Hope you don’t mind, but I’ve linked into this story for my website. I am campaigning against the abuse of disabled bays and blue badges.

Any probs, please let me know…

Thanks,

Helly

Well done Terence on actively trying to get the public aware of their rights, the police and government of their roles and capacity to which they’ve been given power to enforce.

Ignorance seems to be the current disease spreading through this country. see current news on European Elections as evidence, and videos of police brutality and abuse of power for reference. Only if you’re not too busy doing something more important, interesting or engaging. I’d advise the mention two to read the rest of the blog.

Will have to take some time out to read the detailed links coming off the article at some point and make sure I know my rights as well as you do, just in case I’m ever accosted by police like you were ;)

I’m glad to see you engaging with the local community on blogs and twitter. I believe this is essential to building a well respected police force.

Terence
(For the paranoid, yes, the IP address of the poster belongs to Surrey Police.)

Interacting with private photographers or the media is not something police officers do on a regular basis, which means mistakes are sometimes made. In this case, the officer was quite new to the force and had not come across such a situation before. That said, you are not the first person to raise this and it is something Surrey Police has already started addressing.

We provide media awareness training to most front-line officers. In the future these sessions will make clearer the wide rights photographers have to record police activity, provided cordons are not crossed. We will also soon be distributing a short booklet of media advice, which includes information on photographers’ rights.

Thank-you for responding politely and explaining you objections logically to the officer. We would advise others who find themselves in a similar situation to do the same. It’s also good to note that the situation was resolved using common-sense after discussion with the supervisor.

Surrey Police

You might consider it petty of me, but I have made and official complaint. Like most folks, in the past, I would have just let it go, that’s the police for you. But the links below, show an increased belligerence in dealing with photographers and I have hundreds of other examples. They show that I might have been arrested in the attempt to shift blame. I might have been assaulted, my camera kit seized as ‘evidence’ with months of arguement, to get it back. So if this is the atmosphere, then I think we should all note these kind of matters and do something about it, until ‘they’ stop being so bloody awkward to us. So there!!!

UPdate: have a letter now from police saying that that complaint is suitable for local resolution due to INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE. I’m not finished yet. Tash

It was a fine time and place, and it’s good that Terence stood his ground and reminded an officer of both the limits of her power and the nature of the technology.

In this particular instance… we’re talking about, potentially, someone’s life here – so why were you even bothering to fight this one? Priorities! In this instance, surely it would have been better to have agreed to delete the photograph the moment you had any idea she was on a potentially important call out, than to have argued the point and demonstrated that you are correct?

I’m totally with you on the crap that you can get from the police and government officials trying to stop you photographing (I’ve been caught out by it myself, when trying to do some demo work for a client once, who’s building was buy a government building – got an ear bashing, lol.)

You have a very valid point… however, surely there’s a time and a place?

Be well, keep documenting and sharing.

rgds,
Richard