Unfair cops
Journalists have to deal with the police every day. And whether the journalists are trying to take pictures or to find out information, there are increasing complaints of obstruction, harassment or worse.
The NUJ is frequently called on by members to take up their cases. This feature highlights just a few of them.
It’s not what they say ...
Police may have guidelines on dealing with the press, but photographers tell ELINOR ZUKE that on the ground it can be a different matter
IT LOOKED like a major breakthrough. For years photographers had complained that the most powerful police force in the country had obstructed their work by harassment, assault and simple unfamiliarity with the law. In March 2006, after three years of negotiations with the NUJ and other photographers’ organisations, Britain’s biggest police force agreed guidelines for dealing with the media.
Based on guidance to police in Staffordshire and rewritten into “police language” by then Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick, the Metropolitan Police guidance included a mix of legal reminders of the media’s rights (no permit is required to film in public and police have no power to restrict what is recorded) and advice on dealing with them (police should help members of the media carry out their duty to report from the scene of an incident). In April 2007 the guidelines were adopted by the Association of Chief Police Officers. It looked very good. But reports still come in to the NUJ of officers on the ground ignoring them.
Professional photographers have been hindered in doing their job on unlawful grounds. They have been physically assaulted, told to stop filming interviews under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000 and wrongly held in police custody for obstruction.
Photojournalist Marc Vallée was unable to work for a month after police threw him to the curb at a demonstration he was covering. Milton Keynes staff photographer Andy Handley was detained for eight hours when he refused to stop taking pictures in a public area.
And police tactics seem to be becoming more menacing. Photographers have complained that the Metropolitan Police’s Forward Intelligence Team (FIT) — set up to target public disorder and anti-social behaviour by having high-visibility police officers use camera and video footage to gather intelligence — has started surveillance of press-card carrying journalists. They say that images of them are given a four-figure “photographic reference number” and held on a database.
All journalists covering a demonstration against restrictions in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act in March were catalogued by the FIT team. Photographers say they were even recorded while waiting outside a London hospital when Prince Philip was admitted for treatment of a chest infection in April.
NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear wrote to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith in May, complaining of “intimidatory policing”. He cited examples of police officers who know journalists by name, follow them and film them all the time they are working.
Regular, low-level intimidation of photographers often goes unreported. David Hoffman, a freelance with more than 30 years experience, told the Journalist: “If you’re just walking down the street and taking a picture of police on the beat, when you’re well away from any problem and not causing an obstruction, they come over and interfere.
“It happens constantly. In May I was taking pictures of the party on the London tube — the last day people could drink alcohol — from a good distance when two police officers started pushing me around and put a hand over my lens. There was no reason at all. I was simply recording the event and they stopped me because they thought they could. That’s a very typical incident. That will happen to me once a week if I’m out working.”
Jeff Moore, chairman of the British Press Photographers’ Association, recalls a recent case in which a young female photographer at the scene of a fatal bus crash near London Bridge was harassed into handing over her memory card. “She arrived early and some builders invited her to take pictures from a window that had a good view,” he said. “The police saw her, and when she came down five big burly officers told her they wanted her disk. When she refused they said ‘give us the disk or we’ll confiscate your camera, and who knows, you’ll never see them again’.
“Luckily a Scotland Yard press officer arrived who explained to the officer concerned that he was probably committing theft and had no right to seize equipment. He argued for 10 minutes and the officer eventually gave the card back.”
Working photographers are unconvinced that the guidelines have had an effect on police conduct, although not all agree that police behaviour is in permanent decline. Most officers receive no training on dealing with the media and efforts by the NUJ and other press organisations to introduce it comprehensively have met with lukewarm reception.
Jeff Moore said: “Most officers don’t even look at the guidelines, don’t know what they are, and probably don’t care about them. I was speaking to a police inspector at Westminster who’d just been on a media training course and didn’t know about any guidelines agreed by ACPO a year ago.”
He said he had offered to speak to newly qualified officers at the London police training college at Hendon to explain what the media do, but “the Met will not let us speak to passing out police officers and I don’t know why. Once you go past inspector rank they’re all politicians and know what to say. Any senior ranking officer will give you all the correct answers about using the guidelines, but I’m sure they tell their officers something completely different when they go out to a demo.”
Andrew Wiard, another veteran of the London photographic street scene, sees a change in the ranks for the better. “It’s actually got better, compared to the 1970s, when I started. The police now recognise that we have a right to be there doing our jobs — but when they do decide to have a go at us they’re worse than ever.
“Individual attitudes have changed, which I think is the result of an institutional change. Some officers inside the Met are trying to get their foot soldiers to behave and obey the guidelines, but it will take time for them to be universally recognised. After all, the NUJ can draw up a Code of Conduct but it doesn’t follow that 35,000 members will follow it the next day.”
The NUJ meets New Scotland Yard’s chief press officer regularly to discuss the policing of journalists. NUJ Freelance organiser John Toner joins Jeff Moore and Paul Stewart of the National Association of Press Agencies to report instances of harassment in the meetings.
Many of the cases come from the anonymous report form available on the NUJ London Freelance Branch website (www.londonfreelance.org), used by members who decide an incident is too minor to justify the procedure of a formal complaint or are wary of complaining about the police on record.
But the union’s approach has been panned as a “charade” by David Hoffman, who has himself attended two meetings with police as a photographer representative. He said: “The meetings may be cosy and make good copy, but they actually have zero effect on reality. The police go ‘tut tut’ and that’s it ... They drop the complaints in the bin the moment the NUJ leaves. It’s a charade. Police officers know that if there is a complaint their colleagues will back them up. Even the good police will still back them up if it comes to a complaint.”
But things might yet be improving. When John Toner met police in June and raised the issue of the surveillance of journalists by the FIT team, he was offered a meeting with officers from the team.
The meeting also saw an agreement for NUJ officials to attend training courses held by the Met at its public order training centre in Gravesend, Kent, to explain how the media should be treated.