We've got a state when you're on camera most of the time, but recording yourself is treated as suspicious behaviour. Bizarre.
"I am old enough to remember when law-abiding taxpaying middle-class types used to have respect for the police."
Me too. Beginning about 6-7 years ago, I gradually lost all mine (and so have several of my friends & relatives).
Community Support Officers are not "real" Police constables - they are not allowed to patrol on their own, so they go around in pairs, so where is the cost saving over employing one properly trained and equipped Police constable ?
What if they really had to managed randomly stop and search a real terrorist ? Where is their equipment, training and armed backup ?
All of London within the M25 is periodically re-designated, in secret, as a "designated area" under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
New Scotland Yard on Broadway, and College Green are within the Designated Area around Parliament Square with respect to unauthorised demonstrations, under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (even on your own), which require written prior permission from the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis i.e. Sir Ian Blair., who can impose arbitrary conditions, which can be changed by the senior police officer on the spot, regarding what you can carry or wear or display, or for how long you can stand in one place etc. Caxton Street is just outside this zone.
It could have been worse, you might have had your home searched and computer and other equipment seized,like David Mery, or you could have been shot and killed, like Jean Charles de Menezes.
By losing the trust and respect of innocent Londoners, the Metropolitan Police and the labour Government are helping our terrorist enemies to achieve their aim of destroying our freedoms and liberties.
If you are interested in seeing how the Metropolitan Police is or is not giving us value for money, how about applying for the position of Independent Member of the Metropolitan Police Authority ?
A classic tale of modern Britain Wat.
Why the community types were bothering you is beyond me...back to the old stand-by of don't they have anything better to do?
JuliaM
The problem is, what do you do?
If we saw someone getting knifed in the street, we wouldn't say "you know what, I'm not going to testify because you're a bunch of assholes now". We'd still co-operate to get the perpetrator behind bars.
So, what can we do?
Is it right for me to be annoyed at the fact "recovered" is spelt wrong on the form..
Also.. just out of interest, what was the "legal provision" the officer had that gave grounds to stop and search you?
Now you're a criminal, Tyler, that's the last invite for sherry at Chateau Nortogne you'll be receiving. I shall be forced to cut you next time we meet.
People ask what can you do and, ultimately, all you can do is alter your own behaviour. I did so by taking the following pledge: "I will not cooperate with the state or any agent of the state unless by withholding my cooperation I am seen to be breaking the law." Sounds silly I know, but if you've been abused there comes a point when you ask yourself why you should continue to support those that take you for granted.
What is a "METEL POLE"?
"JuliaM
The problem is, what do you do?"
Use your vote wisely come election time. That's pretty much all you can do......
Actually, Wat, you had a lucky escape. You are certainly guilty of being respectable (what an old-fashioned word - so non-Nu/BluLabour) while being white, middle class and harmless (lucky you didn't have a pen-knife on you). Whatever the "police" found or didn't find, they could have summoned up a real policeman and had you arrested for, oh, "obstruction" would do - or anything else they cared to allege. In any case, I don't think there are effectively any offences for which you can't be legally arrested.
You would then have been transported to the nearest (open) nick, had your fingerprints taken together with a DNA sample and sent on your way. Your prints and DNA characteristics would have remained on the record unless the police used their discretion to strike them off which is unlikely. After all why should they? Prima facie you wouldn't have been arrested unless you'd done something, would you? I suppose though that the motto of the useful idiots is a consolation - "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear".
Pah - both I and one of my sisters have red hair and green eyes. We also have very irish names despite being 4th generation UK and having english accents. We always used to allow extra time for being thoroughly searched at airports and have both been stopped more times than we care to remember during the 70s and 80s for carrying letters to a post-box.
You never get to like stop-and-search, but you do get used to it. At least now they document it, back then you were never too sure that it wasn't police officers being bored or objectionable.
You will do something to increase the stats for middle-aged, white males.
In a slight state of, I knew it would be a story when it started to happen to other people - Shinga
You should have claimed to be a semi-retired transvestite pole-dancer.
I's a truism that the crazier your story, the more likely you are to be believed and just told to "move on".
'Metal pole'? You should have told them it was part of your Winterval: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Fes...e_Festivus_Pole
Oh dear oh dear, I really must stop talking to suspicious people such as you!
Funny - I was allowed to film the Queen Going by during the state opening of parliament, and was literally feet away from her - and no one could have cared less!
At least they didnt make you delete what you had filmed which wouldnt have surprised me if they had.
Hmmm...You've got a point here about serious crime.
But if someone blew up New Scotland Yard, and it turned out somebody had been casing the joint a few days earlier, and nothing had been done, YOU would be the first person to kick up a fuss.
I am not a big fan of Reid's 'Bad shit is gonna happen soon' but the run up to Christmas is, and has always been, a testing time for police in London.
The answers to you questions are simple and consitent.
1. You're being recorded on the police database for the same reason that you can't ask why the police aren't arresting the muslims with the 500mm lenses. That is - because you're there to do what the police call "balancing the books." If you weren't on the database then it would be chocca with hate filled men with beards and that could be seen as institutionalised racism. They know who is going to commit the crime but if they can get their hands on a middle class bod then they are in the red (if I can say that word).
2. Bad stuff is happening is called political correctness and their are victims of it as well as racism.
3. Political correctness (a.k.a christian on database) is more important to the Met than a 100% effort against terrorism.
P.S. They are harassing you because they are harassed by the PC cops.
They didn't stop you for "behaving unusually with a metal pole". The whole point is, they can stop you without any particular reason.
I was stop and searched recently for absolutely no reason in Euston Station - I wasn't even loitering, I was just walking out of the tube. I don't like the law, but there is a reason that it's there (to enable police to randomly search people) and there is a reason it's applied widely and indiscriminately (to prevent racial profiling). Whether it should be is another matter...
"In a slight state of, I knew it would be a story when it started to happen to other people - Shinga"
Shinga- I do see what you mean about how red-haired Irish people had 30 years of this. But I guess- and I speak as someone married to half-Irish Mrs T- at least the police could point to plenty of red-haired Irish who had planted bombs.
But I'm struggling to remember when someone with my physical profile bombed somewhere round this way... Bomber Harris perhaps?
So was I stopped to "balance the books"?
Hmm... sounds quite likely. I'm sure the two Community Support Officers- who were immensely polite throughout- were not doing it a crassly as that. But you can bet they've all been trained up to the eyeballs not to "pick on" specific ethnic groups, a la that famous Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch. So if there's half a chance to pick on a middle-age whitey, they're going to jump at it.
Watching Them- I was of course broadly aware of the restrictions on demos etc inside the Westminster zone. But I must say I had no idea making a video might be included in that.
Whatever Blair says huh? Even if Caxton Street is outside the zone.
The thing about all this- as Shinga says- is that the more we "normal" conservative types find out about what's happened to our police- set up by Peel to protect people like us- the more appalled we get.
It's a point all the ex-Tories I know should think about carefully as they decide whether to vote UKIP or BNP.
I hope it's clearly understood that in the meaning of Section 4 of the 2000 Normality Act, by "normal", I mean "traditional".
Well at least they can't take away your passport and driving license without going to a court...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/61.../uk/
6174671.stm
Oh Dear.
Don't be too hard on them, mate - it's the fucking silly law they're enforcing, not that they're intrinsically tossers (with the obvious exception of Sir Ian Blair).
We really are sleep-walking into a police state, and the officers on the street are "just following orders"...
I'm confused as the grounds for the search here.
There's no mention of reasonable suspicion of an offence being or having been committed (as prescribed by PACE). There's no mention of the search being authorised by a senior officer, for that area at that particular time, as per section 44 of the Terrorism Act (or of of that authorisation being shown).
The search may have been justified under SOCPA, where stop & searches may be performed if there is reasonable suspicion of an indictable (not just arrestable) offence, but that's not apparent here.
Then again, PCSOs may not perform searches themselves - only police constables are authorised to do so.
All in all, it might have been an idea to refuse the search altogether, as accepting it is tantamount to giving up your rights in that respect.
If you have nothing to hide, though, there's surely nothing to fear. Is there?
As a burly Irish-looking fellow, it always seemed fair enough to me if they should stop me in the IRA terror-bombing days. But back then, of course, they commanded more respect.
Wat,
Did you really tell the PCSO that you were filming for personal [use] at home?
MTK.
Anyone like to vote for sensible policing, uh!
Machiavelli,
They might not be intrisically tossers, because they were just following orders ? On the contrary, I think that if you behave like a tosser, there is a good chance that you are one.
Theirs is the kind of attitude which make dictatorships possible.
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