Loss of Privacy

Pay close attention to the video. The woman is already past the cop when he has to turn around and push her.

You can read more about this incident here and here. The officer in question and the police department have apologized to the woman.

“When I was a “police officer” back in the early ’70s the transformation was just starting to take place from a mentality of a public servant working for the citizens to “law enforcement”. The first I noticed of it was when the police departments started preferential hiring of ex-military people returning from Viet Nam. They started introducing military tactics into the department, including the first S.W.A.T. team. They quit referring to people on the street as citizens and started calling them “civilians”, or more commonly “assholes”.

“They looked for opportunities to use their new toys provided from “federal assistance” monies in the war on drugs. They changed the uniforms from the blue-suited cop with an 8-sided hat with a shield on front to a set of black or navy fatigues and a ball cap. They started shaving their heads and pumping iron. They gave up on the idea that they put themselves in the line of fire to protect and serve the public and took on a combat marine attitude of protect their own above all else. I’ve known them to murder cop-killers in the street, but have a could-care-less attitude when a civilian is killed.”

You can watch Part 2 here.

Dan Dicks and Charlie Veitch, G-20 protesters just back from Toronto, give their on-the-ground view of the battles between police and those opposed to the New World Order

Jules Mattson was detained by UK police for doing nothing other than taking a photograph. When he repeatedly asked what law he was being detained under, the police’s story kept changing, from being a nuisance to a threat under the terrorism act.

According an audio recording of the incident, the police officer argued, at first, that it was illegal to take photographs of children, before adding that it was illegal to take images of army members, and, finally, of police officers. When asked under what legislation powers he was being stopped, the police officer said that Mattsson presented a threat under anti-terrorism laws. The photographer was pushed down on stairs and detained until the end of the parade and after the intervention of three other photographers.

Apparently, these police still haven’t gotten the memo that members of the public can take photographs in public places. It’s especially distasteful, given the fact that the Met just had to pay damages to two photographers for a similar incident.

Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel.

Found via Mother Jones:

Drew Wheelan, the conservation coordinator for the American Birding Association, was filming himself across the street from the BP building/Deepwater Horizon response command in Houma, Louisiana. As he explained to me, he was standing in a field that did not belong to the oil company when a police officer approached him and asked him for ID and “strongly suggest[ed]” that he get lost since “BP doesn’t want people filming”:

Wheelan: “Am I violating any laws or anything like that?”

Officer: “Um…not particularly. BP doesn’t want people filming.”

Wheelan: “Well, I’m not on their property so BP doesn’t have anything to say about what I do right now.”

Officer: “Let me explain: BP doesn’t want any filming. So all I can really do is strongly suggest that you not film anything right now. If that makes any sense.”

Shortly after, Wheelan got in his vehicle and drove away. He was stopped a short distance later by the same police officer and a BP security guard. BP security questioned Wheelan for twenty minutes while the police officer stood by.

“Then two unmarked security cars followed me,” Wheelan told me. “Maybe I’m paranoid, but I was specifically trying to figure out if they were following me, and every time I pulled over, they pulled over.” This went on for 20 miles. Which does little to mitigate my own developing paranoia about reporting from what can feel like a corporate-police state.

Wheelan never should have answered any questions from a BP security guard. I don’t care if he’s the security chief or not. He wasn’t violating any laws and BP security had no right to interrogate him. The police officer also did not have any cause to take Wheelan’s information and then call on his radio to find out who Wheelan was.

The police are public servants. They are abusing their position by acting as agents of a private company. They are violating Wheelan’s civil rights as well as parts of the Constitution by acting in this manner. The police had no right to stop Wheelan. They did not have any probable cause.

Never speak to the police and, especially, don’t speak to some lackey security guard. The least you can do is write to your representatives in Washington and explain that this type of behavior must stop.