Don’t Photograph Me!

Two pictures from five individual frames over two seconds with the lens at 16mm as a security guard tells me not to take his picture and threatens to assault me and smash my camera. That finger in the lower image is around six inches from the front of the 16-35mm f4, and too close for the lens to focus on. The guard is slightly less sharp than in the previous images because he is moving towards me, and after making this exposure I moved back.

I’d been photographing him telling a group of protesters against workfare – a government scheme that forces unemployed people to work for nothing or lose their benefit payments – that they could not protest in the street outside the shop where he was working, Superdrug, which they say is using the unemployed as free labour rather than taking on extra staff for the Christmas rush.

Fortunately too, he stopped, probably not because I told him he was breaking the law by threatening me, but because everyone around – including the man who has put a hand on his shoulder was telling him too, and he turned around to argue with them – and I continued to photograph him, but from slightly further away.

After a few minutes with the protesters talking to him he calmed down. He listened and understood why the protesters were there, and went back inside to continue to do his job rather than try to intimidate a legitimate protest. I hope he learnt something from the experience, which obviously he hadn’t been trained to cope with.

He wasn’t employed by Superdrug, but by a security company who are “an NSI Gold accredited organisation and has an ACS score that positions it within the top 5% of all manned guarding companies.”  They claim that their security officers are highly trained, but obviously they had not given this particular man the basic training in law (and common sense) needed to deal with such situations. His actions were of course counter-productive for both Superdrug and his employers and gained publicity for the event both on the street where it was happening and on the web. Though I wasn’t happy when Demotix made the threat to me the main point of the published story rather than the issue of workfare that the protest was about.

The protesters knew they had the right to protest on the street (and had been told so by two PCSOs elsewhere earlier in the day) and told him, but he continued to argue with them and attempt to get them to stop. And of course I knew I had the right to photograph, but he seemed unaware of this too. They don’t appear to have trained him that it is an offence to threaten assault (and even more of an offence had he carried out his threat.)

I’d photographed the same protesters earlier in the afternoon when they protested against workfare at a shop run by the charity  the British Heart Foundation.  Here they actually went inside the shop to make a protest, and I followed them inside and took some pictures. As soon as I was told I couldn’t photograph inside the shop and was asked to go I left, but continued to photograph as best I could from the street outside through the door and windows.

One of the staff, possibly a volunteer (and of course there is nothing wrong with charities using volunteers – but many charities are now using people who haven’t chosen but are forced to work for them without pay or lose benefits) was obviously concerned by my taking pictures and came to try and stop me. She told me I needed a licence to photograph, and I told here that she was wrong, and that everyone was free to photograph on the street, and that I had the right to photograph what I liked. She ran away into the shop when I offered to take her picture and raised a camera to my eye.

Shops could of course choose not have large windows so that we can see inside, but most deliberately invite the public to gaze inside, so they can have no expectation of privacy. And for me there was a clear public interest in what was happening both with the charity and with companies such as Superdrug – as well as security companies that fail to give their employees proper training.

But what the incident outside Superdrug clearly shows (and such incidents are not unusual, with security guards who know and understand the law being in my experience unusual) that security companies need to properly train their staff both in dealing with protests and with dealing with photographers. That NSI (National Security Inspectorate) Gold accreditation looks rather tarnished.

Some things may have improved in the City of London since the film ‘Stand Your Ground‘ was made, with police (who came out of the video pretty well) and photographers giving some training to security guards but in general there still seems to be a lack of proper training for security staff.