Lat December I wrote a blog post Is photography the new crime? mainly because the Metropolitan Police Service had issued guidance to its Officers, which on the whole seemed to be being ignored.
Well this blog post is two fold, one is to celebrate the victory of journalists Marc Vallée and Jason Parkinson who have both received £3500 compensation each after police handling a protest outside the Greek Embassy prevented them from filming.
You would therefore now assume that these incidents would stop, unfortunately you could not be further from the truth.
The second aspect of this post is to highlight the incident from the weekend in Romford involving yet another journalist, Jules Mattsson and the Metropolitan Police who still don't seem to understand the guidance that has been issued to them as highlighted in my blog post Is photography the new crime?
Jules Mattsson was trying to cover an Armed Forces Day parade in Romford when ill trained and ill informed Metropolitan Police Officers, including an Inspector detain him, push him down stairs and generally act like very silly people while claiming he was being prevented from working for all sorts of reasons, all wrong.
The Romford Incident just shows that Police training is urgently needed before something goes horribly wrong! Do watch the video on the blog.
This surely shows that the Police are still dealing with photographers/journalists in a far too heavy handed manner?
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2 comments:
Why ask if photographers are being dealt with in too heavy-handed a manner? The very question suggests that those with cameras are a group of people who have to be dealt with in some way. When did that happen?
Folk have been wandering the country with cameras for well over a century. It's why we have all these wonderful pictures of past times and people and events. It couldn't be that there are forces attempting to take photography out of public scope and into the realm of private corporation copyright, could it?
Naaah. That's just way too far-fetched. What a silly idea.
Saw the video last night.
His 'crime' was not unquestionably obeying the men in uniform.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Inspector knew that there was no cause to even approach Jules, but you can't be seen to let people deny the authority of the police.
Slap a catchall charge on him, he'll probably be convicted if it goes to court anyway.
I'm just waiting for the police to try something like claiming recording the police is illegal wiretapping (as has successfully been done in some parts of the US).
I'm just glad police aren't routinely armed with tasers. Non-compliance with the officer seems to be excuse for torturing people with them
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