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A true story of everyday life for Nottingham town folk

Gulliver | 11.03.2007 21:35 | Free Spaces | Repression

The scene: a typical Saturday afternoon in the market square Nottingham. A member of the public is taking photographs and decides to take some of the City’s Community Protection Officers.



One officer rushes over to the member of the public, taking off his hat on the way and using it to hide his face from the camera.

The following exchanges ensue: -

Community Protection Officer: “Why did you just take my photograph?”

Member of Public: “I just wanted to”.

CPO: “ Well you are not allowed to photograph people without their permission”

MOP: “Yes I am”

CPO: “ No you’re not”

MOP: “Yes I am. What’s to stop me?”

CPO: “Its not legal”

MOP: “Yes it is”

CPO: “No its not”
(sorry dear Reader if this get a bit repetitious but at least you have to chance to wander off elsewhere if you get bored. It actually went on for a lot longer than this).

MOP: “Under what powers am I barred from taking your photograph. If there are any then these two CCTV cameras that are watching us are in breach of them.”

CPO: OK I’ll have your name and address then”

MOP: “ No you won’t”

CPO: “Yes you will”
(here we go again folks)

MOP: “ No I won’t”

CPO: “Yes you will, you have to”

MOP: “ No I don’t. What makes you think I have to give you my details”

CPO: “Because I’m authorised” and points to logo on front of hi-vis jacket.

MOP: “ No that’s not good enough, under what powers can you demand my details?”

CPO: draws laminated card from equipment bag, refers to it and says “ Under these here”

MOP: looks at card, which has a Notts Police logo above a list a list of offences.

MOP: “Nope, none of those apply”

CPO: “Look if you don’t give me your details I’ll summon a police office and you’ll have to give him your details or he’ll arrest you”

MOP: “Er, I suggest you summon the police officer then”

CPO “Right, I will” and proceeds to dial on his mobile phone.

MOP carries on with his activities while CPO makes phone call. Five minutes pass by with no sign of police officer or indeed of CPO getting through on the phone.

CPO: “ I’m having trouble getting a line at the moment”

MOP: “Take your time, I’m not going anywhere. Good job you're not in a risky situation though isn’t it?”

CPO wanders off and after a few moment returns with a Police Support Officer (these get to dress more like a proper copper).

PSO to MOP: “Could you step over here sir so I can talk to you”

We all move to a quiet corner beside one of the lions.

PSO: “ Now, you have taken photographs of my colleague when you shouldn’t and refused to give your details”

MOP: “ and….?”

PSO: “You must give me your details”

MOP, thinking, here we go again “No I mustn’t.”

PSO: “Yes you must, it is an offence not to give me you details”

MOP: “Under what powers do you think I have to give my details”

PSO: brandishing his laminated card “under these and if you don’t I’ll summon the police and you will have to give them your details or they will arrest you”

MOP: “look we’ve been over all this. If the police do come I doubt they’ll arrest me because they know they have no just reason to do so. Just to help the situation here let me make a clear statement: Under no circumstances am I going to give you my details. I will step aside now so you can talk to you colleague about what you are going to do next.”

MOP moves away a few yards so PSO and CPO can talk in private.
After a few minutes CPO approaches MOP.

CPO: “Right I’m going to issue you with a formal written warning and if you cause trouble again I will issue you with an £80 fixed penalty notice.”

MOP: “OK, get writing then”

CPO realising he can’t issue a formal warning because he does not have MOP’s details, beats a retreat to the sounds of the MOP calling after him, “is the community safer now you’ve just spent 45 minutes of your shift harassing someone because you have not been properly trained?”

Conclusion: it would seem that there is a need to make sure the people of Nottingham are properly informed of their rights, the law relating to public places and the powers of these pseudo ‘officers’. It is proposed that this is taken forward, especially as the petty authoritarians are going to be under greater pressure to protect the nice new market square the council have just built for their own self-promotion.

Gulliver

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Comedy/tragedy? Can't decide.

12.03.2007 08:54

But well done anyway.

Monty Python


Collect all 100! - an IndyMedia photo gallery of every CPO

12.03.2007 12:05

An IndyMedia photo Hall of Infamy "they've all got it in for me" of every CPO would be fun to have. How long would it take to produce a decent gallery?.. could assign nicknames/caption until we get the real info..

e.g. No. 1 - Photo above - 'pound shop pseudo plod'

I'm lovin' it!

Gallery of horrors


Bust cards

12.03.2007 12:46

An amusing situation - when you know your rights. Lots of the kids/homeless people/buskers that the council seem intent on clearing off their swanky new square don't know them though, and would have given away their personal details. It might be worth knocking together a bust card to give out telling people exactly what these fake cops can and can't get away with.

Legal Support


Its in hand

12.03.2007 13:39

Yes 'Legal Support'
bust cards etc are in hand.

LDMG


various shades of half-constables ......

12.03.2007 21:11


Over time, Nottingham, in common with other cities, have been through various officers with labels, to describe them, mostly stressing their 'protection' and 'community' credentials.

They were invented from conservative ideas from the mid-1980's when Douglas Hurd, [bless him], went off about the fact that people should stop whinging, and become 'active citizens' in their communities. Many of us think that we are already one of those, and don't need a uniform to show it. I am inexorably reminded of the maxim that anyone who wants to wear a uniform should be forbidden from doing so.

Street Wardens
Neighbourhoods Wardens
City Centre Wardens,

Have now all been replaced by the new and accredited [much shinier]

Community Protection Officers CPO's [Jointly funded by Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire Police] & Police Community Support Officers PCSO's [Under management of Nottinghamshire Police].

Nottinghamshire Police - Police community support officers (PCSOs)
 http://www.nottinghamshire.police.uk/jobs/police_staff/police_community_support_officers_pcsos/

Nottinghamshire Police - List of PCSO designated powers (pdf, 23kb)
 http://www.nottinghamshire.police.uk/uploads/library/224/PCSO%20designated%20powers.pdf

In preparing this montage, I was struck by the range of colour schemes that these various species come in. Confusing innit.

a notts photo person


"community" policing - the emperor's new clothes

14.03.2007 10:59

a wonderful surreal "sketch" - I would have loved to have been present when the fool finally realised in order to issue a written warning to the "member of public" for not giving him personal details, he would require...well...his personal details!...perhaps after MOP left the scene, the pseudo-cop's head exploded as he tried desperately to escape the mind loop of such a "catch-22" logical paradox...we can hope.

i guess pseudo-cop's astonished reaction to MOP's refusal to automatically spill his personal details shows how seldom they are challenged - on any level.

Their strength is the power of simulation - adopt the dress, language and behaviour of a "real" cop and the public responds to them as if they were the police. This process works a little too well as pseudo-cop increasingly identifies him/herself in the same light.

It would certainly be an interesting project, spending a day following them around and filming them, maybe under the guise of a "community heroes" project lol...I can't see why they would object to being filmed...after all, as the refrain goes; if they have got nothing to hide... ;)

paul.

ps > the above exchange, as funny as it was, also reminds me, that once RFID enabled identity cards become the norm, pseudo-cop would not have even had to ask the MOP for his details, he would have simply focussed an RFID reader onto the MOP and once matched to multiple databases, would know more about the individual than even the individual him or herself knows...that's real power.


Paul
mail e-mail: paul@utopiated.net
- Homepage: http://www.utopiated.net


Roboflops,Iam the law,pound shop peelers vs the goths & chavs

15.03.2007 02:32

Wow these guys are great,where are they most of the time when crack dealers attacked me?.
As a friend said after hearing about customs excise protecting
the biggest uk heroin dealer, " we smaller fish got to fry".
Other duties they are famous for is stopping the evil goths & chavs sitting on the council house steps bothering our poor tourists, never mind meeting friends & lovers in between the lions is a tradition taxes pay for.

RFID & police state must be stopped, tags are bad but although theres ways around them with zappers etc, unfortunately besides some good people, some bad people will use RFID fakes etc to their advantage.
Personally my money is on us bunny's helping make id cards seriously hard to make happen,most people dont want them & it becomes clearer the biggest dodgy terrorists hiding illegal weapons near here are the illegal bush blair regime.
Lets just hope we dont meet the knights of nee, the peoples community officers of judea must be obeyed

cant wait to see pound shop peeler bust card, please put up on indymedia,

community support belongs to the people, only we can keep our communities safe & alive. Often inn NG7 i have seen police overlok crack dealers whilst targetting kids who whilst annoying arent shooting & stabbing people.
In fact, I once tried to work with police against well known crack dens where there have been stabbings etc, the police visited the place & seem to do nothing, when its blatantly obvious to everyone what is happening there. Is there blackmail happening, money deals or are police bosses just happy to keep crack dens in poor or radical areas?

robin ludd


waste of money

18.03.2007 20:03

So glad to see that our taxes are being put to such a worthy cause as CPOs (Completely Pointless Officers?). Why not just pay for real Police Officers? Oh wait, it's supposed to free up the real officers for more "important duties".

The only time I see a real Police Officer is when they're sitting in a van at the side of the road with a speed camera.

When my car was broken into 3 months ago, I called to report the crime so they could log it as a statistic. Nothing else happens as I found out the first time this occurred.

I was told that I would get a call from them in the next couple of days to give me my crime reference number. Three months on, I'm still waiting for that call. Well alright, I know it's been "forgotten". They couldn't even spare a CPO to give two minutes to make that call. But it's comforting to know that they're out there making our streets safer, accosting photographers with their vast knowledge of their powers of arrest.

Morph


Whatever happened to the guidelines ?

19.03.2007 08:27



As some of you might be aware, all police officers in Nottingham have been issued with guidelines on how to deal with media during incidents and in situations on the street. These guidelines were drawn up with the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). Why are the Community Support/Protection Officers unaware of them ?

Also, recently these officers were given new additional powers to detain. (read article) It makes me wonder how aware they are of the various ways of the law. It seems to me that all they are is ill-informed...

John


Community Persecution Officer

30.04.2007 11:49

Community Persecution Officer
Community Persecution Officer

Community Persecution Officer

C3PO


Community Protection Officers are great

22.09.2007 10:11

i would just like to say that all you people that criticise our community protection officers should be ashamed off themselves i think they do a great job there out there putting there lives at risk to stop crime and all you lot can do is add perfectic comments on here so tell me then what are you lot doing about crime so until you are dont criticise no one my dads one in the meadows i'm fourteen and when i get older i'm joining so dont dare take the mick out off them until you lot get of your fat arses and do something about crime aleast the council and these CPOS are.

Ben Johnson


Name and address powers

30.11.2007 10:04

It seems (consulting the documents referred to) that they can ask for a name and address if he "has reason to believe that another person has committed a relevant offence..."

A relevant offence is:

"(a) a relevant fixed penalty offence for the purposes of the application of paragraph 1 to that person; [This means disorder, Road traffic Offences (inc. cycling on pavement), dog shit and littering] or
(b) an offence the commission of which appears to that person to have caused—
(i) injury, alarm or distress to any other person; or
(ii) the loss of, or any damage to, any other person’s property;"

So, the MOP above was OK - they couldn't easily argue that taking a photo was "disorder" or caused "injury, alarm or distress" - but they can take your name and address, it seems.

Steve