, the people who are actually in question or thereabouts in order to solve the problem and believe their claims to be acceptable.
You wouldn’t let a murder sit as jury for his own trial, so why would you entrust an authoritative figure to pass judgement on themselves?
There is also a petition on the Prime Ministers website against this. Its worth all UK residents or ex-pats signing to express their dissatisfaction.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Photorestrict/
Karl,
I can film a police officer in such a way that, even if he is saving the life of someone else by beating the crap out of the attacker, it looks just the opposite.
While CCTV might be OK. Video footage shot by the protesters can’t be used as evidence.
What I want to say is this:
If you judge every police officer the same way and take away their rights to use force, you will only cripple them.
And with “the professionals” I mean this:
Even the police have police. They should be completely independent. If they are not, then that’s something to work out.
Police officers, especially those that have to deal with protesters, need to get proper education.
Agitating them and then filming them is not the correct way to deal with the police.
Think about it! These police officers are usually people just like you and me. They most likely have a family, some with little kids. Do you think all of them are madman? Of course not.
Before they are put up with such situations there should be a proper psychological investigation en proper education on how to deal with an agitated crowd.
Most likely some of them can not handle it and will flip and do something stupid. It’s key to try to catch these people before they do something stupid.
What’s done is done of course. I don’t want to say that what these police officers did was good. On the contrary.
But please, do not think they are all the same.
What really should happen is to push your government to make more work on reforming your police, to give them better education, training and psychological profiling.
Don’t spit on your neighbour if he happened to be a police officer.
The police just murdered an innocent citizen on his way home and still people are talking about police like they where just ordinary people doing their job. They even tried to hide the fact they killed him, they did deny having touched him, they forged the postmortem results, they discredited eyewitnesses. There is only one reason that this was not successfully hushed up, someone filmed this attack, and still people are debating whether it is right or not to film police. Please wakeup, they just murdered an innocent and almost get away with it. This was no accident, they attack people systematicly, Mao called this “punish 1, educate 100″, they are terrorising protesters intentionaly.
It permits the arrest of anyone found “eliciting, publishing or communicating information” relating to members of the armed forces, intelligence services and police officers, which is “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.
This is the key part: “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”. You left that out. That changes the whole meaning of the law doesn’t it?
In Canada it is (so far) not illegal to film or photograph Police officers. As many you may have seen from the tasering at Vancouver International Airport. The official version of events does not always match the recorded version. I as well believe in the case of Britain with its high numbers of security cameras that if they can record you then you should be able to record them. Just because the Police have to deal with nasty individuals doesn’t give them the right to break laws.
Stapel: it would if we could trust the police to use the law as it is written, instead of however it best suits them. Try reading the accounts here:
http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/official-harassment-of-photographers-in-the-uk-i-have-a-little-list/
And here:
http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/photo/080304cops.shtml