‘Sorry we searched you’
POLICE have given a rare apology to an NUJ freelance they had repeatedly stopped and searched four times while covering last year’s climate camp in at Kingsnorth power station in Kent.
Allyn Thomas, Assistant Chief Constable of Kent Police, has written to photographer Jess Hurd acknowledging that police failed to recognise her press card as they should have done. He promised that lessons would be learned from the incident.
The union had backed Jess Hurd’s complaint that she had been searched four times; on one occasion she had to queue with climate camp protesters for an hour to be searched. On another occasion at Kingsnorth a police officer took her press card because it didn’t “look authentic”.
She said: “Surely this level of journalist surveillance is unnecessary. They already had our press card details and we were not in or near the camp. Coupled with the long delay being searched, I felt obstructed from doing my work.
“My experience at the climate camp was in complete contrast to a job I had the following week at the Treasury, where I photographed the Chancellor in his office and went through no searches, bag or otherwise.”
ACC Allyn Thomas wrote to her: “It is clear that officers on the ground did not understand the accreditation arrangements for journalists and indeed did not generally recognise the press card that you (and others) presented ... The failing appears to lie with the planning and management of the operation. This is my responsibility for which I am sorry.”