You should watch the video embeded in that page entitled: "Moment Speed Camera Operator is confronted in Wales"
Slightly longer version here:
Not sure what to make of this. It has to be said, the alleged videomaker,
Grant Pain certainly made a lot of trouble for himself. Whether that makes him a public hero, taking a stand against the police state, I don't know!
Legally, it sounds like he was on a hiding to nothing. According to reports elsewhere, the camera operator, just by being in a police van, was not "impersonating a police officer". The UK law on impersonating the police is s.90 of the 1996 Police Act (as amended) --
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/16/section/90
Unsurprisingly, the Act says nothing about civilians being in, or operating from police vehicles, nor whether that could amount to "impersonating" a police officer. You would imagine not though. It would make policing completely impractical. There are loads of civilian workers who are transported in police vehicles. Forensic scientists from private laboratories, coroner's officers, child welfare workers of the local authority, and so on. So long as they don't pretend to be police officers - wearing police uniforms or police insignia and such like - they're surely okay. And that scamera operator made it verbally clear from the very beginning that he was not a police officer.
One cop has been working overtime leaving comments underneath that youtube video, in defence of the police. He says that for the purposes of speeding law, the camera operator is known as the "witness" to a speeding offence. As such, he must be suitably trained and demonstrate competence at operating the camera, and so on. But he doesn't have to be a police officer. Makes sense.
After the street confrontation with the camera operator, two cops visit the videographer's home. A female cop steps over the threshold of the man's doorway. That would actually annoy me too. An Englishman's home is, after all, his castle. By doing that, she was as much confrontational as he was; in refusing to recognise the obvious boundary of the man's property; and she ignored his repeated requests for her to retreat to the public side of that threshold. Whether he is a Pain by name and a pain by nature, she still interfered with his right to "peaceful enjoyment" of his home. (Treaty of Rome; 1950).
The cop's parting comment that she was going to pass on her "concerns" over the man's mental health, as well as questioning his fitness to drive (even though she hadn't actually witnessed him driving, as far as we can see) was like something out of Stalinist Soviet Union. People used to disappear for months or even years there, forced to undergo
psycho-corrective treatment simply for challenging authority like this gentleman did. Just by threatening members of the public with the same "treatment", whether they're irritants or not, is half-way to becoming a Stalinist hell-hole right here in Britain.
Curious as it is, we didn't really learn anything much from this. Other than clarifying what we probably already knew about the speeding laws. I did like his accent though! Is he from Wale's perhaps?
This comment in the Daily Mail's coverage is interesting; perhaps there's much more to it? Maybe we're meant to get angered by it, in one way or another? A sort of
strategy-of-tension; meant to polarise society into two groups?
Divide et Impera, so to speak. Pitting those standing up for the cops and authority, against those demanding the dismantling of the modern surveillance state, and so on. As Dennis from Milton Keynes questions below, was it a real incident, or was it "engineered reality"?
Either way, thanks for flagging it up,
@Error7 !
