----- Original Message -----
From: "E.R.N. Reed"
Subject: Re: Today I Was Stopped by the Police While Photographing
With all respect, I disagree with your conclusion that this will lead to
a police state,
Disagree all you want.
You are favouring letting police detain people for the flimsiest of reasons.
The reasons will only get flimsier ar time goes on.
This has happenned in many places, many times in the past.
It seems that the biggest thing we don't learn from is past mistakes.
I think you have a very exaggerated view of the meaning of "police state".
It doesn't mean a state in which police exist and are actively doing their
job.
It means a state where the job of the police is to intimidate the citizens.
Of course, in order for that to happen, laws that allow it must be passed,
so the police can be seen to be doing their job.
This is what the "improper photography" law is about.
You also have an exaggerated view of the meaning of
"harassed." It doesn't mean politely conversed with in a public, open
setting.
Bullshit. If I am doing nothing wrong, have done nothing wrong, and have not
witnessed anything being done that is wrong, (and am not operating a motor
vehicle), then the police have absolutely no business detaining me at all,
whether for a pleasnt conversation or for any other reason.
If a citizen did the same thing, I would have the right to tell him to fuck
off and leave me alone, and if he persisted, I would then have the right to
pop him once, since he would then be assualting me, and I have the right to
defend myself within reason.
Try that with a police officer sometime, and see where it gets you.
I saw the same stories you did. One of them I only glanced at briefly
once, in a hurry, and since I don't want to go back and look for it, I
won't comment on it. The other two can be summarized thus: "Concerned
citizen thought something looked funny about the behaviour of a strange
man with a camera and asked police to check it out. Police approached
subject. (In one case we know that police approached subject very
politely. We have no information as to how they approached the other.) One
subject was pleasant, cooperative and obviously harmless and police went
on their way and let him go his way. As to the other subject, the police
looked at his camera, with his consent, and (being apparently still or
even more concerned) then his car, and the more they looked at him, the
more it appeared that he might be a menace, and so he was detained."
He had a knife (unspecified, it could have been a Swiss Army Knife as easily
as anything else), some rope and some porn in his car.
Where do you figure he was a menace.
Hell, if I am delivering pictures or a CD from a photo shoot, I am often
carrying the same things.
Are you implying that I am a dangerous sexual predator?
You let people carry guns on their person down there, that is a hell of a
lot more of a menace than a knife and some rope.
If you want dangerous perverts to wander around your district and never be
caught, you're entitled to your opinion. (Which we have now heard, over
and over.) My opinion, (which I've also shared many times and so I suppose
this can be the last time) is that I do not want dangerous perverts on the
loose where I live, and I like the idea that police have taken a close
look at this guy -- hopefully if he actually is a potential threat, he can
be stopped before he escalates an unhealthy interest in the pizza-delivery
customers, high-school football spectators, etc., of this area, to
stalking, abduction, rape and murder.
No one wants dangerous people, whether perverts or trigger happy yahoos with
a gun in their purse in their societies.
You want to clean things up, you have a lot of work to do before you start
on the people with cameras.
You want to start presuming people are guilty and making them prove their
innocence, move to a country where that is already entrenched in the legal
system and be happy, but don't fuck up my best friend's country to assuage
your small mined paranoia.
Regards
William Robb
