Policing - new material (86)
01 January 2009
Snap Judgement, John Ozimek. Police Review 27.2.09, pp. 38-41. This article examines “A long and sometimes misguided history of mutual misunderstanding between police officers and photographers [that] came to a head in 2008” when the NUJ’s parliamentary group “put forward an early day motion in the House of Commons demanding that the police service observes the law in respect to photographers.” For the record, the law gives individuals (journalists or members of the public) the right to photograph what they please but the police have, for many years, taken it upon themselves to arbitrate what is legitimate and what is “illegal”. This situation has been exacerbated by the government’s “war on terror” and poorly-drafted anti-terrorist legislation seems likely to be used to justify unwarranted interference in journalist’s lawful activities. This led to a demonstration in February by more than 300 photographers who gathered outside New Scotland Yard to mark the introduction of the new laws. NUJ, Headland House, 308-312 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8DP: Email: info@nuj.org.uk
Water Treatment, Gary Mason. Police Product Review December 2008 / January 2009, pp. 40-41. Article on the use of water cannon to disperse protestors in Germany and Belgium, countries considered as being “at the forefront of developing the vehicles and the water-firing jets into a more effective riot control resource.” Early prototypes, which quickly ran out of water, have been replaced by modern vehicles that can be refilled from water hydrants, reservoirs, lakes or rivers. “There is also the option of delivering an incapacitant with the jet of water at a concentration previously set during installation.”
Capturing the Criminals, Gary Mason. Police Product Review December 2008 / January 2009, pp. 43-44. This piece considers Merseyside police tests of facial recognition technology systems, particularly the Digital Image Register (DIR), which “takes images of a suspect when they are kept in the airlock or holding cell outside custody and search the images against a locally held data base.” If a match is recorded, relevant information is colour coded to comply with data protection requirements: Green (the person is known to the police but there are no markers against their name), Yellow (there is a bail marker against the person’s name), Amber (the person is wanted on warrant), Red (the person is wanted and is considered a serious criminal). The DIR is manufactured by DW Group, which is developing the next generation Digitial Register.