{"id":306,"date":"2002-10-30T23:44:00","date_gmt":"2002-10-30T23:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tashuk.wordpress.com\/2002\/10\/30\/306\/"},"modified":"2002-10-30T23:44:00","modified_gmt":"2002-10-30T23:44:00","slug":"306","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/306","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>  From: Indymedia UK<br \/>\n<br \/>Subject:\tquestion re civil cam cops<\/b><\/p>\n<p>hi tash, quick question re police surveillance camera operatives:<\/p>\n<p>Last night several police officers from the Public Order Intelligence Unit, Scotland Yard, mounted an hour+ surveillance and intimidation operation  outside of LARC (the London Activist resource Centre) in whitechappel, London.<\/p>\n<p>An extra individual wearing a &#8220;POLICE&#8221; jacket with standard issue police  camera<br \/>\n<br \/>(+large flash bowl) took tons of pictures of people arriving at LARC or just passing by, inc. local residents.<\/p>\n<p>People noted down a couple of their numbers&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>But when it came to the chap with the camera, he said &#8220;Unlucky!&#8221; when someone looked for his number on his shoulder, and another officer said he was &#8220;a  civillain photographer employed by the police&#8221;. They refused to answer any other  questions about him inc. the question of whether he was therefore entitled to wear a  police uniform jacket with the word &#8220;POLICE&#8221; on it, and whether that might constitute impersonating a police officer or not.<\/p>\n<p>So&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>essentially the question is &#8211; d&#8217;you know if this is standard practice? were they telling lies? or is this something they do because of some kind of loophole in the law or something?<\/p>\n<p>Any feedback or explanations you might have would be appreciated, since this is the first time I have heard this line from the police, while others tell me this is a response they get often in these situations.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m very curious about this. regards,<\/p>\n<p>1 of imc uk volunteers<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.indymedia.org.uk\">www.indymedia.org.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/homepage.ntlworld.com\/tash.lodge\/Blog_Pix\/1861_12bw.jpg?w=640\"> <\/p>\n<p><b> So, I said the following by reply &#8230;&#8230;. <\/b><\/p>\n<p>Hello mr subversive\u2026..<\/p>\n<p>Yep, sounds like a &#8216;civilian staff&#8217; man.  I see adverts and articles for these jobs from time to time in the British Journal of Photography and Police Review.  You need less qualification that I have got.  Have applied a couple of times for the giggle, but no, they don&#8217;t like my CV.<\/p>\n<p>The job description is basically forensics, &#8216;scenes of crime&#8217;, press office stuff and surveillance in public places.  Not the &#8216;secret squirrel&#8217; stuff that might be dangerous and undercover.   That is still done be Detective Constables.  Or, in riot situations, there are insurance reasons why that I done by uniformed police in &#8216;protective clothing&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>You are right to equate &#8216;surveillance and intimidation operations&#8217; since one does lead to the other, and when done overtly,  they know it!  <\/p>\n<p>But this is the layout of the law.  Free society etc &#8230;..   in that it is allowed to take photographs of people in a public place.  It is the basis on how :<\/p>\n<p>*  they get to photograph people, just in case, without evidence of wrongdoing.<br \/>\n<br \/>*  How the press get to carry on. [within the codes]<br \/>\n<br \/>*  How I  [and video type folks] get to photograph them on operations!<\/p>\n<p>The police jacket is a little more problematic though.  Generally, when I&#8217;ve seen these chaps gadding about at a scene, they have &#8216;Photographer&#8217; in large white letters [capital, helvetica], over blue background rectangle, on the yellow jacket.  Officers tend to have &#8216;Evidence Gatherer&#8217; as their label.<\/p>\n<p>Not likely to succeed with &#8216;impersonating a police officer&#8217;. Since in the company of police officers. It might be he&#8217;d left his &#8216;proper jacket&#8217; at home, and had borrowed one! Or, that is just how its done in London now.  <\/p>\n<p>Anyway, if your into the trouble.  I would do one of three things, or all.<\/p>\n<p>* Take the photo or video you&#8217;ve got of the gezzer to solicitor on legal aid work, or even citizens advice for a bit of research around it. Then with a view to complaint.  As I understand it you don&#8217;t have a complaint.  It just that I takes a great deal of police time, exchange of papers etc., and sometimes things &#8216;bubble up&#8217;, while investigating the circumstances.  See what I mean &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>* Make a complaint directly to the police, quoting the numbers you do have for witnesses, and accuse the geezer you about here, of not identify himself after you&#8217;ve had &#8216;dealings&#8217; with him, in the street.  As I understand it, police &#8216;must&#8217; identify themselves if asked to do so.  His jacket says he was police &#8230; so there is trouble to be had there!<\/p>\n<p>* AND get as many individuals from the event as you can to get \u00a310 together, and apply for the video, photographs and CCTV? Under the Data Protection Act.  [done this a few times now, and they hate it!]. Wont help you identify this chap, just winds them up and being on their case. <\/p>\n<p>Oh, the other explanation is that he is a &#8216;real one&#8217; from the intelligence services and that you really are suspected of some dark deeds. [you may feel honoured to attract such attention].<\/p>\n<p>Hope some of this explains. Do cause time wasting trouble back. Makes all feel better, than just being victims eh?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tash.gn.apc.org\/0431_20slide.jpg\" target=\"_BLANK\" rel=\"noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tash.gn.apc.org\/0431_20slideT.jpg?w=640\" border=\"0\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From: Indymedia UK Subject: question re civil cam cops hi tash, quick question re police surveillance camera operatives: Last night several police officers from the Public Order Intelligence Unit, Scotland Yard, mounted an hour+ surveillance and intimidation operation outside of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/306\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}