New levels of insanity

[TriggerHippy]

Every single time I think lunacy has reached its limits, something comes along to prove otherwise ...

"Kent Police set a new legal precedent last week, as they arrested a photographer on the unusual grounds of "being too tall"."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07...photographers/

WTF?????

[Mich the Tester]

Every single time I think lunacy has reached its limits, something comes along to prove otherwise ...

"Kent Police set a new legal precedent last week, as they arrested a photographer on the unusual grounds of "being too tall"."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07...photographers/

WTF?????

5' 11" and about 12 stone Is that really intimidating?

[TriggerHippy]

According to the Guardian, it's quite normal.

"The mean height of UK citizens is 1,755.1mm (5ft 9in) and the average male now weighs 78 kg (12 st 4 lb/172 lb)."

I'm guessing it was an excuse to nab his DNA for the uber-database

[RichardCranium]

Despite this, the message still does not appear to be getting through to police at the sharp end.

thick

[wobbegong]

Quite right too, the lanky bugger! A one-man crimewave waiting to happen.

That freakish height might enable him to peer over garden walls at ladies undergarments on washing lines, or to be best placed to act as a look out when his mates are selling dodgy gear from a suitcase down the Arndale Centre, or worst of all, those correspondingly long legs would give him an unfair advantage when scarpering from tubby "doughnut enhanced" constables.

They should throw away the key!

[minestrone]

I took a photo of a security guard at a sporting event after he refused to give me his name. He got a policeman who refused to let me go until I deleted it or they would arrest me for 'breach of the peace'.

I am 6 3 and 16 stone though.

[darmstadt]

I can hardly wait for my next trip to the UK. I'm going to take pictures of everything, going to be really non-politically correct, do all those things that you can't do even if they're legal and see what happens. If I get stopped I shall speak in German (dialect, of course) and get the missus to translate. First off I shall ask for the policeman's or community officer's name and number which I shall write down in a little book. When asked why I shall tell them that it is for my lawyer for when we go to the European Court of Human Rights and then I'll (maybe, depending upon how pissed off I am) punch the little ****er in the goolies (or twist the nipples really hard if female) and run like hell while chortling "you'll never catch me copper, possibly!"

[Benno]

What happened to having coppers who themselves are of a certain height and intimidating? If this bird was intimidated she must be a shortarse??

I believe it's because having minimum height requirements is percieved as discriminatory now so they have to let dwarves in.

[bogeyman]

I remember 1997. The dying years of a fag-end parliement, with John Major (pants on the outside) in charge.

At the time, I thought the government had never been so ludicrous, spineless, mendacious, and downright shifty.

At that time, I did quite a lot of 'street photography' in London. Just making a record of everyday life, and occasionally some exceptional incidents.

I did all that for years without ever being hassled by the police, private 'rent-a-cops', or the people I was photographing.

How times have changed.

I took my camera to London (West End and South Bank mainly) a fortnight ago and was harassed by 'security personnel', PCSOs and regular plod about four times (it's a professional-looking camera so unfortunately attracts their attention).

I have an (out of date) NUJ press card on my camera bag, but that was no defense against the nosey busybodies and jobsworths that abound in our society today.

Ferk it! It's landscapes for me from now on (even then, I expect the farmers will complain)

In a society surrounded by CCTV cameras, why do perfectly innocent hobby photographers fall suspect and receive this abuse?

[Benno]

I was working with a bloke from Dallas the other day who asked why coppers over here all look like they're dressed for a riot.

Then I remembered seeing something last week on the news from about 10 years ago where police were dressed like police, you know in black tunics with buttons and proper helmets. Now we have paramilitary forces controlling us.