Police don’t get it? They never have
CONGRATULATIONS for the pressure on the government to bring an end to police assaults on newspaper and television cameramen going about their lawful business.
I am sure there are snorts of derision in the ranks of professional photographers at the suggestion that the police “genuinely, if mistakenly” believe that they are “carrying out duties imposed on them by the law” or that they did not understand press cards or “accreditation arrangements”.
The fact is that for decades the British police and the City of London and Metropolitan Police in particular have nursed a deep, cultural desire to control or prevent professional photography, and there are countless examples of the gratuitous, unlawful aggression of the kind they displayed at the G20 demonstrations.
They have long been offended by the very idea that any kind of accreditation should exempt anybody from their arbitrary authority to clear people from the streets.
They are now on a dangerous roll, abusing their powers under the Prevention of Terrorism and the Public Order Acts and that must be robustly challenged, in the High Court if necessary.
Even when Scotland Yard issued its own “press cards”, carrying a lot of stuff on it about it being recognised by, among other outfits, the Association of Chief Police Officers, any copper on the street could be relied upon to display lip-curling dismissal of its validity if it suited his purpose.
Our police do not “respect the rights of photographers to cover current events” as one Metropolitan Police mouthpiece has said. They pay only lip service to the idea, just as they pay lip service to the supposed right of protest itself. Apart from our professional indignation, is this not cause for serious concern in this supposed democracy of ours?
Michael Sullivan
London W13
IT WAS WRONG to say (last issue) that “the behaviour of the police towards demonstrators and journalists is only a symptom of a creeping crackdown on freedom of expression”.
It is not a “symptom” but actually constitutes a blatant example of a crackdown on freedom of expression and civil liberty.
Concealed ID numbers on police uniforms and a cynically coordinated pre-censoring of the media by relocating reporters both substantiate this and counter any assertion (same page) that the police “were only obeying the law” in their brutal and deceitful actions.
Russell Cavanagh
Sheffield