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POLICE STATE
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Two police officers stopped a teenage
photographer from taking pictures of an Armed Forces Day
parade and then claimed they did not need a law to detain
him. Jules Mattsson, a 16-year-old freelancer from
Hackney, east London, was photographing police cadets
when he was ordered to stop and give his personal details
by an adult cadet officer who claimed he needed parental
permission to capture images of the cadets. After arguing
his rights in a series of protracted legal debates with
officers, the sixth former says he was pushed down a set
of stairs and detained for breaching the peace until the
parade passed.
He is now considering taking legal action against the Met
which has often been criticised for its heavy handed
approach towards photographers in the capital. The
student, who works as a freelance photojournalist in his
spare time, decided to record his confrontation on his
mobile phone, providing an insight into the legal
arguments that the officers were using to justify
stopping him from taking photographs. The parade he was
photographing was one 350 public marches held to mark
Armed Forces Day, a new event which was created last year
amid criticism that the country didn't do enough to
honour its military.
Mr Mattson said his confrontation began when he started
taking photographs of police cadets. He said, “I was
quickly and aggressively stopped by one of their adult
officers asking me who I worked for. I responded that I
was a freelance and upon being told I needed parental
permission to photograph them, I explained this was a
public event in a public place and that I didn’t for
editorial use.” The audio recording begins minutes
later with an officer initially arguing that it is
illegal to take photographs of children. He then claims
that it is illegal to take images of army members and
police officers.
Under laws that guarantee the freedom of press in
Britain, there is no restriction on photography of
children, police or armed forces in a public space. There
is new legislation to protect the identities of some
police officers but only those working undercover or in
instances where an officer genuinely believes a
photographer is collecting data for terrorist purposes.
In the audio recording, when asked by Mr Mattsson what
law police were using to detain him and ask for details,
one officer replies, “We don’t have to have a
law.”
The 16-year-old continues to argue his case, informing
the officers that he has a right to photograph in public
places and asks whether he can get back to work. Instead
he is told by a second officer that he is now
“considered a threat under the Terrorism Act”
and escorted away from the parade. Mr Mattsson claims he
was then pushed down a set of four concrete stairs and
detained until the parade passed. The incident in Romford
came just 24 hours after the force was forced to pay
compensation to two photojournalists for a similar
incident.
Marc Vallee and Jason Parkinson took civil action against
the Met after they had their camera equipment grabbed by
officers in December 2008 while reporting on a protest
outside the Greek Embassy. In a public apology the Met
admitted that its officers had “failed to respect
press freedom” of the two journalists and agreed to
pay them each £3,500 plus legal costs. Police forces
across the country were told to stop using anti-terror
laws to question and search innocent photographers after
The Independent ran a campaign last year highlighting how
legislation was being regularly misused.
But groups representing photographers say the message is
often struggling to get through to some front line
officers. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said
the force had no information on the incident but added
that police officers should not stop amateur or
professional photographers from capturing images in a
public place. Mr Mattsson has been given legal advice not
to talk publicly about the incident. He is believes to be
planning to take legal action against the Met. (Source: The Independent, Jun/10)
See video here
Kevin Kirk and his business partner were
lecturers at Aberystwyth University when they started
Kanda Systems Limited in Aberystwyth in Wales, making and
distributing electronics components. Kevin was married
and at the time of these events in 2001 his eldest
daughter was 19 and two younger children were 11 and 9.
The company quickly grew to 42 staff and won several
prestigious awards for small innovative businesses. They
acquired a subsidiary in the US. One of the innovative
ideas was to solve what could have been an expensive
packaging requirement for their shipped products by
shipping them out in ordinary plastic video cases.
In 2001, Kevin privately purchased two adult videos from
the US, which featured Asian women wearing uniforms. A
‘customs censor’ at Leeds Airport opened the
package, saw the uniforms and decided that the models
were under the legal age, apparently unaware of either
the facts that uniforms are common in Asian countries in
just about every sector of the urban working population
and that they are very popular in adult erotic and comedy
movies. The videos featured Japanese actresses, and
anyone who has seen Japanese erotic or non-erotic fantasy
knows that women in uniforms in Japanese entertainment is
a national characteristic. The women on the videos were
all over 21 and the videos had been certified by NEMA,
which appears to be equivalent to the BBFC certification,
but more relevant is that each of the women had her own
website which shows her age plus other details, such as
her fan clubs.
This mistaken assumption by one customs officer set off a
chain reaction that was to be fatal for Kevin and his
business. Next thing apparently, customs or police peered
in through the factory windows and lo and behold! They
saw the video cases used to ship products!
‘Operation Star Trek’ was launched and its high
point was the raiding of the factory and homes of the
managing partners, no less than 48 customs and police
officers raiding the factory alone. Neither the raiders
nor the officers who obtained the warrants had seen the
legal adult Asian movie seized at Leeds Airport. The
mistake about its contents and the sight of the plastic
cases were enough to set off this ridiculous operation.
The raids happened on the same week as the company won a
national exporter of the year award, which was reported
in the newspapers, so word of the raids spread quickly.
As the raids were taking place, Kevin was in the Ukraine
having lunch with that country’s Deputy President.
One of his employees called to tell him what was
happening and to say that the senior officer involved had
suggested that he was in the Ukraine talking to his child
porn suppliers. Kevin told this to the Deputy President,
who was an ex KGB general, and he laughed and said it
must be awful living in a totalitarian country where
privacy and freedom of expression were forbidden. At
first Kevin assumed that he was joking, but then he
remembered that he was the ex Ukrainian Ambassador to
London.
The raiders behaved with the usual swaggering arrogance.
According to Kevin, they locked the staff up in the
boardroom for the whole day and when customers called
they were told it was a customs raid in progress and
those customers in turn were interrogated over the phone
as to why they were phoning. They told all the employees
they were investigating the importation of child porn and
this news quickly spread to the customers who soon began
to understand that they also were being tarred with the
same brush. Finally, after spending the day at the
factory, they left, taking all the computers which were
eventually returned. Over 80% were damaged to varying
extents and about 25% never worked again.
It was equally bad at Kevin’s raided home. They
lived in a very rural part of Wales and with him away and
his wife afraid of stories about a local stalker, she was
terrified at seeing a man peer through the windows at
7am. The officers pushed her aside as they entered and
would not let her get dressed, leaving her in her
nightgown. They told her and his neighbours that they
were investigating the importation of child porn. His
wife became hysterical at this news and even later, when
it transpired that only the adult movies had been found,
their marriage was irretrievably damaged.
At his business partner’s house, their naked and
terrified 15 year old daughter was dragged out of bed and
forced to dress in front of the leering customs officers.
We are told that the police had left the room in disgust
at seeing this treatment. His business partner’s
wife was also told they were investigating the
importation of child pornography, which was not what it
said on the search warrant. They found no child porn at
his business partner’s home either but his business
partner’s wife has not spoken to him since.
Kevin’s 19 year old daughter was in the factory and
confirmed to him that she and the others were kept locked
up all day. She also told Kevin that the customs officers
made lewd statements to her and that one even asked her
out on a date. Kevin reports also that when she told them
off, they tried to badger her into saying that he had
molested her when she was younger. They found no evidence
of either the importation or manufacture and distribution
of child porn whatsoever at either the factory or the
homes. The seized Asian adult videos did not feature
either in his arrest or in the search warrant which was
for ‘Production and distribution of pornography
contrary to the Obscene Publications Act’, not for
the importation of child porn.
Kevin claims that they took $500 from his workshop during
the raid. He complained and provided evidence that it was
there before the raid, but Customs deny this. The police
issued a letter to the company on the day of the raid,
saying they could find no evidence of anything illegal.
One week later Kevin went voluntarily to Aberystwyth
Police station to meet with Customs with what he
describes as his ‘incredibly supine lawyer’,
and despite their having found nothing illegal he was
arrested for the production and distribution of obscene
material.
The police then informed the child protection team of
Social Services and they began an investigation to see
was he abusing his children, which included asking all
his friends and some neighbours if they suspected him of
being a paedophile. They even arrested his wife in the
street because she would not say that he had molested the
children. Eventually, in 2003 two policewomen came to his
house and said that they had concluded their
investigation and found no evidence of him being a
paedophile, but, threateningly, that the suspicion 'would
remain on file'.
There is a sinister reason for this apparently
inexplicable act of arrest for possible child abuse.
Having destroyed his business (for it was now about to
collapse), the act of investigating and arresting him
placed him on a ‘soft intelligence’ police
register, which ensured that he would not be able to take
up teaching again. He was thus blacklisted. When the UK
or US police fail to destroy you legally, they have other
means of getting you. They do not forgive those they fail
to falsely accuse.
Their reasoning proved correct, because after the factory
closed with the loss of the 42 jobs, Kevin could not get
work as a teacher or college lecturer, as each time he
applied the ‘offenders database’ threw up this
arrest and the subsequent investigation of suspected
child abuse. On top of the smear campaign, for months
after the raids, the company’s goods were impounded
for weeks at a time while they were checked. They were
still found to be only plain printed circuit boards, but
this caused them to lose contracts in an industry where
time to market is paramount.
No charges were ever brought, but as Kevin says,
“Mud sticks!”. The company went under a year
later because the best staff left, so 42 people lost
their jobs and the country lost a bright new export
earning company. When Customs were challenged they said
they said they'd done nothing wrong but had ‘a duty
to protect the public’. Kevin has not been charged
with anything. Most of the raiding officers were from out
of town and stayed during the raid in local hotels,
probably on overtime.
Kevin made a complaint to the Customs Ombudsman but says,
“They just passed it on to Customs to be
investigated by the very people I made a complaint about.
Needless to say they denied everything. I would really
like to publicize this case to stop others going through
the same nightmare that I went through. I am an innocent
man and have lost my livelihood, my friends and any hope
of getting a job, and my marriage fell apart. And all
Customs could say was, "We have a duty to protect
the public.” (Source: Inquisition)
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