Police pay damages to photojournalists

The police’s problems with mistreating photographers just go on and on. Yesterday Helen reported on the latest incident – including the damning comment from a policeman who, when asked under what law he was demanding a photographer’s details, simply said “I don’t have to have any law”.

But also we have the recent news that the police are paying compensation after an incident outside the Greek Embassy in 2008 when they stopped two photojournalists taking photographs. As the Press Gazette reported,

Vallée had his camera pulled away from his face and the lens of Parkinson’s video camera was covered by officers.

The two men were then told by officers they were not permitted to film them.

The Metropolitan Police last week admitted the pair were unlawfully prevented from reporting by its officers and accepted liability for breaching both journalists’ rights to freedom of expression – as detailed in Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

Each man was paid legal costs by the Met and damages of £3,500

The problems with photographers are bad enough, but do you really think that a policeman who – as in the first case above – thinks they have powers that go beyond what the law grants them, really behaves impeccably and within the law on every other occasion and it is only the site of a camera that makes them discard respect for the law?