I was watching this the other night.
As usual, some teenage hooligans were stopped and turned out to have little in the way of tax, licence, insurance, brain and so on.
One of them objected to being filmed. The PC told him that as he was in a public place the cameraman could film him.
Then I thought afterwards about all the current stories concerning the police and community support, telling people that they can't take photographs in public places.
I must say if I were stopped by the police accompanied by a film crew I would object strogly to being filmed. But I would also object to a policeman telling me I couldn't photograph, say, my local council office.
Any thoughts on rights and wrongs?
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You can certainly take photographs of people in public places and most people are normally quite happy with the situation.
If you need/intend to use the photographs for publication purposes, then a release note from an individual or individuals concerned might prove invaluable.
The most likely cause of anyone objecting to photographs being taken is if they are of children, a consequence of the public's natural worries about paedophiles.
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Quite right, a man was hauled over hot coals under Terrorism Act 2000 the other day for taking a picture using his mobile phone of a car parked on a bus stop which turned out to be an unmarked Police car.
tinyurl.com/6ljrgl
No wonder New Labour keep going on about Terror threats increasing when they think this is it!
Edited by Hamsafar on 26/08/2008 at 20:56
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Even worse.
As far as I can tell from the story it was a "patrol" (and therefore presumably marked) car.
It's well-known, I think, that terrorists keep photographs of marked police cars handy on their mobile phones in case they forget what one looks like.
What worries me about stuff like this is that the legislation seems imperfectly understood and applied with all the subtlety of a brick through a (car) window.
I'm even more doubtful that the police can insist on you being filmed.
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terrorists keep photographs
With the availability of high quality images from maps.live.com and maps.google.com, plus the street views of UK now being taken
[ www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/15/google_spycar_map/ ]
terrorists won't need to take photos of public places.
As for the law, have a look at
www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/03/protester_photo_r.../
www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/photography_law/
www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/police_photograph.../
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Well I told a BBC cameraman where I would stick it if he pointed it at me during the latest filming of 'Motorway Cops' (coming to a TV near you soon)
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MLC, thats an interesting point.
What is the background to Motorway Cops? Are you all asked who are willing to appear, I assume the ones who do are paid a fee of some sort, either direct from BBC or through employer?
Would assume there must be some amount of H&S disclaimers signed? Does the Police force have "editing" rights?
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Well I told a BBC cameraman where I would stick it if he pointed it at me
;-) You are not PC Farooq, are you?
www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/23/camera_analysis/
tinyurl.com/65w2ds
"Man arrested and locked up for five hours after taking photo of police van ignoring 'no entry' sign "
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Get paid..are you having a laugh!!
(And we have no editing rights..another reason why I wouldn't appear. There was some dodgy cutting in the last programme, that showed (wrongly) a couple of the lads in a bad light.
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Was it Motorway Cops or Road Wars that showed the incident on the motorway where they had cornered the "baddie" and two of the cops went racing down the hard shoulder and rammed into the stationary police car sitting there with its lights flashing whilst the female PC screamed at the driver?
A tad embarrassing I would think!
So if they don't get paid, why do it? All on ego trips? Or do they get brownie points? If they don't get paid I assume the Police Force certainly will?
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Why an ego trip? They do it because they want to show what we do.
The Organisation gets peanuts (and I mean peanuts)
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Just watched a cracking chase on BBC4 a 80s cop show - the chase was between a Range Rover (V8) and an invalid carriage driven by a kid - brilliant !
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There used to be a sort of "hippie" looking guy in the Scottish Borders who had one of the old blue three wheeler "invalid carriages". Either he was very very brave or he had done something to it. It could regularly be seen hurtling at huge speeds about the environs of Peebles. It didn't sound like a utilitarian engine either. If I had to guess it sounded far more like a Ducati. It was also rumoured that he was not bad at five a side too !
Edited by Humph Backbridge on 26/08/2008 at 22:44
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I saw that BobbyG, I think it was a Roadwars epsiode which has not been repeated every day like the others. That whole job was so embarassing, they all had red mist because a motorcycle policeman got "attacked with a machete" and it turned out he was uninjured and hadn't.
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No, it was a samurai sword....well that's all right then !!
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No, it was a samurai sword....well that's all right then !!
MLC - Don't rise to the bait.
I.M.O., Hamsafar [aka Ashok Leyland] has always had an anti-police attitude. I cannot remember a single post of his where any credit is given to the Police for anything at all.
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I saw that BobbyG I think it was a Roadwars epsiode which has not been repeated every day like the others. That whole job was so embarassing they all had red mist because a motorcycle policeman got "attacked with a machete" and it turned out he was uninjured and hadn't.
The only embarassing bit that I can remember was accidentally stuffing the Vectra into the marked car, but who here has never underestimated how long their car will take to stop? Especially under such cicumstances, I've ended up going almost sideways through a junction once when I made a similar miscalculation on a wet road and I didn't even have any wet mist. I did have two new tyres soon after though, Chinese rubbish is not good in the wet.
The rest of it was just how I would think it should be, they smashed the hell out of the Astra with a range of heavy impacts from their patrol cars and eventually detained the guy in a field. I thought it was impressive and if it wouldn't put such a large hole in the traffic budgets I wish they would be similarly hard with other miscreants.
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