Missing a couple of y's

Worthy of a tweet though

Just fixed my energy prices until 2013 as a friend who works at a power company says the prices are about to jump up.

That's worth knowing, as we were about to look at suppliers.

Was down at Perranporth beach earlier and a full-blown cliff rescue was in operation. Long story short I pulled my phone out and started filming, within minutes I had two coppers on me.

The cops asked if I was filming, I said yes. They then asked me to stop filming, I refused. Cops went on to say "How would you like it if your daughter attempted suicide and the footage ended up on YouTube"? I again refused to stop filming, stating that it's not against the law, however unethical some might view it.

The cops then threatened to seize my phone under Section 19 of PACE, citing my phone as "evidence", unless I stopped filming. She claimed my footage could be used to clear the Police of negligence. The cop further assured me that she would ensure it 'would be months, if not years' before my phone was returned to me. This struck me as a veiled threat, and a neat way to get around there being no provision against this sort of thing.

Thankfully the girl was rescued, so the Police had no reason or authority to "seize" my handset, but I was curious to see how they were going to escalate it should the situation have ended badly.

This was the marvellous folks at Devon and Cornwall constabulary, and I have the entire conversation on video.

As for the girl, she was no more than 20 feet above the sand, so in no real danger. This apparently required the response of 5 Police cars, an ambulance, a Navy rescue helicopter scrambled out of Culdrose, HM Coastguard and a cliff rescue team. The cost to the taxpayer must have been £100,000+.

Personally I wouldn't have carried on filming.

I think the police should have left it at a polite request to stop filming and then left you with the ethical decision as to whether to continue.

The ISO performance of the Pentax K5 blows me away. I wouldn't stray past ISO400 on the old camera - not anymore!

They probably do it as a matter of course. If they screw up, the last thing that they want is camera evidence to get to the courts.

One for Ernie …
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ibats/id426795283?mt=8

Mark

a) I thought you were moving?!
b) Perran must be pretty cool today. I'd swap just for a day, even though it's lush here right now.
c) WTF is PACE? And since when did the D&C 5-0 become assholes (except traffic who are universally assholes)? I thought they reserved that kinda treatment for Londoners??

Police And Criminal Evidence act 1984. Basically the laws that allow police to seize property as evidence if they believe a crime is being committed. Of course in this case, as far as I can see, no crime was being committed. So the copper in this case didn't have a leg to stand on and you would get your stuff back eventually. Of course he knew that, but he was hoping the 'eventually' part was enough to discourage whatever our penguinous friend was doing.


Giving the guy the benefit of the doubt, maybe he thought the person they were rescuing was in a bad way. If I saw someone recording something where someone was in distress I'm not sure I would necessarily be polite about out. Or he's just the paranoid type who doesn't like being filmed. Either way he very much overstepped the mark, IMO. It's stuff like this that are the reason people are much less positive toward the police than they used to be.

Jon

f**kin pigs

It seems Bratty summed up jonbwfc's entire posting in two words