For some years now, photographers – myself included – having been complaining about the high level of surveillance by police of us while we are doing our job at demonstrations. I’ve been videoed and photographed at almost every such event I’ve attended, often in a way that I think can only be intended as deliberate harassment. There must be thousands of images of me now on the police files, along with hours of video footage.
Yet all that time I’ve been behaving perfectly legally, following the instructions of police even when I’ve thought them unreasonable. The police have always denied that they paid special attention to journalists, but today on the Guardian Online site you can see a video which includes footage (video and sound commentary) from a police unit covering the Climate Camp at Kingsnorth which clearly shows how they targetted press photographers and videographers covering the event as well as the campaigners.
The Guardian report is by Paul Lewis, Marc Vallée and John Domokos, and Marc is one of the photographers targetted, along with videographer Jason N Parkinson. I was filmed and photographed by police on the Sunday when protesters marched from Rochester to Kingsnorth, although the surveillance then was considerably more low-key, but missed the rest of the week as I had to be in Glasgow, otherwise I would have been there too. As well as Marc and Jason, several other photographers I regularly work alongside also appear in the clip.
It’s long been very clear that the police target journalists who cover protest – despite their protestations of denial. Now we have it clearly in their own words and images from an operational level.