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The police surveillance team had spotted their target: a 12-year-old boy with freckles and ginger hair. He was known to police for nuisance behaviour. They watched as he walked along a path with friends in the distance, before disappearing down a side street.

When the four boys emerged from the estate’s maze of alleyways, the patrol car was waiting. “Is this that operation, sir?” said one boy. “I don’t want to be on camera.” He already was…

Officers target a hit list of individuals who are “known to police”, and subject them to repeated surveillance. Last week the Guardian was given unprecedented access to the latest operation on the Five Links estate in Laindon, near Basildon.

For civil rights groups, the operation is an Orwellian technique that persecutes individuals who have committed no crime. But for police, the “in your face” approach works and, unlike covert surveillance, it requires no special authorisation.

Essex police claim there has been a “100%” drop in crime on target estates during recent operations. Their surveys indicate the so-called “harass a youth” strategy is popular in the community.

Some of the clever kids on the hit list have started filming the coppers – who are filming them. Which pisses them off pretty much the same as the kids.

Who knows where this all will end up, eh?




  1. moss says:

    Cripes – it’s in “British”. Some folks probably will need subtitles.

  2. Greg Allen says:

    In the video, even the police say that these kids have not broken any laws.

    Is crime so low in England that they can afford to send police teams after kids who might maybe perhaps someday commit a crime?

  3. admfubar says:

    i bet the police outtakes the kids get are hilarious, all i can imagene is that cop walking backwards recording some kid and he walks smack dab in a light post, mailbox, traffic…etc….. :))

  4. Balbas says:

    It’s time we start filming fundamentalist nutjobs like Westboro Baptist Church. Follow ’em around and stick their antics on YouTube — and name names with their addresses.

    Or would that be harrassment?

  5. Improbus says:

    What is good for the goose isn’t good for the gander, eh? Frak’n pigs.

  6. Ron Larson says:

    This technique was mastered by the LAPD in the 1980’s to combat gang crime in Los Angeles. They built large portfolios on gang bangers, real and wannabes, their tats, graffiti, clothes, cars, and other communication mediums used by gangs to claim turf.

    Nothing new here then.

  7. ECA says:

    Kids are KIDS…
    They and YOU all learned the same way…
    WE MESSED UP, and now we live with that Broken leg, Smashed nose…Or what ever.
    If you get caught Writing on a wall, then you CLEAN IT..

  8. eyeofthetiger says:

    Britons really are a bunch of pasty pansies. Anti-social behavior sounds like something FSB puts on a persons place card before sending them off to the “mental hospital.” Is crime so bad there they this intelligence unit (who is by the way using military tactics of gathering intelligence,.e.g. Fallujah) has to stop 12 yr old kids for walking to the store? When I think of Briton I truly get the creeps. It’s like they live in a world of total paranoia and crown worship.

  9. gregallen says:

    I was at the tail end of the hippie thing, and the cops in our used to harass us for having long hair.

    I once got a ticket for going twenty in a fifteen zone! I number of times I got pulled over just to ask me where I was going.

    … and I was a good kid but that experience has made me forever skeptical of the police.

    It also has made me sympathetic to African Americans in regard to the police. If my minor youthful experience of harassment made me skeptical, I can understand how a lifetime of harassment would make you totally cynical about the police and justice system.

  10. Cursor_ says:

    Well now, their team didn’t want to be on film because they feared harrassment by cicil liberty types…

    Hmmm.

    Civil Liberty types, get out your cameras and start stalking the streets for any police with a camera and take their pictures and post them up.

    That will teach them a lesson.

    In fact I think the kids should do the same to ANY policeman. Might be nice if they know what it feels like.

    Cursor_

  11. Rick Cain says:

    Such surveillance is the norm in the UK. A pity it hasn’t had any effect on crime there. Their real problem is their immigration policies, they darn near allow anybody to be british.

  12. Glooo says:

    This looks more like Saudi Arabia or another third world muslim country…Fascism Much?


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