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Baaaaaa….
If you talk to an Officer like that in the States, be prepared to pick your teeth up off the cement!
I think it is worth mentioning a number of points. The video in question was clearly sensationalised… everything from the music to the edited footage of the community support officer (who are not police and have no powers of arrest).
Although I like to read this blog recently i feel that there has been a lot of ‘brit bashing’ under the guise of ‘freedom of speech’. Before looking oversees i think the Americans should look at their own media (biast coverage of the iraq wars and the florida-bush election are great examples).
Please keep up the general interest news but at least present a fair and balanced arguement.
James
Shouldn’t a police officer in England be required to speak the language clearly?
Go eat some beef and brocolli.
As an amateur photographer, I am very concerned about being treated as a terrorist – whether in the US (where I am a citizen) or the UK (or anywhere else for that matter). Many governments are trying to erode our rights, but don’t mind using us after a crime has been committed
Is this the test bed for the US? I certainly hope not.
EXCELLENT post. We need more of these grass roots efforts to restore our freedoms. Aside from the police being oriental, it felt like something right out of North Korea.
Shameful this is happening also in the US under the guise of “protecting is from terrorists”.
I urge all my fellow liberals, democrats to speak out andsave our nation from the republican fascist party.,
This raises a very serious topic, but this particular video where the filmmaker pick a fight with a random policeman doesn’t do it justice.
I don’t care where you live, if you try hard enough you will be able to pick a fight with just about anyone at just about anywhere on just about anything.
So we have a filmmaker in a busy intersection filming buildings and zooming in on a cop. Let’s face it, he’s acting suspiciously. Not at all like a tourist. Cops are supposed to investigate suspicious behavior. That’s their job.
And in defense of the cops, they didn’t take him in or make him swallow his own teeth.
Oh my flipping lord. What a load of world-class bum-fodder.
I don’t disagree with the man’s underlying point about freedom. Just that he, and apparently DU, haven’t the ability to see, from logic and behavior, that this cop is just plainly, clearly wrong and didn’t know what he was talking about. He fumbled his charges and answers and slink-ed away. Even he knew he didn’t know what he was talking about. It’s amazing, but that happens.
If the “filmmaker” had taken the time to also include a clip from the police station, or a lawyer, or a politician, or a stock-in-trade news station, there would be no story.
If the cameraman was truly interested in his freedoms and not just being a Mike Wallace wannabe, he’d have mentioned this incident, and the cop’s “shut up” misconduct, to the local cop shop so the rookie could be better informed & corrected for the next time.
Our “documentary journalist’s” exquisite manipulation of truth, including the generalized insinuation, the carefully selected music to tell you how your supposed to feel about all this, is what is most frightening here.
RBG
Aaron so if I spoke like that to the police in the states you think they could kick my teeth in. That is sad and pathetic statement. Besides insulting the sensibility of the average American cop you revealed yourself as a bully with violent tendencies. I saw nothing wrong with what the camera man said and in fact it is people like this camera man who keeps our country free. Without people speaking up and defending their rights like during the civil rights movement in the 60s we would live in a police state.
John’s “Random Walks” are not as interesting this one.
# 10 sticky2j and # 7 Dallas,
Excellent points and good discussion.
Makes you wonder, what part of being AMERICAN or BRITISH don’t people understand?
# 2 Aaron comment is typical of a mindless authoritarian sycophant he seems to be.
Aaron seems to object to people exercising their very AMERICAN/BRITISH rights, to assert ones legal privileges and rights.
The same rights, PATRIOTS have fought and died for.
How lame does one have to be, not to to assert ones legal privileges and rights.
I guess, for a coward they must be, all authoritarian sycophants are not TRUE Americans or Brits?
In the US the filmmaker would have been tazed, maced, kicked, hit in the head with a baton and dragged to jail for failing to obey a police order, resisting arrest and/or the catch all “disorderly conduct.” No matter that whatever piqued the cop’s interest was legal.
At least these two coppers acted with some modicum of respect for the public.
Call me a bigot, call me a racist, I don’t care, I’m with #5. That guy should be not be a cop in the UK if he can’t speak a blind word of English properly.
@ #13
and plastered all over the Associated ( communist ) Press, then accused of anything else over the last 20 years of his life…..even if committed as a juvenile playing with fireworks……( previous explosive convictions )….
News at 11:00
@ #13
and plastered all over the Associated ( communist ) Press, then accused of anything else over the last 20 years of his life…..even if committed as a juvenile playing with fireworks……( previous explosive convictions )….
News at 11:00