Today’s ‘The Independent‘ front-pages the problems faced by photographers on the streets in the UK, and in particular in London.
It isn’t news to most of us that the police – and particularly the Met – are misusing their powers under anti-terrorism legislation. The Home Office even pointed it out to them in their circular 012/2009 as pointed out here last August.
What is news is that the latest criticism of their abuse of power comes from Lord Carlile Of Berriew QC, the governments Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation (a former Liberal Democrat MP he is also President of the Howard League for Penal Reform.)
Most of these abuses come from the inappropriate use of Section 44, which enables the police to designate areas as stop and search zones. We aren’t even allowed to know where these zones are, and I had earlier assumed that the whole of London was covered by them, but the Independent article, by Mark Hughes and Jerome Taylor says that there are more than a hundred separate areas in London covered by them. It probably adds up to the same thing. It also says that every train station in the UK is one, perhaps explaining why 96% of searches in a recent quarter were carried out by the Metropolitan Police or British Transport Police.
Most photographers have their own stories to tell, and there are a few mentioned in the feature, and more relate their experiences in the comments. Here’s one from pjjacques:
Stopped and searched for taking pictures of cyclists near Oxford Circus in June/July – police made me delete pictures – threatened me with arrest – kept me standing around for almost 30 minutes – very unresponsive to any questions I had.
Of course the police have absolutely no right under any law to ask photographers to delete pictures, but as a later comment suggests, it’s often best to accede to police demands – and if you don’t take any more pictures on the card you can always undelete them.
If you make a living from photography, you can get a limited amount of protection from joining the NUJ – as well as support when things go wrong. Many police are aware that they do need to be more careful with journalists event if – as often happens – they refuse to recognise your press card. After all one of their bosses showed complete ignorance about them when he came to speak to the NUJ.
There is a related story on the Amateur Photographer site where freelance stills photographer Justin Leighton talks about the problems, saying “The Met Police and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) are a nightmare. They haven’t got a clue what they are doing.”
At the end of this piece are a whole long list of related links, including those to reports of a number of protests by photographers I’ve taken part in and written about here. There are far too many of my own features that have dealt with the subject to list here, but here are some of photographers’ protests:
